Stories in Our Roots

#40.  Researching her ancestry has helped Angie to feel like there is a purpose and a place for her story.  Through her research she has been reminded of her part in our global story that spans oceans and continents.

In this episode Angie shares:

• How she reconciled her connection to land taken from indigenous people generations ago
• Why she tries to keep her culture intact in spite of living in a “melting pot”
• How she incorporates the role of women in her mixed media art

About Angie:

Angie Follensbee-Hall is an artist and a teacher. Angie was born in Sicily, Italy, and has immersed herself in the study of myth and her-story as she reclaims her identity to women’s wisdom traditions. She creates mixed media and handmade paper tapestries inspired by nature, stories, and the deep mystery of the world. Angie has taught classes, workshops, and teacher training in art, yoga, and mindfulness for over 20 years. She holds a BFA degree in studio arts, a Master of Arts in Education with a concentration on creative practice.

Connect with Angie:

Website          angiefollensbeehall.com
Facebook        @angiefollensbeehall
Instagram       @angiefollhall
Twitter            @AngieFollHall
 
Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Your Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to choose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

Having common life experiences with an ancestor can draw you into learning more about what you have in common.  Annette Gendler shares some of the stories within her family history which she learned in her efforts to research one individual.

In this episode Annette shares:

• How learning of an ancestor with a similar love story inspired her to research her family history
• Unexpected discoveries that lent credibility of family stories
• Why she feels it is important to leave our own stories by writing them down

 
About Annette:

Annette Gendler is the author of the guide How to Write Compelling Stories from Family History as well as the memoir Jumping Over Shadows, the true story of a German-Jewish love that overcame the legacy of the Holocaust. Her writing and photography have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Family Tree Magazine, Tablet Magazine, Kveller, and Bella Grace, among others. In 2014-15, she served as the writer-in-residence at the Hemingway Birthplace Home in Oak Park, Illinois. She has been teaching memoir writing at StoryStudio Chicago since 2006 and has led workshops around the world on writing stories from family history. Born in New Jersey and raised in Germany, she lives in Chicago with her husband and three children.

Annette’s story The Flying Dutchman is an excerpt from her memoir and is based on a letter her grandfather wrote about her grandparents' deportation from Czechoslovakia after WWII. Listeners can find it here.

Connect with Annette:
Website           annettegendler.com
Facebook        @AnnetteGendlerAuthor
Instagram        @annette.gendler
Twitter             @AnnetteGendler
 
Episode Sponsor:

Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to choose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

Family stories are not passive, they shape us into who we are.  Laura Roselle is an expert in storytelling and the psychology behind the stories we share.  We have the power to choose how we interpret the stories of our ancestors and what we choose to convey to others, and even ourselves, through the stories we tell and the way we choose to tell them. 

In this episode Laura shares:

• How we can change the way we tell the story to give it a different meaning
• Looking for generosity within our family stories can help us be more generous
• Every story told passes on a meaning from the teller to the listener

About Laura:

After more than 20 years as a university professor and scholar studying narratives, Laura Roselle, PhD co-founded the Family Narrative Project, LLC with 3 family members. The Family Narrative Project offers online courses, books, and workshops to help people save and save their stories. Laura is particularly interested in how family storytelling can strengthen families and individuals, and in how stories shape the way we see the world. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, and is a mom to two daughters and Nana to a year-old grandson.

Connect with Laura:

 Website           www.familynarrativeproject.com
Facebook        @FamilyNarrativeProject
Instagram        @FamilyNarrative
Twitter             Dr. Laura Roselle
LinkedIn          Laura Roselle
 
 

Episode Sponsor:

 Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to chose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

Beliefs that limit what you achieve in life are created by your experiences or passed down to you through your parents and the generations before you.  Learn how to identify those beliefs and give yourself permission to let go of the ones that do not make your life better.  Many of your beliefs were established as a young child, as an adult it is time you understand the sources of those beliefs and choose for yourself what to carry with you into your future.

Download the free workbook, Release Limiting Beliefs, which follows the content of this episode. Start today to understand yourself better and gain power to live life the way you want.

 About Heather:

Heather Murphy is a resilience coach, genealogist, and host of the Stories in Our Roots podcast.  Heather teaches people how to strengthen their resilience as they research and connect with the stories of their ancestors.  As a teenager one of Heather’s role models was a 3rd-great-grandmother who exemplified service and perseverance.  Heather’s love of family and history led to a bachelor’s degree in Family History - Genealogy.  

After twenty years teaching people how to research their family history or completing research on their behalf, Heather saw in the lives of her clients the strength and understanding that comes from researching their own family history, and the missed opportunities when they paid her to research instead.  Her signature program, Resilience in Your Roots teaches people how to use the process of researching their family trees to strengthen their resilience and improve how they adapt to the big and small challenges of life.

Heather lives in Washington State (the dry side) with her husband, son, three ducks and a rabbit.

 Connect with Heather:

Website: heathermurphygenealogy.com
Facebook: @MsHeatherMurphy
Instagram: @msheathermurphy
LinkedIn: Heather Murphy

Episode Sponsor:

 Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots. 

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

Carly Morgan’s family has lived in the United States for generations, but the two sides of her family are not equally represented in the records.  Despite the difficulty, Carly has dug into her Chinese roots and pulls her ancestors, and the traditions of their culture, to the present.

In this episode Carly shares:

• What she did when she thought her inadequacies were the reason she couldn’t find records for her maternal ancestors
• The story of a Chinese ancestor who was not Chinese biologically
• Why she insists on claiming her Chinese heritage

About Carly:

Carly Morgan is the writer and designer behind Family Tree Notebooks, a genealogy worksheet system designed to help you organize your family history page by page. She became interested in genealogy at an early age but, as a bi-racial person, was surprised at how difficult it was to research one side of her family versus the other. As a result, she is passionate about encouraging people to find and own their family stories, even if the research journey is challenging.

