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Stories That Connect Us (And Why DNA Isn't Enough) | Episode 120 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Crista Cowan: Can I tell you a secret?
• 0:02
  Crista Cowan: My favorite part of exploring my family tree isn't just discovering the stories of people who lived hundreds of years ago, though you know how much I love that part of it.
• 0:13
  Crista Cowan: But it's what those stories can do to the relationships we have right now.
• 0:19
  Crista Cowan: A family tree can show us how we fit.
• 0:22
  Crista Cowan: But the stories we tell out loud are what truly connect us.
• 0:26
  Crista Cowan: I was reminded of that just last week, but before I tell you what happened, I need to take you back a few years to a conversation I had with one of my nephews.
• 0:38
  Crista Cowan: Hi, I'm Crista Cowan, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family.
• 0:46
  Crista Cowan: Welcome to Stories That Live In Us.
• 0:49
  Crista Cowan: Way back in episode 27, you met my nibblings, the six nephews and world's only niece, that my siblings occasionally let me borrow for fantastical adventures.
• 1:05
  Crista Cowan: And I do love those adventures.
• 1:07
  Crista Cowan: But as much as I love taking them on trips, it's the Sunday dinners and the family text threads and the memes sliding into my DMs and quiet car rides around town that mean the most to me.
• 1:21
  Crista Cowan: Especially the moments when one of them looks over from the passenger seat of my little two-seater and says, Aunt Crista, do you remember when you told that story about?
• 1:33
  Crista Cowan: Because that's how family stories become part of us.
• 1:39
  Crista Cowan: Children hear the same family phrases, the same birth stories, the same vacation disasters, the same stories about who showed up, who struggled, who survived, and who made everyone laugh.
• 1:54
  Crista Cowan: And eventually those stories stop being something that the adults just tell.
• 1:59
  Crista Cowan: They become something the child simply knows.
• 2:03
  Crista Cowan: This is who my family is.
• 2:05
  Crista Cowan: And that means that it's a part of who I am.
• 2:08
  Crista Cowan: So one afternoon, a few years ago, my nephew Asher was riding in the car with me when he said, Yo, I've got a homework assignment.
• 2:18
  Crista Cowan: I have to write something about the city we live in.
• 2:21
  Crista Cowan: Don't we have an ancestor who did something important here or something?
• 2:26
  Crista Cowan: Why, yes, yes, we do.
• 2:29
  Crista Cowan: So once again, I told him about his fourth great-grandfather Samuel Mulliner, who helped found the city of Lehi.
• 2:38
  Crista Cowan: As we drove, I pointed out the mill pond that Samuel created, the one just off the freeway on the road to Asher's house.
• 2:47
  Crista Cowan: We talked about Samuel's life in Scotland, the journey that eventually brought him to Utah, and how his story had become intertwined with the place where Asher was growing up.
• 2:59
  Crista Cowan: I told more of Samuel's story back in episode 28, so you can go listen to that episode later.
• 3:06
  Crista Cowan: But that day in the car, the part that mattered most to me wasn't the genealogy of how we were related to Samuel.
• 3:14
  Crista Cowan: It was that Asher remembered there was a story to ask about.
• 3:18
  Crista Cowan: He had heard enough over the years to understand that the streets he drove every day weren't just streets.
• 3:24
  Crista Cowan: His hometown wasn't just a place on a map.
• 3:28
  Crista Cowan: His family had a story there and he was part of it.
• 3:32
  Crista Cowan: Sure, he needed the information for a homework assignment, but he listened.
• 3:38
  Crista Cowan: He asked questions.
• 3:40
  Crista Cowan: And for a few minutes, the story of a man who lived generations ago became part of a conversation between an aunt and her nephew.
• 3:51
  Crista Cowan: I felt deeply honored to be the voice of carrying Samuel's story forward.
• 3:57
  Crista Cowan: But I also felt deeply connected to Asher because in that moment I could see the story moving from one generation to the next.
• 4:06
  Crista Cowan: And even though it's been a few years now, I suspect that if you asked 16-year-old Asher today, who was Samuel Mulliner and how are you related to him, he could probably still tell you, at least the important parts.
