Children Should Know Their Grandparents Stories

Paperdoll Journal with Lisa

MARCH 2020

Maryland, USA

My Year in Review Update

During the COVID lockdown I focused on getting my personal and professional life more organized. For the past year, I have been living a long held dream to read, research and write my days away!

Black Family Oral History and Culture

As a child during the 1970s and 80s, I spent lots of time with my career-oriented grandmothers. One was a realtor and the other was a regional manager for Avon products. They both made their own hours working from home and in the community. Becoming an adult during the 90s the trend and media focus was on work-life balance. And yours truly bought it hook line and sinker! My grandmothers were retired by then and I was steadily working in the fast-paced entertainment media industry. What I have learned and research now confirms is there is no such thing as balance with life. Priority is the key. Who said, what you focus on you will have? Exactly.

The year both of my grandmothers died, I started Paperdoll Journal as a space to talk like this, soundboard, share, and reflect on my family history and genealogical research. Family history and genealogy conversations can be quite an emotional rollercoaster. For Black families in particular, including my own, it's challenging when it comes to sharing recovered family information with each other. My goal is not to shame, surprise, or disgrace family members with long-forgotten family history, often intentionally, instead, it's to build and grow to an understanding of ancestral lived experiences. Wait, who said, 'You have to know where you've been to know where you're going?' Exactly. ​

Paperdoll Journal Lisa Hazell