Huguenots - about new beginnings

In my first blog entry, I want to talk about the Huguenots - yes, the French. No, don't stop reading just yet! It's not really about the Huguenots, because I don't really know history, but since you apparently learn from past experiences and since what goes around comes around.... *starts singing Justin Timberlake*...

So. Why am I thinking about the Huguenots? I was with an amazing photographer this weekend and we were driving through upstate New York on our way back from a shoot when he took me on a detour through the small town of New Paltz. I had never even heard of it, but he knew everything about the place and the people there, because, guess what, that's the town the Huguenots first settled back in the 1600s - and he is a direct descendant of them! 

For those of you that don't know: the Huguenots were a group of French protestants that fled after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 facing prosecution for their religious beliefs. Over 200,000 of them spread all over Europe, and since Huguenots were hardly welcomed, this specific New Paltz group was sent from the Netherlands to the promising New World aka America. They were once again rejected from living in what was then New Amsterdam (today NYC), thus ending up on unclaimed land 2 hrs north. That's what I call a fresh start.

There are two things that really struck me about this incidence.

One, that this photographer - or really anyone! - could know their family lineage so far back. And so much that you KNOW when your first ancestor stepped foot on this continent you still call home; that you could possibly even trace most of their steps up until today - who married who, family trees, what they did, jobs, maybe even diaries giving you a sense of who they were as people? I may be looking at this from a very European perspective, where everything is just SO OLD - or my uncommunicative family has forever ruined me. I still feel like I don't know anything about my family and while there always existed a dusty copy of the family chronicles somewhere back in our house in Germany, it took me until my graduation to even find out that my grandpa was a pretty cool man in the film industry - information only shared thanks to my boyfriend's curious questions! Classic parents, is it just me or do they always rather tell these stories to your friends and guests? 

Beyond my fascination, I was also reminded of an article I came across a couple months back. Recaptured by a NYT writer in this lifestyle piece, American psychologists have found that individuals who know more about their family history have the most self-confidence. Dr. Marshall Duke refers to this quality as an "intergenerational self" - belonging to something bigger than oneself. And more than that - the realization, a consciousnesses that you belong to something bigger. "That's something I personally struggle with" - I realized as I was facing my internal conflict in form of a direct descendant of the French Huguenots driving through his hometown.

Which leads me to the second point... I said in the beginning that one can learn from the past. And I, at some point, thought to myself that we are not different at all from the Huguenots. People nowadays leave their homes all the time to travel to new countries, change residency and enjoy the fruits of globalization, or they are refugees too, fleeing to new places. I did it - I came to America when I was 16 and haven't lived in my home country, Germany, for the past 5 years. My family has no connection to this country, as I am the first one to ever move to America and I can feel the disconnect every day. I have felt like a Huguenot, as have so many others that understand the constant state of floating in between.

But I am not a Huguenot. When I came to this country, I did not have all ties to my home country cut off, and neither did I lose touch with people I care about. It was my conscious choice to move here, I wasn't forced by war or dragged along by my parents. Simply put: I did not start a new life, I chose to add a second one to the one I already have.

This is not a Marie phenomenon, anyone out there who has moved from a different country or splits his or herself over multiples ones knows what I'm talking about. It's like you're playing two different matches on two soccer fields at once, with the restriction that you, physically, can only be on one of them at a time - leaving you to always miss goals on the one further away from you (I can't count how many birthdays, weddings, celebrations and lamentations I have missed in Germany, including my parents' divorce), while constantly battling and doubting the one you're on. How many times have you questioned that what you're doing is right/will make you happy? That you are in the right place and didn't leave your home for nothing? How many times have you thought about going back but decided to stay over and over again?

It is easy to fall into a cycle like that with social media constantly reminding you what's happening in "the other world" and nostalgia-inducing Facebook flashbacks to "your old life." How many times have you sought to start over completely but failed because the ties of 24/7 cross-continental connection never loosen?

In one of my favorite graphic novels, Marzi a memoir, the author Marzena Sowa identifies herself as a specialist in the field of "burning bridges" and I have never related so much to the introduction chapter of a book. The stories to come in this blog will be about that - to burn or not to burn these bridges and every struggle in between.

(( Dedicated to Nora Oravecz.))