The Power of the Stories We Tell Ourselves: This is my Story

Identity is the result of the many stories we tell ourselves about who we are. As a psychologist I strive to help others delving into their own memories, beliefs and values to give them a reflection of themselves they can articulate to function in the lives they have built in the reality they were given. This has also taken me to explore my own stories. Some of these handed down to me by my culture and family, others discovered throughout my life, pondering on the significance of my own experience.

The confinement of the pandemic brought many of us the opportunity to start exploring activities that kept us busy, interested and in my case connected to other human beings. Apart from my teaching and professional activities that kept me going, I began to explore my genealogical background. At first it was an entertainment, discovering interesting details of my ancestors, many of them hidden and forgotten. Eventually, once I became very engaged, I decided to get a DNA test done. My mother had been adopted and she never explored her biological background. The results of this changed many of the stories my family and I tell ourselves about where we belong in the world.

Before that, my story had focused on my experience of being a Mexican-American living in Mexico City with many connections with people from many places in the world, specifically with the US and Mexico. My cultural paternal heritage was built from strong Catholic values from central Mexico , specifically in León and Queretaro. In contrast, my mother was brought up in a small railroad town in the Colorado plains, by her loving adoptive parents, who were descendants of immigrants from Scotland and England. My own childhood developed in a mixed household, speaking and living in a mix of English and Spanish, soaking up experiences that went from exploring and loving Mexico through the eyes of my American mother, to living the English middle class life of London during the year my father did his medical specialization. I was fortunate, I had a grounded upbringing with many opportunities to explore physically and mentally what my life had to offer.

Once my DNA test came back, a whole new world opened up. I discovered I am half Finnish/Swedish, and of Spanish and Mexican indigenous descent, typical of most of Mexicans. My nordic ancestry was a complete surprise that came accompanied with a very large and amazing family, mostly living in Finland. So many questions and stories to discover. After some detective work done with the help of a DNA cousin who gave me access to his Finnish family tree, that I clearly had connections to, I discovered my grandmother´s family. She was an American Finnish, daughter of two Finnish immigrants who migrated to the US in the 1880s to start their lives in the Michigan Upper Peninsula. They were both from Lapland, in the Arctic Circle.

Having lived most of my life in sunny Mexico, where it never snows, this discovery has given me another perspective of the reality I live in and the one they inhabited. I have always felt connected and grateful with my mother´s adoptive parents in Colorado who gave her a caring home and family she grew up in, but this discovery added many dimensions to my connections. Not only am I part of the history of the Americas, I am connected to distant lands I knew nothing about.

I have also been blessed by finding my connection to this Finnish family, by being contacted and met by a cousin of mine in Finland. This has been an extraordinary experience of human connection. We have led similar yet distant parallel lives, being of similar age and same gender. We have experienced family and professional lives with shared worries about the world, as well as the possibility of enjoying the simple pleasures of life in the love of family time as well as a walk in nature. She has shown me the beauty and difficulties of her and my ancestors country. All this has widen my spiritual connection to my own lived experience, as well as the knowns and unknowns of the struggles of those who came before me.

Here I only describe the beauty of it all, but I have also become acutely aware of secrets and imperfections of those in my past, being that this is also an important part of my own story. It has made me feel my own humanity and be grateful for my own existence.

I invite you to explore your own story, the one you have told yourself, as well as the untold part that may be lying in the mind of our parents or grandparents, or maybe hidden in pictures, letters or family objects that are waiting to be uncovered; and if you are feeling a little more adventurous, in your own DNA or family tree. Explore it with curiosity and compassion, knowing that all the complexity in the people that came before us, makes up the known or unknown stories that have made us who we are. We can integrate this story into the narrative that gives us a sense of purpose, as well as of belonging to others similar or maybe different to what we have always believed of ourselves.

Here is a link to my own podcast in Spanish, where I share my reflections and discoveries of the stories I have uncovered. Las Mujeres que me dieron alma https://open.spotify.com/show/0vdSZXCTu1nm0SoJOXsAUX