How to fight the good fight, walk away, and keep creating Ask ANYBODY who knows me well and they can tell you that, in my vast canon of favorite things, there is absolutely no contest as to who I name as my Hip-Hop GOATs (Greatest Of All Time, for you…

Processing the frustration of unanswered connections It has now been a decade since I first spit in a tube to see what the science would say. Hard to believe how much I’ve learned, and unlearned since then. Right after we flipped the calendar to usher in 2023, I was able…

Reconfiguring my relationship with EVERYTHING! Hey good people! It’s been too long since I’ve checked in with you, so I owe you an update on where things stand and where they’re headed. WORKING DAY AND NIGHT The struggle was real, y’all. Coming out of the pandemic, I was deep in…

A change (of scenery) gon’ come…ohhhhh yes it will! Big news, y’all. It’s been a BUSY few weeks in these genealogy streets, and I’m rapidly adapting my communications tools to better accommodate people’s interest in my work and setting the stage to expand my reach and project scope. …

Using grant rejection letters as my latest motivation Over the past two weeks, I’ve gotten two brief “thanks, but no thanks” responses to grant applications I’ve submitted regarding The DNA Journey web series I’m developing around my family research. I am not the first person, and certainly won’t be the…

For newly-discovered cousins, the question is not If, but How. I find myself asking this question a LOT more often than I ever imagined, but here goes…again: If you didn’t want to find family, why the hell did you DNA test? Ancestry’s inbox system is both a blessing and a…

Ready to take this story to the masses Thank you to all of you who are reading the stories from my series, The DNA Journey, and who have signed up to receive my occasional messages directly. As you’ve gathered from my essays, the discoveries and connections have been truly extraordinary…

A quick hood lesson, for button-pushers and habitual line-steppers LANGUAGE WARNING (in case the above meme didn’t make that clear) This essay is not an attempt to defend, excuse, or justify Will Smith’s actions during the Academy Award telecast. He doesn’t need me to do that. Doesn’t pay me to…

Lessons learned in Pandemic Year 2, and how to do better in the 2–2 I was really ready to come back outside, y’all. But Delta has transmogrified to Omicron, and a bunch of my favorite people turned up positive between Thanksgiving and New Year’s and…heavy sigh. I now feel like…