Have you ever wondered about your unknown ancestors? How to research your ancestry to create an accurate family tree with stories aligned with family names, connecting family members through family knowledge and DNA? According to Ancestry, 23 and Me, we randomly inherit about fifty percent of our genes from each parent. In general, we as human are 99.7 percent the same. Within each of our ancestral families, we pass on from one generation to the next, DNA mixes from each set of parents, great grandparents, great, great grandparents, etc.

H1q represents my maternal Haplogroup. According to 23 & Me, H1q haplogroup traces back to a woman who lived nearly 18,000 ago. The H haplogroup is nearly 240 generations ago from what’s known today as the Middle East, it’s relatively uncommon among 23 & Me customers as it evolved into H1q 6,000 years ago! Haplogroup L is the oldest, tracing back to a maternal woman who lived in eastern Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago.   Paternal Haplogroup groups are identified through male children. Therefore, a male sibling can determine the paternal Haplogroup group of a female sibling if they share the same paternal side.  Each subsequent sibling inherits a random fifty percent from shared parents. 

Researching my ancestors has been an interest for several decades as a female. I would dabble a bit here and there, beginning a family tree of what I knew in my son’s baby books. These trees were dismal in comparison to what I’ve learned in the past two years. I wondered about both of my parent’s ancestors and how they derived at the decision to immigrate to the United States from Canada and Mexico. What courage and resilience they must have relied upon as they traveled from their homes to the Northeast and Southwest?  How did my ancestor’s journeys before me, effect my journey? How has my life’s journey affected my son’s journeys? 

Where to begin this story of my truth as I know it today? 

Who were my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and what are their stories? These answers are illuminating, intricate, perplexing, with a multitude of surprising events.   As I’m still researching today, filling in gaps with a paper trail of documents, DNA relative stories and continuing to connect the dots.

Through my research of my maternal ancestry I’ve traveled back in time as far back as the 1700’s, to tell a story beyond belief from my growing knowledge and research. My research has led to knowing and understanding more about perspective within any given shared memory or legal documentation as a part of the total reality of what really is.  I’m a woman with a true focus to deeply understanding the puzzles, intricacies and discoveries of secrets within my complicated family dynamic that influenced past, present, and future generations. Plus, some of the few stories I’ve heard are fictional and not ancestors connected to my DNA tree. A true adventure has begun discerning fiction from nonfiction as I travel back in time living in the present.

A few distinct challenging themes emerge, such as immigration, poverty, moving to working class, university graduates, artists, jazz singer, English as a Second Language, alcohol, mental health issues and a few colossal surprises. Awareness of mental health issues are more of a hot topic today, research in previous decades and centuries was limited in comparison. A variety of possible known mental health issues bipolar, narcissistic and borderline personality disorder may have links to my maternal lineage primarily. These are terms tossed around quite frequently on social media and other websites. Plus, sprinkle in divorce, parental deaths, adult and childhood trauma, PTSD, C-PTSD, estrangement and eating disorders to name a few. How does mental health effect family dynamics, child development, relationships with self and others in the 21st Century?

Yet with my ancestry research there are diverse themes of individuality through giftedness within copious genres, enumerating resilience, courage, survival, healing and growth. Trying to be objective as possible with perspective understanding of all involved in this family story. Leading the reader, walking along the same path of the writer, as the story begins to unfold the discoveries of family dynamics. These vignettes will begin in the twentieth century, going back a century, to the 19th and forward to the twenty-first century. The intricacies and ramifications indicate a trilogy set of books with a few thousand pages or more to understand and convey generational healing can transpire with mindfulness, research, and empathy, from thoughtfully processed knowledge obtained, balancing compassion for self and others.

A colorful mosaic tree with thousands of pieces to create the branches. Where do they all fit?