Connections in Quarantine

In Virginia, we've been in a state of emergency since March 12th and under a stay at home order since March 24th due to COVID-19. With limited access to nearly everything - including people - how was a connector like myself to stay connected? Genealogy and technology!

Here are some of the things I've been up to during this time that have helped keep me connected.

#ABatchADay Challenge

At the end of April, I started a seven-day challenge to index records on FamilySearch. It was a great experience! I had never indexed records before - though as a daily online researcher, I'm always reaping the fruits of indexers' labors! So I decided to jump in and have a go at indexing.

I worked on records of the U.S. Colored Troops from during the Civil War. Each day, I would index at least one batch of records. A batch is a certain amount of records that can be indexed in 20 to 30 minutes. In my case, it took less time than that. The military records that I worked on will be searchable soon for those seeking their ancestors. It was super simple, and the learning curve was fast to get over. I recommend everyone try to index a batch!

In just one week, our group indexed over 11,000 records! To get your feet wet with indexing, head over to FamilySearch's indexing page by clicking here.

Connections Experiment

Starting May 1, I participated in a daily experiment to make more connections to family past and present. It's called the Family Connections Experiment. I wrote about the plan I chose and my first day's reflections on my post A Journal, A Timeline, and Family Connections. I thought it would be a helpful exercise to reflect some on who I am, and what makes me, me. And I was right; it as a great experience!

Each day, usually in the evening, I would sit down at my dining room table, and scroll down to the next prompt on the website. I loved the surprise of what that day's prompt would be, and how I might write about it. I chose to journal my reflections, and then share something of what I wrote on my Orthodox Genealogist Facebook Page, and on my Twitter account @SosonKyrie.

Here are some of my reflections on what I've learned or have greater clarity on:

• My identity is wrapped up not only in my experiences and interests, but in the people who came before me. My family isn't perfect, but I am theirs and they are mine.
• My parents did a great job at cultivating my sister's and my interests and skills. And they did this because we were and are their prized possession. 
• I have been blessed with great experiences - school, work, and travel - and with great people in my life - mentors, friends, and family. 

Some highlights from quarantine 

While isolation is...well...isolating...it doesn't have to be completely without connection. Besides the daily genealogy research I've been doing, and the daily reflections with the Connections Experiment, I've made sure to stay connected to family and friends through technology.

I FaceTimed my mom on Mother's Day, I've had virtual happy hour, virtual hangouts, and virtual game nights all during this time of quarantine.

My favorite board game is Settlers of Catan. During my time at the Greek Orthodox seminary in Boston, we played a lot of Catan. During our senior trip to Greece, we played a lot of Catan! So it seemed only meet and right to revamp our tradition by playing virtually - thanks Zoom! - during our time in quarantine. So far, we've played twice. The second time we played, I even won y'all! I was in shock.

On the last day of the Connections Experiment, I was interviewed by Sydney Orton on Facebook Live. Our discussion "Grappling with Difficult Discoveries" is available on the Connections Experiment Facebook page. You can watch the video by clicking here. 

We talked about how common it is for people to make difficult discoveries in their family history. Everyone is going to react to the same sort of information a bit differently, so we talked about some of the most common challenges a person might face:

• Parentage - unknown parentage, adoption, circumstances surrounding their conception
• Infidelity - DNA matches can reveal moments of infidelity or children born out of wedlock
• Mental health & addiction - records can reveal our ancestors were in jail, hospitals, or died by suicide or liver failure. You can read more about Mental Health, Addiction, and Genealogy.
• Race & ethnicity - DNA results can reveal unexpected or missing ethnic groups

Healing is possible through family history research, but trauma can also be relived or caused through unexpected discoveries. The best balm that I can recommend is connection - to the genealogy community, to mental health professionals, and - if relevant - to your spiritual leaders. 

*****

I value all of my relationships, so staying connected to my family and friends is super important. And I love making new connections to newly discovered family through genealogy. One of the coolest parts about genealogy conferences is that we can make new friends who are just as passionate about family and genealogy as we are. 

It's awesome to see that even during quarantine and the challenges of COVID-19, we can stay connected to others and find glimmers of hope each day.

How are you staying connected these days? Have you faced a difficult discovery recently, and if so how are you getting support?

My ancestors - and your ancestors - deserve the best researcher, the most passionate story-teller, and the dignity of being remembered. So let's keep encountering our ancestors through family history and remembering the past made present today!

Their Prized Possession

It's Day 5 of the Family Connections Experiment! The About Me plan's prompt for today is "picture."

On 25 August 1990, my parents took me to Midlothian Masonic Lodge 211 to get my Child Identification Card. 

The trip to Masonic Lodge 211 involved getting fingerprinted and having this adorable photo taken of me to identify me with. I'm wearing a yellow-green tank top and multi-colored shorts. My hair was still Hite-family-blonde and my cheeks squeesibly-chubby. Behind me reads, "Prized Possession."

