Vysyons Journal
Notes on storytelling, heritage, celebration, and the work of preserving what matters.
When the Record Doesn’t Match the Story We Were Told
: Every family historian eventually finds the record that doesn’t quite match the family story. Here is why I don’t treat that story as an error, and the five steps I use to hold both honestly.
What PRSA ICON Taught Me, and What I’m Missing This Year
I attended PRSA ICON in 2024 as an undergraduate and in 2025 as a graduate student. This year, I’m reading the agenda from the outside and thinking about what the margins of a conference give you that sessions can’t.
Five Questions to Ask Before You Write Anything
The first twenty minutes of almost any communications project look the same, and almost none of it is writing. These are the five questions I ask before drafting anything, including the one most likely to start an argument.
What DNA Can and Can’t Give Back
When I first got my DNA results, I did what most people do. I went straight to the ethnicity estimate, then moved to the list of matches. What I found was a list of people I didn't know, connected to me by percentages I barely understood. Looking back, those matches taught me far more about my family than the colorful map ever could.
When the Record and the Road Point in the Same Direction
A deed I found in my PopPop's files turned Farmville from an abstraction into an actual patch of ground. It also led me to a name I wasn't prepared for: Julia Venable, my great-great-great grandmother, enslaved on the same land I now have a claim to by blood on both sides.
The Living Archives
There is a specific feeling that comes with realizing you didn't ask someone something while you still had the chance. Every archive has a closing time, courthouses, libraries, historical societies, and you can come back once they reopen. The archive that lives in an elderly relative's memory doesn't work that way. You can't come back once it closes.
Why Genealogy Is at the Heart of Everything
I was eleven when my Nana first told me who we came from. Decades later, one branch of my family traces back to 412 AD, documented, protected, written down for over a thousand years. Another branch, from that same Virginia property, stops cold at a name and a plantation. Both branches are mine. Only one was ever considered worth the ink.
The Letter I Wish Someone Had Handed Me
If you're stepping into a new semester or season, your first, your second attempt, or the one you almost didn't try again, I hope something in this letter gives you something steady to hold onto. You don't have to know the whole story. You just have to be willing to begin the chapter you're actually in.
Before You Ask AI, Ask Your Nana
Before my cousin called me about our family tree, he'd already asked a chatbot. Here's why the order you research in matters as much as the research itself, and where AI actually fits, and doesn't.
What Thirty Years in PR Actually Taught Me
World PR Day passed last week. I've been sitting with what this profession has given me, and what it has cost me.
What Essence Festival Keeps Getting Wrong (And What It Reveals About Communications and Events)
The festival ended yesterday. I spent the weekend in conversation with vendors and attendees. Here is what they told me, and what it confirms.
Vysyons Is Here: Stories, Strategy, and the Space to Say More
A note on what this publication is, who it's for, and what's coming.