Genealogy, inspired!
My Grandma, Eve Stanton, was (as so many of us are) wild & complicated, accomplished & haunted.
So, I knew that when I first sat down to work on her Heritage Journal spread, limiting myself to two pages would be a challenge. Truly, how do you boil 80 years into two pages when it’s supposed to represent the only Grandparent you really knew as a child and spent so much time with?
I knew when I started this Heritage Journal project that my paternal side would present my biggest challenges because this side of my lineage didn’t even truly exist my periphery until 2019.
There were no stories told to me as a small child about them.
No vacations filled with cousins or grandparents. No sights, smells, tastes, or memories to guide my way in the creation of each journal spread.
I know I’m not alone when I say that I had a difficult relationship with my mom.
With so many individual, familial, and societal forces at play, I’m honestly not sure our culture is set up to nurture and support our mother/daughter relationships in a very positive way, especially through the individuation years, try as we might.
And so, as I’ve sat with the Heritage Journal spread for my mom, my emotions have ebbed and flowed…
Journaling is a passionate hobby of mine, a hobby I’ve happily begun weaving through various aspects of my family history documentation in a variety of ways.
Welp, after a nasty bought with COVID and a little recovery/catch up time, I finally carved out a couple of hours to sit with my new heritage journal, write out a few words on the first two pages, and complete the first spread! I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.
What all does it include?
Photos of Scotland, England, and Ireland (the lands of the majority of my Ancestors)
A map of Santa Fe (where I was born and raised)
A DNA helix
A copy of my pedigree through my 2x great grandparents…