I stand at the edge, or should I say in the middle. I’ve gotten to the middle, as far as I could get off of my own experiences and knowledge in life. So far I attribute a large part of who I am to what I have learned on my own, without my family. Growing up as you know from my previous posts, I was on my own at an early age. I had a lot of resentment towards my family, so I didn’t seek to know anything about my history.

Now as I have gotten older, I had all of these questions. I wanted to further understand who I am, and what makes me who I am.  In my post earlier today, I had a lot of questions concerning my family on my father’s side. Right after I posted this, I decided to get to the bottom of things and call my father to get some answers.

Here is for the first time, my awakening to my family history.

I am my father’s daughter, he is the son of my grandmother, whom he loved with all his heart. They were inseparable, they went everywhere together. Although she had 10 children he was the favorite. She died at 60 years old, a year before I was born. When I was born my father fought with my mother for a while to name me after his mother.

My grandmother grew up in a poor family, she couldn’t read or write. She met my grandfather at a young age, fell in love and decided they would work their hardest to earn a good living to raise a family. They worked early morning every day for years, as early as 4 o’clock in the morning to take care of their farm. They had ten children together, whom they provided for and sent to private school, which was a big deal in those times. My grandfather also had children outside of his marriage. (my father doesn’t know all of them).  My grandmother had a big heart, she was always taking in people, cooking for them and being of service to them in anyway she could. When the farm was doing well for them, she decided to start her own business and she opened and owned a store where she sold various goods. In my father’s words “Despite the fact that all the odds were against her she overcame them all, and she lived a big life, a good life. She was loved, she loved and she served others”.

I can’t explain how much it helps to know this information, it helps me understand a bit better my character traits. It made me feel so good to know this. If you are like me and don’t know enough about your family history, I insist that you find out as much as you can. Not to be bound by what you find out, but to better understand who you are. In learning all of this, I see why I have such an apt for giving and helping others. I see why I have such strong entrepreneurship skills and such strong work ethic. It wasn’t just by luck !

As my father said before we hung up “Hopefully this helps you when you write your book later on.” Now onto finding out about my mother’s side of the family.