Heather Murphy | The Most Important Reason for Family History is You

Stories in Our Roots 0:03
Welcome to the Stories in Our Roots podcast. I'm your host Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives today, discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connect deeply with ourselves, those we love, and the world around us.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of stories in our roots. I am Heather Murphy. Now before we jump into today's episode, I would like to make an ask of you. The Stories in Our Roots podcast has now reached its six month mark. And during that six months, I have learned so much about podcasting and interviewing and bringing these stories to you. But I would like your feedback on what would make this podcast more valuable for you. I'd love for you to let me know what's working and what isn't. So that I can be sure to provide you with the best value and learning and inspiration that I can in our episodes together. If you would do that, for me, the link is in the show notes or on my Stories in Our Roots comm webpage. It's really quick. It's about 14 questions, most of which are just checkboxes, really easy to do. And as a gift to you, I will send you the 27 lessons learned through stories and our roots, which will highlight the takeaways from each of the episodes over the last six months. Now today's episode for stories in our roots, is about how family history is really about ourselves. It is about coming to understand ourselves better. And I think that is a huge part in why we research our family history. And it can actually be part of the huge benefit that we can get from researching our family history. I'd like you to think for a second. Why do you research family history? That's one of the main questions that I asked on this podcast, I asked every guest. Why did they start researching their family history? For many of them that reason has changed over time. But everyone has a reason why right now you research your family history. What is your reason for researching your family history. Some people just enjoy history and family history is a way to make general world national history more personal. Some people enjoy the puzzle, they enjoy that feeling of being a detective and putting together all the pieces and thinking how they go together. And when you can't find a record thinking about where you might find that record or where you might find that piece of information that's being elusive. And then that great feeling that comes when you figure it out when you solve the puzzle. But for other people, and these can be the same people as well. There's a deeper reason why people research their family history. Some people are looking for answers. They want to understand themselves better, they want to understand family members better. And so they look to the history, to the records to the stories and they gather all that to understand people better to understand why their lives are the way that they are. People are looking for a sense of connection, of belonging and what the most basic unit to belong to as a family, and so people seek to build that out. Another reason why people research family history, I think is to answer those basic existential questions that we have of Who am I? Where did I come from and where am I going? and family history helps people to answer those basic kind of core questions that everybody has in life. First of all, let's focus on this past portion. Where did I come from? And of course family history is going to play into that because it's the history is the past. One thing I see though, that is a little bit problematic is some people get hung up on the DNA ethnic desity results, they get these test results back. And they think it's going well, first of all, even when they go to get these tests, they think that getting the test that ethnicity results is going to tell them who they are, is going to help them know who they are at their core, I see that as a little bit problematic because most people when you come to turn in this DNA test, you're not really thinking that I want to know who I come from 500 to 1000 years ago, which is exactly what DNA results do 500 to 1000 years ago, that is 1080 to 1500 ad that you want to know the makeup of your ancestors in that time period. But that doesn't even really make sense. Because when they say that you are a belong to like Scottish or Norwegian, did Scotland or Norway exist as they presently do 1000 years ago? Are we actually connecting to what the DNA results are telling us that 500 to 1000 years ago, that's who your ancestors were? Or in our minds, are we connecting to 100 years ago, that, Oh, I'm Scottish. So immediately, you come up in your brain, with the known history of Scotland over the last couple 100 years. But that's not what the DNA results are telling you. They're telling you way, way farther back. So while it is fun to get that ethnicity results, and the cousin matching is a completely different topic on that sense of identity, wouldn't it be more beneficial to you to really come to know the last 100, maybe the last 200 years, because those people had a more direct impact on who you are. today. If you look at DNA percentages, the DNA that you carry from a particular ancestor gets diluted, the more time goes by. So like your great, great grandparents, at the most, you would carry six and a quarter percent of their DNA. And back seven generations, you might carry 1% DNA of those ancestors. So just as that DNA is diluted over the generations, as you go back farther and farther, I believe that so is the impact of that one person's decisions and experiences and life, on your life on who you are today. What I really encourage people to do is focus on these ancestors that are maybe like four to six generations back approximately about 150, maybe 200 years back, and focus on learning their lives, because their individual decisions have more of an impact on who you are today than someone who was born 500 years ago. If you think about those family tree things I know, you've seen them on the internet, they say you have yourself and then two parents and it just gets exponentially larger, the farther back you go. That means one person's choice. If you had 1000 ancestors in a certain generation, one of those 1000 people is not going to have as direct of an impact on where you are today as one of your four grandparents, or one of your eight great grandparents. So I think really, sometimes we get caught up in trying to find back the generations as fast as we can to not want to know where you come from. And then we pass over these more recent generations who really have more impact on who we are than those previous generations. I really encourage you to look at those most recent generations, and to go deep within those ancestors. Learn about them as much as you can learn their stories. Think about the times in which they lived. Get all the records you can for one family, go through the newspapers and the court records, the local histories, probate tax, all these extra records that sometimes we don't use because we already have the birth certificate and the death certificate, and that filled up our pedigree chart. Our family group record, really really dive in to understanding a great grandparents life. What did it mean for them to experience different things? Make these historical generalizations very personal in a deeper way. What was the role of women during the time in which your ancestor lived? What was their experience with racism? Or anti immigration? How did those things affect your ancestor directly in their life? What about the Irish potato famine or the dustbowl? How did those events affect your ancestors lives? What did it really mean for them? What did it mean for them to have to leave Oklahoma and move to California? They were part of something bigger, but what did it mean for them? For your ancestors? no family history, it helps us learn about the past. And that helps us understand our present more. One of the things that I love to incorporate into my family history research is journaling. Yes, I said, journaling. I use a research log when I'm doing my personal research in a word processing document. Because I can get all my citations and my graphic clips. And I can take apart and essentially journal about that record that I found. This is what the document has within it. These are the questions that it brings up to me, as I read this document, I write down what I think about does it raise any questions? And then I can also journal about how it is that I felt about that document? How What did I learn from it? Did it pick up any other questions that maybe I wasn't expecting? When you journal about your research as you go along? It really transforms it. Especially if you are looking at family history, not as just the charts, but as a way to understand yourself better. And if you journal while you're doing your research, as you're coming across different stories, you come across a newspaper article about something that happened in your ancestors life. Well, how do you feel reading about that? Do you feel a connection to that? Maybe you had a similar experience? Maybe you have a fear that that could happen to you? What is it about this ancestors life, and about these documents that you're finding that hit you personally, and you record that, write that down. And as you're learning about your ancestors, then you come to understand yourself better? You see things that you hadn't seen before. You see patterns in your family, you can recognize your own feelings as maybe you get upset about something. And you can take time to think about why is it that you're upset about that? What is it that is raising a little flag and saying that you need to pay attention to this. Family history is amazing for making connections with other people. But it can be even more amazing to connect more deeply with ourselves, to not be in a rush when we're doing our family history research, but to take the time to acknowledge how we're feeling about things, the good things and the bad things. How does that impact us in the moment in our present? And what can we do with it?

