The Secret Power Of Family Stories

Crista Cowan 0:00

Can I tell you a secret? My favorite part of exploring my family tree isn't just discovering the stories of people who lived hundreds of years ago, though you know how much I love that part of it. But it's what those stories can do to the relationships we have right now. A family tree can show us how we fit. But the stories we tell out loud are what truly connect us. I was reminded of that just last week, but before I tell you what happened, I need to take you back a few years to a conversation I had with one of my nephews. Hi, I'm Crista Cowan, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family. Welcome to Stories That Live In Us. Way back in episode 27, you met my nibblings, the six nephews and world's only niece, that my siblings occasionally let me borrow for fantastical adventures. And I do love those adventures. But as much as I love taking them on trips, it's the Sunday dinners and the family text threads and the memes sliding into my DMs and quiet car rides around town that mean the most to me. Especially the moments when one of them looks over from the passenger seat of my little two-seater and says, Aunt Crista, do you remember when you told that story about? Because that's how family stories become part of us. Children hear the same family phrases, the same birth stories, the same vacation disasters, the same stories about who showed up, who struggled, who survived, and who made everyone laugh. And eventually those stories stop being something that the adults just tell. They become something the child simply knows. This is who my family is. And that means that it's a part of who I am.

Asher’s Homework And A Founder Ancestor

Crista Cowan 2:09

So one afternoon, a few years ago, my nephew Asher was riding in the car with me when he said, Yo, I've got a homework assignment. I have to write something about the city we live in. Don't we have an ancestor who did something important here or something? Why, yes, yes, we do. So once again, I told him about his fourth great-grandfather Samuel Mulliner, who helped found the city of Lehi. As we drove, I pointed out the mill pond that Samuel created, the one just off the freeway on the road to Asher's house. We talked about Samuel's life in Scotland, the journey that eventually brought him to Utah, and how his story had become intertwined with the place where Asher was growing up. I told more of Samuel's story back in episode 28, so you can go listen to that episode later. But that day in the car, the part that mattered most to me wasn't the genealogy of how we were related to Samuel. It was that Asher remembered there was a story to ask about. He had heard enough over the years to understand that the streets he drove every day weren't just streets. His hometown wasn't just a place on a map. His family had a story there and he was part of it. Sure, he needed the information for a homework assignment, but he listened. He asked questions. And for a few minutes, the story of a man who lived generations ago became part of a conversation between an aunt and her nephew. I felt deeply honored to be the voice of carrying Samuel's story forward. But I also felt deeply connected to Asher because in that moment I could see the story moving from one generation to the next. And even though it's been a few years now, I suspect that if you asked 16-year-old Asher today, who was Samuel Mulliner and how are you related to him, he could probably still tell you, at least the important parts.

Wildfire Camp And A Name Test

Crista Cowan 4:24

Which brings me to what happened last week. Right now, Utah is on fire. And I do not mean that metaphorically. We have massive wildfires burning in our mountains, destroying hundreds of thousands of acres. In my congregation, I serve as a leader for the young women. And last week we were scheduled to take 20 girls ages 12 to 17 up into the high Uintahs for a three-day primitive camping experience. But because of the wildfires, we were told we couldn't have campfires, which was a bit of a problem considering it had just snowed up there at 9,300 feet. After a rough start, including the food trailer truck breaking down and leaving me stranded in Park City for hours, we finally arrived at the remote lake. The rain and snow actually ended up working in our favor because the camp caretakers gave us the green light for campfires. So for the next three days, that campfire ring became the kitchen hearth of our camp. We gathered around it to eat and to braid hair and to put on skits and to share the seeds of our faith. And naturally, we shared stories. They asked me about the first man who ever proposed to me. They asked me about how I started this podcast, how I got into my career. On Wednesday, as the campfire smoke curled around us, I decided to ask them a question. Can you name all four of your grandparents? Statistics show that 53% of American adults can't do that. And as it turns out, teenagers are no exception. About half of them hit a total wall. One girl was sitting there struggling to remember her grandmother's maiden name when another one of the leaders spoke up and said, It's Duncan. This cute girl looked stunned. How did you know that? She said. Oh, that's right, she said, we live in her house. She was living inside of a piece of her family history, and she only knew this woman as Grandma Rose, but the surname that connected one generation to another had just completely slipped out of reach for her. Then one of the girls looked at me and challenged, I bet you can name all eight of your great-grandparents, can't you? Challenge accepted. So I started rattling them off. And when I got to my paternal grandmother's parents, Victor, Mulliner, and Mary Heaps, I casually looked across the fire at two beautiful, makeup-free, smoky-smelling twin sisters and said to no one in particular, you know, Victor and Mary are my great-grandparents, but they're the twins' great-great-grandparents. I turned to the twins. Your grandma's maiden name is Mulliner. She's my dad's first cousin. Some of the other girls around the campfire perked up instantly. What? Really? You guys are related? Across the fire, the twins barely reacted. And I was instantly disappointed. Maybe they were tired, maybe they were cold, probably. Maybe they simply didn't know what to do with that piece of information. I couldn't know in that moment what they were thinking, but I suddenly had this massive realization about something that I had done. I