Connect with Carly:

Website           familytreenotebooks.com
Facebook        @familytreenotebooks
Instagram        @familytreenotebooks

Episode Sponsor:

 Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to chose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

With a Bolivian husband and biracial children, Jessica envisioned a trip to Bolivia as the perfect opportunity to visit churches and cemeteries to research her family’s history.  While there she had to redefine what success meant. Because of her curiosity and persistence, she came home with stories and photos that will be treasured for generations.

In this episode Jessica shares:

• The contrast between her research expectations and what was actually possible
• How visiting Bolivia allowed her to feel her family history rather than only know it
• That traveling thousands of miles, getting sick, driving in harrowing conditions was all worth it because of the stories and experiences she gets to pass to future generations

 About Jessica:

Living in the space between, Jessica divides her time and attention between the rigors of motherhood, finishing a PhD program in Political Science, running a small business that assists small businesses and non-profits, and pretending her world still has time for 1950s homesteading values.

Connect with Jessica:

Website           www.townopinions.com
Instagram        @thatswhatshedidblog
LinkedIn          Jessica (Pilling) Loayza

Episode Sponsor:

 Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to chose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

Randy knew since childhood he was adopted and in his late teens his parents helped him start the journey of finding his birth family.  On the cusp of the internet as we know it and well before DNA testing was popular, Randy found who he was looking for.

In this episode Randy shares:

• The point in his life when his parents thought he needed to know his birth family
• What it meant to him to connect with family and culture
• How knowing his past gave him an anchor and sense of belonging that gave him a sense of direction

About Randy:

Randy was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and was raised in and around Toronto, Ontario. Adopted at a young age, Randy started trying to discover where he came from fairly young, not very successfully. It wasn't until after finishing high school things started coming together and in 2000 Randy found his birth mother and her family. Ever since then Randy has been discovering bits and pieces of the family tree, and most recently completing a DNA Ancestry kit.

Connect with Randy:

 Website           www.freezeflameinc.com
Facebook        REDBROWN4ever
Instagram        M.A.R.B.L.E_whitecap
Twitter             FreezeFlameinc
LinkedIn          Randy Freese

Episode Sponsor:

 Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to chose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

What does it mean to be self-aware and how can being self-aware improve your life?  Learn the answers to these questions and three ways you can use your family history research to increase your self-awareness.  Better understand your thoughts and feelings and the reasons behind them, whether they began with you or have their roots in generations past.  Use your family history research to get to know yourself better, empowering you to change how you react to what life throws at you.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to chose your beliefs moving forward.

 About Heather:

Heather Murphy is a resilience coach, genealogist and host of the Stories in Our Roots podcast.  Heather teaches people how to strengthen their resilience as they research and connect with the stories of their ancestors.  As a teenager one of Heather’s role models was a 3rd-great-grandmother who exemplified service and perseverance.  Heather’s love of family and history led to a bachelor’s degree in Family History - Genealogy.  

After twenty years teaching people how to research their family history or completing research on their behalf, Heather saw in the lives of her clients the strength and understanding that comes from researching their own family history, and the missed opportunities when they paid her to research instead.  Her signature program, Resilience in Your Roots teaches people how to use the process of researching their family trees to strengthen their resilience and improve how they adapt to the big and small challenges of life.

Heather lives in Washington State (the dry side) with her husband, son, three ducks and a rabbit.

 Connect with Heather:

Website: heathercmurphy.com
Facebook: @MsHeatherMurphy
Instagram: @msheathermurphy
LinkedIn: Heather Murphy
 
 

Episode Sponsor:

 Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

What do you know about your family’s mental health history?  Christy Walton and I discuss the importance of knowing about mental health conditions within our families to help us better understand ourselves and those we love.  

In this episode we talk about:

Christy’s relative who disappeared from family memory

The way our ancestors faced their challenges could result in generations of effects

How we can use the knowledge of our ancestors to help us through our own challenges

About Christy:

Christy Walton is a genealogist of 20 years, a small business owner at The Modern Genealogist and a former High School World History Teacher. She has solved numerous cases of unknown parentage using the latest genetic genealogy. She also writes family history narratives, develops innovative family history print decor, creates family history story reveals, and manages social media for the Texas State Genealogical Society. She was born and raised in Southern California and now resides in Dallas, Texas.

Connect with Christy:

 Website           www.TheModernGenealogist.com
Instagram        @TheModernGenealogist

Episode Sponsor:

 Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to chose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy

Christy, a former secondary school history teacher, looked for ways to make history personal for her students so they could connect with events of the past. She knows family history can not only help us understand the past, but also help us with our identities.

In this episode Christy shares:

• The experiences she’s had through connecting with DNA cousin matches
• Why she thinks family stories are more inspirational than movies
• How knowing her family contributes to her identity

About Christy:

Christy Walton is a genealogist of 20 years, a small business owner at The Modern Genealogist and a former High School World History Teacher. She has solved numerous cases of unknown parentage using the latest genetic genealogy. She also writes family history narratives, develops innovative family history print decor, creates family history story reveals, and manages social media for the Texas State Genealogical Society. She was born and raised in Southern California and now resides in Dallas, Texas.

Connect with Christy:

Website           www.TheModernGenealogist.com
Instagram        @TheModernGenealogist

Episode Sponsor:

Episode sponsored by Heather Murphy's signature 1:1 service, Resilience in Your Roots.

Get a free workbook, "Release Limiting Beliefs by Understanding Family History " to help identify your beliefs, where they come from, and how to chose your beliefs moving forward.

Are we connected on Instagram or Facebook yet? Find me @msheathermurphy