• 4:23
  Crista Cowan: Which brings me to what happened last week.
• 4:28
  Crista Cowan: Right now, Utah is on fire.
• 4:31
  Crista Cowan: And I do not mean that metaphorically.
• 4:34
  Crista Cowan: We have massive wildfires burning in our mountains, destroying hundreds of thousands of acres.
• 4:41
  Crista Cowan: In my congregation, I serve as a leader for the young women.
• 4:45
  Crista Cowan: And last week we were scheduled to take 20 girls ages 12 to 17 up into the high Uintahs for a three-day primitive camping experience.
• 4:56
  Crista Cowan: But because of the wildfires, we were told we couldn't have campfires, which was a bit of a problem considering it had just snowed up there at 9,300 feet.
• 5:08
  Crista Cowan: After a rough start, including the food trailer truck breaking down and leaving me stranded in Park City for hours, we finally arrived at the remote lake.
• 5:18
  Crista Cowan: The rain and snow actually ended up working in our favor because the camp caretakers gave us the green light for campfires.
• 5:27
  Crista Cowan: So for the next three days, that campfire ring became the kitchen hearth of our camp.
• 5:35
  Crista Cowan: We gathered around it to eat and to braid hair and to put on skits and to share the seeds of our faith.
• 5:40
  Crista Cowan: And naturally, we shared stories.
• 5:43
  Crista Cowan: They asked me about the first man who ever proposed to me.
• 5:47
  Crista Cowan: They asked me about how I started this podcast, how I got into my career.
• 5:52
  Crista Cowan: On Wednesday, as the campfire smoke curled around us, I decided to ask them a question.
• 5:59
  Crista Cowan: Can you name all four of your grandparents?
• 6:03
  Crista Cowan: Statistics show that 53% of American adults can't do that.
• 6:07
  Crista Cowan: And as it turns out, teenagers are no exception.
• 6:11
  Crista Cowan: About half of them hit a total wall.
• 6:15
  Crista Cowan: One girl was sitting there struggling to remember her grandmother's maiden name when another one of the leaders spoke up and said, It's Duncan.
• 6:24
  Crista Cowan: This cute girl looked stunned.
• 6:26
  Crista Cowan: How did you know that?
• 6:28
  Crista Cowan: She said.
• 6:29
  Crista Cowan: Oh, that's right, she said, we live in her house.
• 6:39
  Crista Cowan: She was living inside of a piece of her family history, and she only knew this woman as Grandma Rose, but the surname that connected one generation to another had just completely slipped out of reach for her.
• 6:52
  Crista Cowan: Then one of the girls looked at me and challenged, I bet you can name all eight of your great-grandparents, can't you?
• 7:00
  Crista Cowan: Challenge accepted.
• 7:02
  Crista Cowan: So I started rattling them off.
• 7:03
  Crista Cowan: And when I got to my paternal grandmother's parents, Victor, Mulliner, and Mary Heaps, I casually looked across the fire at two beautiful, makeup-free, smoky-smelling twin sisters and said to no one in particular, you know, Victor and Mary are my great-grandparents, but they're the twins' great-great-grandparents.
• 7:24
  Crista Cowan: I turned to the twins.
• 7:26
  Crista Cowan: Your grandma's maiden name is Mulliner.
• 7:28
  Crista Cowan: She's my dad's first cousin.
• 7:31
  Crista Cowan: Some of the other girls around the campfire perked up instantly.
• 7:34
  Crista Cowan: What?
• 7:35
  Crista Cowan: Really?
• 7:36
  Crista Cowan: You guys are related?
• 7:37
  Crista Cowan: Across the fire, the twins barely reacted.
• 7:41
  Crista Cowan: And I was instantly disappointed.
• 7:44
  Crista Cowan: Maybe they were tired, maybe they were cold, probably.
• 7:48
  Crista Cowan: Maybe they simply didn't know what to do with that piece of information.
• 7:53
  Crista Cowan: I couldn't know in that moment what they were thinking, but I suddenly had this massive realization about something that I had done.
• 8:02
  Crista Cowan: I had given them a fact, not a story.
