Rusty Blazenhoff and her Italian cousin Giuseppe Petrucci in Vignarola, outside of San Giovanni Incarico, Italy (2015)
photo by Carolyn Anhalt
Populating my family tree on Ancestry.com has changed how I look at myself and the world.
When I was about 12, I was estranged from my family. So most of my life, I’ve had almost no access to family history, which has left me floating a little bit. It’s been difficult kind of to know who I am, where I came from. Like a missing link almost. So cut to 2015 many years later. A friend invited me to travel with her to Italy. I knew I had Italian roots, so I jokingly suggested we take a road trip to the little town where my great-grandparents came from. It’s not a tourist town, and she was totally game. So I literally only knew their surname and the little town’s name. And so we rented a Fiat and headed there. But long story short, and it is a really great story that I won’t get into here, but I met an Italian cousin. I don’t speak It