Hands: Mine, Jeff, Jeremy, and Iysa

Finding Your Roots on PBS is now in its 12th season and has become one of the network’s most beloved programs, drawing more than 18 million viewers.

Why does it resonate so deeply?

Perhaps it’s because so many of us have questions about who we are and where we come from. We ask ourselves: What happened in my family’s past? What did my ancestors endure to arrive and build a life in the United States or elsewhere? How does their story live on in me? What shared human experiences connect my history to that of others?

My reflection: For all of these reasons, I chose to research my own past. I found important documents, located the town my grandparents left, and traveled back to Rotondella, where I found family – people who looked like me and embraced me. I wanted to follow the footprints my ancestors left behind and understand what they faced, and how their courage and struggle across generations helped shape my life and the lives of those I love.

Something to think about: Discovering our roots fulfills a fundamental human need to understand who we are, where we belong, and how we connect to history. Today, there are more tools than ever to help us trace those stories. It was an important search for me. Perhaps it will be for you too.

For years, I scoffed at New Year’s resolutions. It felt silly to set an intention I knew I’d abandon after a few weeks.

Then I remembered something Jeff wrote when he was new to recovery: “This is the first year my New Year’s resolution was crystal clear: contribution. I need to roll up my sleeves and offer my time and experience to the people around me. The Big Book says, ‘To keep what we have, we need to give it away.’”

I admired his clarity and resolve.

My reflection: I decided to follow his lead and make a “crystal clear” resolution of my own. Writing is the most important part of my daily habits, and prayer is where I find peace.

Today’s promise to consider: Even though I’m not usually a believer in New Year’s resolutions, this year I will try. I will write daily and reflect on what truly matters. I will recommit to a mantra I first adopted more than ten years ago: Talk less. Pray more.

Happy New Year. 

Wishing you serenity and peace

Several years ago, a mother wrote to me: I just read your book Stay Close and would like to know how Jeff is doing now. In reading your book, your family became an extension of my own as my son continues to battle his own addiction issues. I do hope and pray that all is well and that your family has found peace and contentment.

In 2006, on Christmas Eve, I wrote: “When Jeff didn’t come home for our large Italian family gatherings, no one knew what to do or say. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends didn’t know whether to ask about my addicted son or whether it would be kinder to leave him out of the conversation. At Christmas Eve Mass, my older brother leaned toward me and asked softly, ‘How’s Jeff?’ I swelled with tears, tried to speak, but no words came. He nodded and turned toward the altar. I kept my head down and prayed.”

My reflection: Today, Jeff is nineteen years sober and healthy. We know how lucky we are, and we are grateful every day that Jeff came home to himself, to us, and to his God.

Today’s Promise to Consider: The holidays often put our struggles center stage and make them excruciatingly public. The reality is that our lives are not always as joyful as we wish they would be.

Today, let us avoid that painful place by being compassionate with ourselves, with others, and with those we love. Let us find serenity in honesty and prayer.

Piazza del Duomo, Florence, Italy

I’ll soon be headed back to the States to celebrate Christmas with my family, but for now:  Merry Christmas from Florence.

In Italy, Christmas is a blend of faith, family, and food. There’s a popular saying: Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi: Christmas with your family, Easter with whomever you want. This truly captures the spirit of the season: Christmas is meant to be spent with your loved ones.

All around the city, nativity scenes, called presepi, are ubiquitous and can be spotted in churches, shop windows, and piazzas. In some areas of Italy, live manger scenes are staged in ancient streets and piazzas. The Christ Child doesn’t appear in the manger until midnight on Christmas Eve, a meaningful moment. Families gather for long meals: a (usually) meatless Christmas Eve lunch or dinner, followed by a lavish Christmas Day feast where every region adds its own touch and specialties.

Of course, traditions vary from country to country and even from family to family. And not everyone spends the holidays the same way. Some gather in noisy houses, some celebrate quietly, and some spend the days alone, whether by choice or circumstance.

However you find yourself this year, my family and I send you our love and hope that the season brings you comfort, health, and peace.

Buon Natale a tutti. 

Click here to see the one-minute reel of a presentation I gave in Florence, Italy, about wanting to be America.

While researching IT TAKES A LIFETIME, I interviewed the oldest grandmother in Rotondella so that I could better understand what the village was like during the time of the great diaspora when my grandparents left.

