The start of great things…

Welcome to the home of Illume Genealogy!

I’m so excited to start this journey. I firmly believe by exploring our roots, we have the opportunity to grow. In sharing those stories, we create connection. In those connections, we find our true selves.

I was blessed/cursed by my grandmother with the genealogy bug. Her study was always cluttered with papers, binders, and notes. I remember feeling suffocated by the sheer volume of information in that room. Over 30 years later, my office is cluttered with papers, binders, and notes. I can’t seem to escape it. Then again, maybe that is the whole point.

To be honest, I’m not sure why or how she started doing this work. This was the age just before Ancestry.com blew up and before any of the commercial DNA tests. She was doing the work when you had to email (or in some cases mail physical letters) to people miles away or across oceans. I grew up reading physical documents and interpreting writing that sometimes looked like cuneiform.

Then I grew up and went out into the world a while and forgot I ever cared. It felt like such a self centered hobby. There was a whole world out there that was vast and different and demanded such attention, why on earth would I spend my hours looking into how I came to be part of it?

Little did I know, that was exactly the point.

Some people are gifted with a strong sense of self. They never question why they are where they are or who they are. They just know that they are and that is enough. Then there are people like me. People who question everything.

Why am I here? What is the point of me? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing? How am I supposed to know what I’m supposed to be doing? Is what I’m supposed to do the right thing or the wrong thing?

I’m not sure people like me can ever answer those questions. I’m not sure people like me are supposed to answer those questions. I think what matters is that we ask them.

So for people like me, who are wondering who we are, why we are, and whether we should be; genealogy can have a profoundly grounding effect.

Adrift in a vast and rapidly changing world, learning about your genealogy helps you find a place in the history of everything. You can put a pin in the timeline of humanity that says “this is me”. Then another pin that says “this was my ancestor”. Everything in between can help answer the what, when, where, why, and how. You then get to holistically decide about the who of it all.

Thank you for being here as I explore my own who. I hope you find inspiration and the confidence to find your own who.