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Lisa Morton's avatar

Ruth sounds amazing!

Family is a different thing for me, having never had much (if I've never mentioned it, my mother was orphaned at the age of 3) and having no living blood relatives that I know at this point. For those reasons, notions of "family" tend to just leave me perplexed.

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Kate Maruyama's avatar

I understand that. We were very nuclear, with a few scattered family stories. My mom was not in touch with most of her cousins aunts and uncles, and was an only child, so we had a lot more found family than relatives around. you can take the genetic journey and find relatives, and I know similarly isolated friends who've enjoyed that. But found family is great too!

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Toni Ann Johnson's avatar

Thanks for this, Kate! Ruth’s accomplishments are inspiring. Your post has me wondering about the women in my family. Questions I’ve not previously considered have arisen because of your piece.

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Kate Maruyama's avatar

Yeah, I realized I was kind of discounting women ancestors because "they weren't allowed to have jobs" anyway. I knew they were important to the home life, but that was untraceable, and I never bothered to ask about other things they were doing.

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