Related On Paper Not In Feeling

Crista Cowan 8:03

had given them a fact, not a story. I had told them that we were related, but I hadn't told them anything that would help that relationship feel meaningful. I couldn't expect a shared name or even shared DNA to do the work of connection for me. I had never given them a reason to feel connected to me or to the people whose names linked us together. I had actually told them we were related a year ago when I first met them, and they hadn't been impressed then either. To them, I was just a stranger, an old lady leader from their church. As I listened to some of the other girls around the campfire that day continue to ask questions, I began to wonder whether curiosity is something we cultivate. Maybe hearing family stories teaches us to look at the people around us differently, to recognize that every name, every relationship, every ordinary life contains stories that are worth asking about. The twins didn't feel connected to me because I hadn't shared any stories yet. If kids aren't raised in a storytelling household, maybe they don't automatically develop the curiosity to ask about the people around them. So I may not have connected to those girls just yet, but trust me, Aunt Krista has a plan. I am planning a family reunion next spring for my dad's first cousins and their descendants. I plan to print a massive, beautiful family tree chart to hang right in the middle of the room so that every single kid there and the adults can see exactly how they fit. But more importantly, we're going to use that chart to start sharing the stories. Maybe next summer, when we go camping, the twins still won't care exactly how many greats stand between them and Victor Mulliner or Samuel Mulliner, his grandfather. But just maybe one of them will look at me across the campfire and say, Krista, tell that story about Grandpa Victor and his beat-up pickup truck. And I'll share how we used to drive around Los Angeles as though stoplights were just suggestions. Because a shared ancestor makes us related. And a shared chart shows how we fit together, but it's the stories that connect us. So that's where we're going together in season three.

Season Three And One Word One Story

Crista Cowan 10:37

For the last two seasons, we've explored the stories that live in our family trees, in records, in places, in photographs, and in the memories that are passed down to us generation after generation. This season, we're going to focus on what happens next. We'll tell the stories of the people who came before us, but we'll also tell our own stories. And hopefully we'll share them with the people we love while we're still here to tell them. Because stories can't connect us if they remain untold. And that brings me to something new we're doing this season. If you've ever spent time with me at an Ancestry virtual event on a Facebook Live or at a genealogy conference, you probably know that my favorite feature on the entire Ancestry website is the card catalog. I know. I'm a total nerd, but I'm pretty sure my love of card catalogs started long before Ancestry. When I was a kid, my mom took us to the library every week for story time. Afterwards, she would let us check out a few books. There was something magical about pulling open one of those big wooden drawers and rifling through those cards to discover a book that might transport me to some faraway place. Then when I was a teenager, my dad would bring me to Utah to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. You walk in, and there were endless rows of drawers with reels of microfilm filled with names. And behind every name, I just knew there was a lifetime of stories. And just thinking about that still fills me with this nerdy wonder that has only increased with time. Now, today, billions of historical records are available online. We chase leaf hints, we do quick searches from our tree, we save records, we organize them. Essentially, what we're doing is cataloging the lives of the people in our family tree. But what about our lives? The everyday memories, the personal stories that only we can tell. Those usually aren't cataloged at all. So this season, we are making room for those uncataloged memories. At the end of each episode, I will open the story drawer and pull out one ordinary random word. Then in a segment that we are calling one word, one story, I'll share the memory or brief story that word brings to mind. And I'll invite all of my guests to do the same. Because telling your family stories doesn't only mean sharing the stories you discover in old records or family history research, it also means telling your own stories, the ones your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and loved ones need to hear. Sometimes one small word is all it takes to unlock a story that's been living in you all along. So are you ready? Let's open the story drawer and see what the first random word is. I know what these words are, but I don't know which one I'm gonna draw, so we'll see.

Ice Cream Memory And Your Prompt

Crista Cowan 14:01

The word is ice cream. Okay. Um so I grew up in a little town. We lived there for about eight years, uh, called Turlock, California. And in California, there's a drugstore called Lucky's. And Lucky's had at the front of the store like an ice cream bar. And we lived about two and a half blocks away, maybe from Lucky's. And one of my favorite things to do when I had saved up enough quarters or done a tour around the house, and my mom had given me a little money, or maybe I had done some babysitting, um, I would get on my bike and I would take one of my siblings, and we would ride those two and a half blocks to Lucky's, and we would get a double scoop of ice cream. Now, here's the really gross thing that I think about now that I'm an adult. One of my favorite flavors at the time was bubblegum ice cream. And I don't know what the fascination was because I think about it now, and it sounds like a dental appointment waiting to happen. Because imagine if you put gumballs in ice cream and then try to bite into them rock hard. Like, what were we thinking? And it was also those gross bubblegum balls, and so they would like you'd chew on them for like five seconds and then they lose all flavor. But there was something kind of magical about that childhood memory of, you know, riding my bike a few blocks and getting ice cream and paying for it with my own money. So there's my story about ice cream. So, what story came to mind for you when you heard today's word? If you're watching this on YouTube, tell me in the comments. Or if you're listening on a podcast app, go share it on Facebook or Instagram and then tag me so I can see it. But most importantly, tell that story to someone in your family this week. Because the stories that live in us are meant to be shared. If you love today's story, would you help more people discover us? I'm on a quick mission this week to reach more people looking to have deeply connected families. So just tap the follow button on our show page. It only takes one second. Thank you. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.