A few years ago, I found out my husband can trace his lineage back to 1650.
His family’s roots reach deep into the soil of Collelongo, a mountain village in southern Italy. There are records, names, and stories of his people. When he was a kid growing up in a small midwestern town, the community would gather each year for the St. Rocco’s picnic — a yearly celebration that brought together descendants of Collelongo. Whether they realized it or not, that shared tradition served as a grounding force in their lives. Their roots were visible, celebrated, intact.
When I learned this, I was happy for my husband but also heartbroken over my own heritage. At the time, I barely knew who my grandparents were. I couldn’t name more than one great-grandparent. There were no dusty documents or home videos connecting me to a homeland. No saints, no picnics, no lineages printed out on the back church programs. Just gaps, silence, and loss.
I felt like an orphan. Actually, more truthfully, I felt robbed. Because, literally, my people were taken from their land, stripped of their language and culture, renamed, and sold. My ancestors endured the dehumanizing brutality of slavery and carried its legacy for generations. Not only that, but somewhere in the midst of all that suffering and survival, records were lost, some were never even written at all.
What do you do when your roots are hidden? What do you do when you long to belong, but you don’t know where — or who — you come from?
To finish reading this post, click here and join me today at (in)courage.
Sign up here to receive free daily notes from (in)courage, sent right to your inbox!