Journey into the past and discover your family’s history
In 1980 I went off to university far from anywhere any of my ancestors had ever lived and the genealogy bug lay dormant for years. It didn't wake up again until I moved to Scotland in the early 1990s. Not that any of my ancestors hailed from Scotland either, but I satisfied my craving by doing research for friends, spending happy days at the General Register House and Scottish Archives in Edinburgh. I became interested in “house history”, researching the old farm
that I lived on and even dug into the history of vegetable varieties as a “seed sleuth” for the Henry Doubleday Research Organization!
Then came the internet and everything changed! Initially, as archives around the world set up websites and put their catalogues on line, it was still a case of ordering in paper copies of documents, or in some cases microfilms. Around the same time I moved back to the land of my birth, Canada, and discovered LDS family history centers and the option of ordering in microfilms. I spent many, many hours scrolling through microfilms. Between ordering in from archives and the LDS center I was able to carry out significant new research particularly on my Belgian and Spanish family lines. And then, bit by bit, the documents themselves were digitized and became available online. This took my abililty to do research to a whole new level.
You may have guessed that the above is not a picture of me. The young woman on the right is my paternal grandmother, with her brothers and parents. Anyone who knows me takes one look at this picture and immediately says "You look just like her!"
I grew up in a family that did not do conflict well. At any given time, some members of the family would, for whatever reason, not be talking to one another. On both sides of the family. And this had been going on forever. In fact, my father used to joke that there had been one family disagreement that had carried on for 300 years! (It was true, too. Many years later a Spanish archive kindly sent me 2kg of photocopied court documents and a microfilm to prove it!)
My family did, however, value its history. My Spanish father in particular was immensely proud of his heritage and had a large chest full of old family documents. Mostly, they dealt with land transactions and inheritances and the oldest dated from 1599! As a teenager I spent hours with my father poring over documents like the one in the picture on the left. (The picture below is me with my dad, ca 1963.)
Today I work overwhelmingly online, utilizing a huge and ever increasing number of resources. Increasingly, I am also becoming involved in genetic genealogy, using DNA to identify unknown recent ancestors and so add to clients' knowledge about their family's history.
A new, quite exciting venture is combining family history research with my work as a Clinical EFT Certified Practitioner. Doing so allows us to not only learn about our families' pasts, but also process and heal intergenerational trauma and dysfunctional patterns created by our ancestors' life experiences. Then we can not only live our lives free of the burdens of the past but also prevent them being passed on to the next generation!
Everyday Yoga
Recently, fellow healer and yoga teacher Masha posted a video talking about doing Yoga while shopping at the supermarket. No, she wasn't doing asanas in the aisles. She was talking about mindfulness, a key component of Yoga, and how to bring it into everyday life.
It reminded me that I really could practice mindfulness every day, all day long, if I wanted to. I was thinking about it while I was doing morning chores on the farm. I can be aware of how my feet feel in my boots as they are hitting the ground. I can notice how my hands feel on the handle of the manure fork. I can listen to the sound of the horse munching on its hay, hear the raven cawing in the distance.
For trauma survivors, these small moments of grounding presence can help regulate an overwhelmed nervous system. When we're caught in hypervigilance or anxiety, bringing attention to simple sensory experiences - the feel of our feet on the ground, the sounds around us - signals safety to our bodies.
Like probably most of you, my life is too busy to set aside hours every day for self care. Masha reminded me that mindfulness or other self-care practices don't need to be separate from doing what needs to get done. Daily life can be self care.
And if you want to find out how to address trauma at its roots, you can book a free introductory EFT session with me.
@ Copyright 2025 All Our Pasts Are History | All rights reserved
@ Copyright 2025 All Our Pasts Are History
All rights reserved