Ancestry

There is a television show I watch called Who Do You Think  You Are?  Each show follows a particular celebrity's search for their ancestral roots.   I have found each episode quite fascinating, and it inspires me to want to do some genealogical research myself.  It appears that one can follow Ancestry.com and tap into all kinds of significant documents which shed light on what might have been going on in a person's life.

The insights and revelations that have been discovered in each episode lead one to believe that there is a lot more going on than just dates, and facts and figures.   And I might add, there is probably a lot more going on than just genes.  In other words, there seem to be relational patterns,  spiritual kinships, and all sorts of other unexpected twists and turns.

Gweneth Paltro was searching her family ancestry trying to understand her grandfather,  who obviously had a dismal childhood, and whose mother seemed at best, ambivalent, at worst completely indifferent. He had no compassion for his mother, and was filled with pain and disappointment all his life.  Because of that, the family never talked about that great-grandmother.

The genealogists review of the census reports revealed some startling information.  It turns out that the great-grandmother lost a daughter.  She would have been filled with grief from that loss, no doubt.  Then two months later, she gave birth to another child, so she was pregnant at the time of the other child's death.  That she might have been hormonal, distressed, depressed should be no surprise, knowing those circumstances.
Those simple facts give a plausible explanation as to why she may not have been able to adequately care for her older children.

Of course, not everything will appear in documents.  There are many reasons why people do not talk about tragedies.  I am so grateful to have learned from my uncle, just a few years ago, of a tragedy in my own mother's life which happened to her as a youth.  That information gave me a whole new way of understanding my own mother.

All sorts of traits and tragedies,  inclinations and ideas get passed along multiple generations in a family. Perhaps if something doesn't get worked out or resolved in one generation, it gets picked up by the next, completely unbeknownst to the one who 'inherits' it.

 I suspect that I come from a long line of ancestors who might be characterized has having a well developed sense of spiritual curiosity.  There have been several preachers.  I probably am one of a long line.

Some day, when I am bored and curious, I will log on to Ancestry.com and start a quest of my own.  Who knows what might come up?