In my American mind, I imagined something dramatic – like a death or scandal – must have happened to make them abandon their families and country, cross the ocean in steerage to start an entirely new life in an entirely new country. 

I asked her, “Why did my grandparents leave? What was the real reason?” 

She looked at me as if I were from outer space. Then she said, clearly and without hesitation, “They wanted to eat. They wanted to EAT!” 

It was in that moment that I realized how little I knew about my own history or  about the depth of the abject poverty and harsh reality of life in Italy in those years, especially in the South and in Basilicata. 

My reflection: From 1876 to 1915, fourteen million Italians emigrated to countries across the globe. My grandparents came during the peak years of 1900 to 1915, when roughly two million Italians arrived in the United States. 

Something to think about: My grandparents crossed an ocean so their children and grandchildren could have a brighter future. However, my mother, who was born in Pittsburgh, told me, “I refused to live life according to rules from a time and a country that wasn’t mine.” She was determined to be fully American. But I came back, searching for truth and connection. I wonder why the past calls some of us home.

Nonna and I danced the tarantella               (Mom on the left, Dad on the near right, and Tim’s dad  on the far right)

I’ve always loved the tarantella, a traditional wedding dance in Southern Italy. Even as a child, I begged Nonna to dance it with me. She’d laugh, shuffle a few quick steps, then collapse into a kitchen chair, insisting she didn’t remember “t’is kind’a dance.”

Before my wedding, I pleaded with her to dance it with me, but she adamantly refused. Still, near the end of the cocktail hour, when Nonna announced she was ready to leave, Mom quietly cued the musicians, and the tarantella began.

Granddaughter Iysa and I in front of Nonna’s door

When my granddaughter Iysa visits me each summer, we return to the Mezzogiorno, back to Rotondella, the hilltop village where our family story began. We stand in front of the padlocked door in Via Cervaro, and I tell her about the hovel in which Carmela lived, the fields where she labored, and the water that she carried up the mountain.

During her first visit to Rotondella, when Iysa was in first grade, she struggled to understand the significance of this village to her life in America. “Sally, at my school,” she questioned me, “came from people who were famous Vikings. Are we famous for anything in Italy besides being poor?”

My reflection: She’s correct that our family history holds the narrative of poverty, but it also holds the narrative of hard-fought wisdom, pride of achievement, respect for education, love of family, and the dignity of living meaningful lives. These are stories I want Iysa to know—the sacrifices made by those who came before her, on whose shoulders she now stands. The ones who lift her up.

Something to think about: Sharing our past might feel difficult or painful, but is it valuable to pass on our family history? How do our histories shape the way future generations might see themselves? These are questions I return to each time I walk with Iysa through those hills, hoping she carries with her not just memories of hardship, but of the strength and light that come from knowing where she truly comes from.

Nonna Carmela, Mom, Bisnonna Laura Manfredi, Nonno Vincenzo

I wrote this in IT TAKES A LIFETIME: Above my head hung a picture of Nonno Vincenzo with my great-grandmother, Bisnonna Laura Manfredi, Nonna, and my mom when she was just four years old. I loved this black-and-white image because it proved to me that these people, two of whom had died before I was born, had once been alive.

Nonno’s birth name was Vincenzo, but when he came to America, he thought this sounded too Italian, so he chose to be called Jim, which he thought was a good, solid American name.

“Oye, my Jim is a good man,” Nonna had told me. “He comes a-first wit’out me to l’America and gets a big job in Pitts-a-burg. He helps many people, gives t’em jobs, and keeps water on to houses of our paesani even when some people tell him to close.”

“But why would people want to shut off the water to the houses of the Italians?”

Her voice became animated, “In t’ose days, t’ere is La Mano Nera, t’e Black Hand. T’ey tell all Italian people to pay a pizza, some money for many t’ings like water in t’e house. Many people are poor and cannot pay not-a-t’ing. My Jim always helps people from the old country. When people need water, he keeps t’e water on. Ma he dies too soon, when he is just a young man.”

“How did he die, Nonna?” I asked.

“A knife in t’e belly.” She looked away from me and refused to say more.

My reflection: The photo gave me a sense of whom I came from, my history. In the end, it truly led me home.

 Something to think about: When we lack accurate historical facts, our minds fill in the gaps with what we think, or want, to be true. That’s what I did. I took the little Nonna told me and invented a world around it.

Have you ever filled in family stories with what you wished had happened? Or have you started your own historical search to understand your past?