• 8:06
  Crista Cowan: I had told them that we were related, but I hadn't told them anything that would help that relationship feel meaningful.
• 8:14
  Crista Cowan: I couldn't expect a shared name or even shared DNA to do the work of connection for me.
• 8:21
  Crista Cowan: I had never given them a reason to feel connected to me or to the people whose names linked us together.
• 8:29
  Crista Cowan: I had actually told them we were related a year ago when I first met them, and they hadn't been impressed then either.
• 8:37
  Crista Cowan: To them, I was just a stranger, an old lady leader from their church.
• 8:42
  Crista Cowan: As I listened to some of the other girls around the campfire that day continue to ask questions, I began to wonder whether curiosity is something we cultivate.
• 8:52
  Crista Cowan: Maybe hearing family stories teaches us to look at the people around us differently, to recognize that every name, every relationship, every ordinary life contains stories that are worth asking about.
• 9:06
  Crista Cowan: The twins didn't feel connected to me because I hadn't shared any stories yet.
• 9:12
  Crista Cowan: If kids aren't raised in a storytelling household, maybe they don't automatically develop the curiosity to ask about the people around them.
• 9:24
  Crista Cowan: So I may not have connected to those girls just yet, but trust me, Aunt Krista has a plan.
• 9:31
  Crista Cowan: I am planning a family reunion next spring for my dad's first cousins and their descendants.
• 9:39
  Crista Cowan: I plan to print a massive, beautiful family tree chart to hang right in the middle of the room so that every single kid there and the adults can see exactly how they fit.
• 9:51
  Crista Cowan: But more importantly, we're going to use that chart to start sharing the stories.
• 9:56
  Crista Cowan: Maybe next summer, when we go camping, the twins still won't care exactly how many greats stand between them and Victor Mulliner or Samuel Mulliner, his grandfather.
• 10:07
  Crista Cowan: But just maybe one of them will look at me across the campfire and say, Krista, tell that story about Grandpa Victor and his beat-up pickup truck.
• 10:16
  Crista Cowan: And I'll share how we used to drive around Los Angeles as though stoplights were just suggestions.
• 10:23
  Crista Cowan: Because a shared ancestor makes us related.
• 10:27
  Crista Cowan: And a shared chart shows how we fit together, but it's the stories that connect us.
• 10:33
  Crista Cowan: So that's where we're going together in season three.
• 10:37
  Crista Cowan: For the last two seasons, we've explored the stories that live in our family trees, in records, in places, in photographs, and in the memories that are passed down to us generation after generation.
• 10:49
  Crista Cowan: This season, we're going to focus on what happens next.
• 10:53
  Crista Cowan: We'll tell the stories of the people who came before us, but we'll also tell our own stories.
• 11:00
  Crista Cowan: And hopefully we'll share them with the people we love while we're still here to tell them.
• 11:05
  Crista Cowan: Because stories can't connect us if they remain untold.
• 11:09
  Crista Cowan: And that brings me to something new we're doing this season.
• 11:14
  Crista Cowan: If you've ever spent time with me at an Ancestry virtual event on a Facebook Live or at a genealogy conference, you probably know that my favorite feature on the entire Ancestry website is the card catalog.
• 11:32
  Crista Cowan: I know.
• 11:32
  Crista Cowan: I'm a total nerd, but I'm pretty sure my love of card catalogs started long before Ancestry.
• 11:40
  Crista Cowan: When I was a kid, my mom took us to the library every week for story time.
• 11:46
  Crista Cowan: Afterwards, she would let us check out a few books.
• 11:49
  Crista Cowan: There was something magical about pulling open one of those big wooden drawers and rifling through those cards to discover a book that might transport me to some faraway place.
• 12:00
  Crista Cowan: Then when I was a teenager, my dad would bring me to Utah to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
• 12:08
  Crista Cowan: You walk in, and there were endless rows of drawers with reels of microfilm filled with names.
• 12:15
  Crista Cowan: And behind every name, I just knew there was a lifetime of stories.
• 12:19
  Crista Cowan: And just thinking about that still fills me with this nerdy wonder that has only increased with time.
