I love genealogy. Especially mine. It’s fascinating to me that the actions that people who lived 100’s or more years ago are responsible for your existence and the roads you were to travel. It goes back even further than that, since the beginning of man really, but for the sake of this post, let’s just say 100’s of years, to our great great grandparents. If you live in America, then you probably have great- great grandparents who immigrated from somewhere else to here in search of a better life. Their relatives who stayed behind either perished in a famine, war or endured hardships of their own. Some survived and that’s why when you do your family tree or put your DNA into the genealogy site, you find yourself with thousands of matches from around the world. But here in the USA, you can find the stories that made you, you. Whatever place your great-grandparents settled is probably where you are right now. Or close to it. This is the reason why places like Boston are teaming with Irish families and Wisconsin and Minnesota are rich in Swedish heritage. Your ancestors put down roots and built a life. Family made that place home. In a way, the state they chose became like a tiny country. That’s why each state has its own personality and its own unique characteristics that make up the culture, accent, dialect and colloquiums. You are essentially, where you were raised.

But there’s a different kind of past that is not rooted in immigration. It’s rooted in experiences, some good, some bad. How you respond to those experiences is because of your family, location, age, sex and other factors, like support, determine how you process the experience. The people around you can tell you that your response to what happened is right or wrong. It doesn’t matter if they are correct it their assessment. It means, you are affected by those opinions. So if you, as a child, fall and scrape your knee and your mom kisses your boo-boo, you learn to minimize your small traumas and carry on. But if, say, your dad yells at you for being clumsy and denting your bike or ripping your pants, then you internalize feelings or guilt and shame and develop low self-esteem and possibly even become a perfectionist. I’m being very broad with my brush here, but you know what I mean.

So here comes a giant trauma in your life and you have to face it the best why you know how, with all that past running around in your head telling you to heal quickly and move on or beat yourself up about it. And now comes the best part. You are in control of your thoughts and feelings. Thoughts are just thoughts and feelings are just feelings. They have zero power until you give it to them. It is a conscious decision to decide to develop or squash them. You can redirect them, ignore them or act on them. The decision is completely in your power. Just like your ancestors made the decision to leave one place and go to another, you can leave one memory and create another new one with the here and now, and never look back.

I say this because I have an 40 year anniversary today of the worst day of my life. I haven’t seen in it coming because I have done an excellent job of healing from it. However, something reminded me of it and the memory came to visit for a bit. I thought, “ Should I examine this, sit with it, explore the impact that it had on my life, or should I just make this one fantastic celebration of life, my life, of how I’ve survived, grown in wisdom, strength and power?” Well, the answer is obvious. I choose to celebrate my victory. I came through it and now I’m on the other side. If I had given in, given up or given it power over the rest of my life, I would not be the person who is equipped to handle the next 20 or 30 years of being old. And every year that I live is a blessing. Old age is a blessing. Not everyone gets to experience it. When I look at the histories of my ancestors and see how many of them had short lives, I feel more determined than ever to be like the ones who lived past 100 and happily so. I think it’s probably because they kept looking forward to the next thing. They didn’t dwell on the heartbreak of the past, and goodness knows, it was there. No, they acknowledged it and in the spirit of their grandparents, they kept looking forward with hope.

So the next time a really bad anniversary comes around to visit, remember what I said about your own personal power. It can be a good day or a bad one. Keep practicing every year until you are the master of your memories.