Vysyons Journal
Notes on storytelling, heritage, celebration, and the work of preserving what matters.
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.
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.