• 12:27
  Crista Cowan: Now, today, billions of historical records are available online.
• 12:31
  Crista Cowan: We chase leaf hints, we do quick searches from our tree, we save records, we organize them.
• 12:38
  Crista Cowan: Essentially, what we're doing is cataloging the lives of the people in our family tree.
• 12:44
  Crista Cowan: But what about our lives?
• 12:46
  Crista Cowan: The everyday memories, the personal stories that only we can tell.
• 12:51
  Crista Cowan: Those usually aren't cataloged at all.
• 12:54
  Crista Cowan: So this season, we are making room for those uncataloged memories.
• 13:01
  Crista Cowan: At the end of each episode, I will open the story drawer and pull out one ordinary random word.
• 13:09
  Crista Cowan: Then in a segment that we are calling one word, one story, I'll share the memory or brief story that word brings to mind.
• 13:17
  Crista Cowan: And I'll invite all of my guests to do the same.
• 13:20
  Crista Cowan: Because telling your family stories doesn't only mean sharing the stories you discover in old records or family history research, it also means telling your own stories, the ones your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and loved ones need to hear.
• 13:38
  Crista Cowan: Sometimes one small word is all it takes to unlock a story that's been living in you all along.
• 13:44
  Crista Cowan: So are you ready?
• 13:46
  Crista Cowan: Let's open the story drawer and see what the first random word is.
• 13:52
  Crista Cowan: I know what these words are, but I don't know which one I'm gonna draw, so we'll see.
• 14:00
  Crista Cowan: The word is ice cream.
• 14:04
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 14:05
  Crista Cowan: Um so I grew up in a little town.
• 14:12
  Crista Cowan: We lived there for about eight years, uh, called Turlock, California.
• 14:16
  Crista Cowan: And in California, there's a drugstore called Lucky's.
• 14:23
  Crista Cowan: And Lucky's had at the front of the store like an ice cream bar.
• 14:29
  Crista Cowan: And we lived about two and a half blocks away, maybe from Lucky's.
• 14:34
  Crista Cowan: And one of my favorite things to do when I had saved up enough quarters or done a tour around the house, and my mom had given me a little money, or maybe I had done some babysitting, um, I would get on my bike and I would take one of my siblings, and we would ride those two and a half blocks to Lucky's, and we would get a double scoop of ice cream.
• 14:59
  Crista Cowan: Now, here's the really gross thing that I think about now that I'm an adult.
• 15:04
  Crista Cowan: One of my favorite flavors at the time was bubblegum ice cream.
• 15:08
  Crista Cowan: And I don't know what the fascination was because I think about it now, and it sounds like a dental appointment waiting to happen.
• 15:16
  Crista Cowan: Because imagine if you put gumballs in ice cream and then try to bite into them rock hard.
• 15:22
  Crista Cowan: Like, what were we thinking?
• 15:23
  Crista Cowan: And it was also those gross bubblegum balls, and so they would like you'd chew on them for like five seconds and then they lose all flavor.
• 15:32
  Crista Cowan: But there was something kind of magical about that childhood memory of, you know, riding my bike a few blocks and getting ice cream and paying for it with my own money.
• 15:43
  Crista Cowan: So there's my story about ice cream.
• 15:47
  Crista Cowan: So, what story came to mind for you when you heard today's word?
• 15:53
  Crista Cowan: If you're watching this on YouTube, tell me in the comments.
• 15:57
  Crista Cowan: Or if you're listening on a podcast app, go share it on Facebook or Instagram and then tag me so I can see it.
• 16:05
  Crista Cowan: But most importantly, tell that story to someone in your family this week.
• 16:12
  Crista Cowan: Because the stories that live in us are meant to be shared.
• 16:18
  Crista Cowan: If you love today's story, would you help more people discover us?
• 16:30
  Crista Cowan: I'm on a quick mission this week to reach more people looking to have deeply connected families.
• 16:36
  Crista Cowan: So just tap the follow button on our show page.
• 16:40
  Crista Cowan: It only takes one second.
• 16:42
  Crista Cowan: Thank you.
• 16:44
  Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.