Heather Murphy 14:01
Now as we consider the past and how it affects us and how we feel in the present, we can also learn to use what we've learned to help us with our future. Another thing to journal about is, how is what you learned about your ancestors? How does that change you as you look to your future? What does it matter that you learned about your great grandmother's experiences and her hardships and her triumphs and tragedies and successes? What can you use from her life to improve your own? If we're in a rush, just filling up the charts, we don't see that as clearly. We can take the time as we research to look at our ancestors as individuals look at them as a collective whole as each of those lines have resulted in You know, as I've done this, I've seen patterns in my family history, or not even patterns, but just situations that that's just the way it was. And it just happened that I can see in my family tree, when I look at it in a different way, I can see that women didn't work in my family, and how my thoughts about that now are impacted by the different events, different women in the last three generations have encountered. But if I don't take the time to stop and think about it in a different way, stop and ponder and wonder, what can I learn from my family history, then I'll miss those opportunities to change thought patterns, to change behaviors, to build on the strengths of the past, and also to let things go that don't serve me in my present time. And that's not to be judgmental that things and other times didn't serve well for those people who lived them. But I can choose what fits best now, for me, and from moving into the future. When I look at my family history, I can gain strength to overcome challenges that I have, I can gain compassion to forgive people, I can gain that perspective, to build on the good things in my life, and to discard the negative things, the things that I don't want to continue. Family history is really about learning about ourselves. It's about learning this, this prequel before we were born about these people who made decisions and had experiences that directly impacted how our life began at birth. As we look at our family history, and we sit with it, and we think about it, and we struggle through it. And we have the triumphs and the struggles even just in researching and learning about them. We can understand our present better understand maybe some quirks that we have, we can understand our strengths and weaknesses. We can gain betters perspective, compassion, so many more attributes as we open up our mind. And it's kind of paradoxical that you can learn about family history outside of yourself, to understand yourself better, which then also opens up your eyes to things that you didn't see before or perspectives that you didn't have before. Family history can help us to understand our pasts, which then brings clarity to our present. And that brings hope to our future. So I want to ask you again, why do you research your family history? How do you want the process of researching your ancestors to be a blessing in your life? And what can you do to make that impact of your research of your learning as you're gathering more impactful in your life, and not only your life in the present, but your life in the future? Who you can be moving forward? And the generations that you can bless with your decisions today? What does family history mean to you today in your life? And how can you make it more powerful than it ever has been up to this point?

Stories in Our Roots 18:46
This podcast is brought to you by my signature service and one on one program Resilience in Your Roots. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with stressors and responsibilities of life, increasing your resilience that ability to get back up when life knocks you down helps you live your best life, resilience and your roots will help you in four areas to increase your resilience, self awareness and self care, purpose and goals, connections and relationships, perspective and optimism all as you learn how to research your family tree and absorb the lessons that are contained in the stories in your family. If this sounds like the perfect program for you jump on a call with me at heathermurphygenealogy.com/nextstepcall. Thank you for joining me today for stories in our roots. Please help this podcast grow by subscribing leaving a review and sharing it with your friends. If you have feedback or would like to recommend someone to share their story head to storiesinourroots.com and fill out the form. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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