We don’t think that often about the ancestors we’ve never met, unless they were somehow heroic, victimized, or had a story that was captured in the news or became family lore. We just didn’t know them.
In my Message in a Bottle series, I’m exploring connections across people, generations, time and memories using the metaphor of what’s been captured and held and shaken and stirred in that bottle of a life and a family – and what comes forth as memories, feelings and ways of being. This started after my father passed away last year and I began incorporating fragments of the thousands of letters/postcards he wrote to me, plus fragments of letters he wrote to his mother, plus those his father (whom I never met) to his mother as a soldier in WWII.
This is an ongoing exploration. We’ll see where it goes but already it’s led to laughter, tears and a sense of connection — even to those I never met and those who came before them. If you’re interested in exploring this idea with fragments from your own family or relationships, reach out. Let’s talk about whether I might dream up something for you! Perhaps a message is waiting.