As a little kid, my hair was bleach-blonde. My dad loved - and still remembers with pride - that I had a mullet: spiky on top, with a long rat tail in the back. One day in March 1989, when I was 18 months old, I got a hair cut. I guess it was just to get the hair off of my ears, but my parents kept some of that hair as a keepsake. It's like they knew I wouldn't always have blonde hair - or much hair at all for that matter - and they wanted to remember this moment forever.

In September 1987, I was born. I was a nearly bald, very chubby, Chippenham baby. You see, I was born at Chippenham Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. My dad was sure that the German doctor who delivered me had somehow broken me, leaving me with a cone-head. Thankfully the 1993 film had yet to come out...and even more thankfully, my head went back to normal!

*****

Going through old mementos of my childhood isn't always a happy experience. Many memories are best left in the past. 

But these pictures remind me that my sister and I were our parents' "prized possessions." Whether they were doting over our art, admiring our mud-pies or the holes we dug out back, or the birds I could identify...our parents cultivated and praised our interests and talents.

And they - like unbeknownst family historians - preserved like time capsules the evidence of their most prized possessions: their children.

My ancestors - and your ancestors - deserve the best researcher, the most passionate story-teller, and the dignity of being remembered. So let's keep encountering our ancestors through family history and remembering the past made present today!

I Am Theirs and They Are Mine

Day 2 of the Connections Experiment had me reflect about myself. Who am I?

The prompt for today reads:

Write about how you would describe yourself. Physically? Mentally? Spiritually? Personality? Tip: It’s ok to talk about how you are feeling mentally. Think of the healing that can happen if you share your depression or anxiety or what you worry about. Healing can come for you and for your descendants.

So I put pen to paper and reflected on how I see myself today. Here's some of what I wrote, which I hope will prove relatable, familiar, or at the very least...interesting?

Self

I don't like talking about myself. I like talking about my interests, my family, my experiences, but not myself. Describing who "Sam is" is a challenge because in the attempt is the lingering feeling that others might not see me the same way as I do. Perhaps it's fear or insecurity. It's easier to ignore the nagging self-criticism or perhaps to succumb to it. But for today, I'm laying that aside.

Physically - I ran 5 km today with a friend! I'm not as in shape as I was in January when I ran every day, but I always feel refreshed after getting fresh air and some exercise.

Mentally/emotionally - It depends on the day! Some days, during this COVID-19 mess, I feel isolated and stir-crazy. Other times, I enjoy the quiet and simplicity. I miss the freedom of going to a friend's house, of giving hugs, of getting to hold my friends' babies, of going to cafes and breweries, even crowds. I miss going to court houses and the Library of Virginia to do research.

I'm also grieving events that are postponed: weddings, ordinations, baptisms, reunions.

And then I remember gratitude. I'm not sick. I have a job. I live in a great apartment in a beautiful city. I'm paying off debt and I have food. I'm not going without.

Spiritually - Today, I read several chapters of the Book of Acts outside in the sunshine. My prayer life isn't at 100%, but Christ is risen! This is my joy and my hope.

My personality - The more I discover my family history, the more I see my parents and their family in me.

My laugh, my love for people, my intensity, my compassion. All of these are in my DNA. My gift for teaching is a gift from God. But how I speak is a gift from my grandparents.

I'm an extrovert (I'm an ESFJ & a 2 on the enneagram) yet I love my time alone to recharge. I'm intense like my parents: I love intensely, I care intensely. I laugh like my Memaw and giggle like my Grandma Nora. I'm eccentric like my dad and Uncle Art, and a bit hoity-toity like my Uncle Fred. I'm an open book and I have an open home like my Aunt Judy. I'm a talker like my Granddaddy and my Pawpaw. And I'm so much like my sister, it's a wonder we're not twins.

I am my family - the best of them and the worst of them. But they're wonderfully mine. And I am theirs.

*****

Reflecting on who I am - in light of who my family is - is a life-giving exercise. I'm reminded that no person is an island and that the best in me come from them.

How would you describe yourself? Do you see your family in yourself?

My ancestors - and your ancestors - deserve the best researcher, the most passionate story-teller, and the dignity of being remembered. So let's keep encountering our ancestors through family history and remembering the past made present today!

A Journal, a Timeline, and Family Connections

As a genealogist, you might expect that I'd always be excited about family history, genealogy, and family. That maybe I come from a perfect family or that my research turns up nothing but cheery stories.

But as with any vocation, profession, or hobby, the passion may wane at times. And I am passionate about family history not because I come from a perfect family, but because I believe that family history can be healing and transformative for imperfect families like my own. At certain times, it may be harder to want to dive deep into one's family history though. In times of grief, or in particularly busy times, or perhaps during a pandemic, we might find ourselves in a bit of a lull.

Like exercising or studying, sometimes we need accountability and community to get us moving!

So I'm happy to let you all in on the Family Connections Experiment! This 21 day experiment aims to help us all explore "the psychological benefits of daily connections with family, past and present." It begins today - 1 May - and lasts for three weeks. After taking a quick survey, you pick a plan from the Family Connections Experiment website, and each day you'll participate through the daily prompts given from your plan.

