A Quick Introduction

Hi! Welcome to my first post. I am suddenly terrified… I’ve always suffered from stage fright but I didn’t know it would transfer to blogging as well! I guess I should ease my way in by telling you a bit about myself and how I became a genealogy junkie.

Six and a half years ago I was injured in an accident which has left me with debilitating chronic pain, migraines and trouble using my dominant arm. It’s been a tough, frustrating time in that regard, but it has also been a tremendous time of personal growth and awareness. During the first few months after the accident I spent a lot of time propped in a chair with ice on my shoulder and heat on my neck. I watched a lot of TV. One day I was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show and Lisa Kudrow was talking about her new show Who Do You Think You Are? This is when a whole new world opened up to me. Before I go forward, I have to go back, so you understand why this episode had such a strong impact on me.

As an adoptee, I hated any projects in school revolving around family history. I remember having to do a family tree in elementary school and it brought up all these painful feelings of not knowing where I came from. My mom’s response was to do her family tree. The experience left me feeling misunderstood and it reinforced my feelings of isolation. Although I had been grafted onto another tree, it still wasn’t my tree. I was accepted, but the truth is I still came from somewhere else. How do you feel grounded when you have no clue where you come from?  So, when I was nineteen I applied with The Children’s Aid Society to unseal my adoption records and meet my biological mother. She had already applied so the match happened quickly. It was an interesting experience, some of it good, some of it not so good. All in all, I’m really glad I did it.

It wasn’t until years later, as I watched Lisa Kudrow talk about her new show about researching your genealogy that it dawned on me, “I can do that now!” I started immediately. My cousin, Jamie, helped gather information on my maternal biological family, and my sister, Chandra, gave me some information on my paternal biological family. I found amazing free websites which were incredibly helpful, and thus began my adventure into discovering my roots; each new document that I found on an ancestor grounding me more and more into this world, making me feel like I really do belong.

This blog will be devoted to all things genealogical, with a focus on my personal journey into it. I also recently delved into DNA testing, so that will be a topic as well… as soon as it stops making my brain hurt!!!

I hope you enjoy!
Debbie