I love the little quotes that come across social media. In a world that offers too many stories of trauma and suffering, inspirational post-it notes, pictures and stories help us root back to our values. It’s like a mini church.
What stood out to me today was one line from Ilan Shamir’s Advice from a Tree: “remember your roots.”
I’ve often said that we can’t fully make peace with who we are until we know where we come from. So many of us US-Americans are an amalgam of cultures and ethnicities, some of them carrying oppositional trauma. Many of us don’t even know our histories. Our recent ancestors wanted to be good “Americans,” or were robbed from their country of origin.
I’m currently working with a genealogist who has found so many unknown closets in my family history, and I find my sense of self shifting to take in the new information. I am bigger and broader than even I knew. I thought I was grounded and centered before; now, knowing my roots run deeper and wider than I’d imagined, I find myself on even more solid ground.
If you don’t know your family history, I encourage you to explore it. You will likely be surprised at what you find. You will likely find grounding roots you did not know you had.
“Advice from a Tree” is by Ilan Shamir. The image above reached me as a Facebook post with no attribution. His work lives at Advice For Life.