The goal is that through these simple and engaging daily activities, you will invest more time in creating family connections and will notice a positive improvement to your mood and mental health.

Today, I'd like to reflect on what I've been up to with Day 1 of my Family Connections plan.

After checking out the many awesome plans available - including a choose-your-own-adventure type build your own plan - I chose "The About Me Plan." 

I decided to go with this plan because I'm already a daily genealogy researcher. I'm on track working on DNA matches, adding new cousins to my tree, and researching brick wall ancestors. 

But do you know what gets left behind when you're always digging so far back in your tree? You forget to tend to the branches a bit closer to home. I'm guilty of not engaging enough in my own story, connecting with my living close family, and strengthening these connections more regularly. This plan provides simple prompts that will help me put words to memories, to tell the story of my life in a way I might not have thought about before. And, it will help me connect with my family in the process.

Each day, there's a different topic to engage, a new aspect of self or family that I can write about.

Timeline

The Connections Experiment website provides the following as today's prompt:

Timeline: Vertically down the page (paper or electronic) write each year you have been alive on each line. Then go back and add important events that happened in your life those years. You aren’t writing the story but writing a phrase to capture the memory.

As you can tell, this is at once very simple and complex. It's a timeline of one's life - so the older you are, the more years you'll need to write about.

There are all sorts of ways that you can engage with this experiment - you can journal, blog, type everything up on your computer, post on social media, discuss your responses with family and friends. I decided to journal - and then to let y'all know how everything's going here!

The Journal

I love to journal. I've kept journals since college, and even during middle and high school I would write free verse, spoken word type poetry as a means of self-reflection and healing in times of stress and anxiety. So I truly believe in the power of catharsis, of speaking truth to feelings and watching as the jumble of thoughts take form and unravel into some semblance of sense. It was a natural decision, then, to want to write my daily reflections in a journal.

In 2013, my aunt Judy - my JuJu - gave me a bound journal with the Footprints poem on the front. Her gift was in honor of my graduation from seminary at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. On the first page, she wrote me the sweetest note:

Dear Sam,
Congratulations! You're just too smart!
This journal is for you to put your special thoughts and prayers in. I personally write prayer letters to God, as so not to forget all the points I want to bring up to him. That way I don't leave anyone or thing unspoken.
I pray here:
Dear God, Continue to guide and bless my Sam. In your blessing I pray, AMEN.
God, be with you Sam!
I Love You!
Judy

My beloved aunt Judy passed from this life on 31 August 2016 after years of illnesses - from lupus, to kidney and hip transplants, to cancers too numerous to count. After her passing, I have struggled to grieve her loss. I have in many ways ignored grief as if through ignoring her loss I might not have to feel her absence. But each time I read her words, or see a photo, I remember her laugh, her smile, her love.

So each time I remembered the journal Judy gave me, I would balk at using it. How could I risk messing it up? What prayers or special thoughts were worthy of her journal?

When I was reflecting on where I would add my memories and thoughts in this experiment, I came to a sense of peace that this journal that my JuJu gave me...this was precisely the journal I needed to use. She would want me to use the journal to connect with family, to reflect on my own life, and to stop holding on to something without using it!

My reflections from Day 1

I'm only 32, so a yearly run-down of my life shouldn't take so long right? HA!

It took me a few hours - not going to lie. I wanted to recall the various important moments of my life: when close family members died, when others were born, when I was in which grade at which school. I wanted to remember when I moved where, and some of the major world events in my life.

So what have I learned from writing my timeline?

• I was in speech therapy much longer than I remembered - from 3-5 years old. After struggling with consonants and needing my parents to interpret my speech, it's all rather ironic today that I had a problem speaking! 
• I divide my life into sections: 0-9 years old, 10-13, 14-17, 18-21, 22-26, 27-32.
• I too often allow myself to define my life by one or another period...but I have progressed so much beyond a turbulent childhood. Sometimes, you need to see yourself in a timeline to see that you're no longer an 8 year old. I mean, I can know something intellectually - but seeing it is another thing.

This is only Day 1, y'all! There are 20 more days of simple reflections that I really hope will build upon this great foundation of writing out my life in a timeline.

*****

I'm already glad that I signed up for this Family Connections Experiment. I want to encourage you to sign up too! In the challenging times we find ourselves in, it can be difficult to want to do anything. You might not want to sign yourself up for "one more thing" to do, another thing to put on your to-do list only to feel guilty if you don't keep up with it.

But I don't want y'all to approach this experiment this way! See this as an adventure, as an opportunity to make connections, to get out of your own head and to reach out. If you - like I did today - find things in your reflections which bring up painful memories or trauma, reach out to someone. Speak to someone in your family, a friend, a therapist or counselor, a faith leader, connect to the Family Connections Experiment page on Facebook, or contact me! We want to create community, and to support one another in building connections.

How has your first day of this Family Connections Experiment gone? What have you learned?

My ancestors - and your ancestors - deserve the best researcher, the most passionate story-teller, and the dignity of being remembered. So let's keep encountering our ancestors through family history and remembering the past made present today!