Threads That Found Me: A Founder’s Reflection on Lineage and Becoming

Over the last month, I have been continuing the work on my ancestral research. It did not start as a project. It started as a question. A quiet one at first, something I could not fully articulate, but could feel sitting just beneath the surface: How did I get here? Not just in the physical sense, but in the deeper way. The way that asks who we are shaped by, what we carry, and what patterns we are still unconsciously walking through.

At a certain point, I realized that if I wanted to understand myself more fully, I needed to stop only looking forward. I needed to go backward. To understand who my ancestors were. What they lived through. What they endured. What they built. What they survived. And maybe, what they were trying to resolve that still echoes forward now.

Because the more I have sat with this over the last few weeks, the more something has become clear: History is not as far away as we think. And even more than that, it repeats. Not always in the exact same form, but in pattern. In lesson. In human behavior. In the ways we avoid, resist, rebuild, protect, endure.

It mirrors us.

The same way we sometimes move through our own lives, circling the same lesson, trying to work around it instead of through it, history does the same. Generations do the same. And somewhere in that realization, this stopped being about curiosity. It became about understanding. And if I am being honest, I have had the space to sit with that in a way I did not plan.

Those 24 days in the Hub…waiting. Waiting on something entirely out of my control, while standing inside a space I had already brought to life. Everything ready, everything aligned, except for the one piece that would allow it to open.

There are only so many times you can reorganize a drawer before you realize you are being gently forced into stillness. And I resisted it at first. Of course I did. I filled the time the way most of us do, cleaning everything, resetting everything, convincing myself I was being productive. Cabinets, closets, corners of my life that had not been touched in months. But eventually, there was nowhere left to direct the energy outward. And that is when the pull returned. Back into my ancestry tree.

This has become a quiet pattern for me. When the world softens, when the noise drops away, something in me starts looking backward. Not out of nostalgia, but out of a deeper knowing that if I follow the thread far enough, something meaningful will reveal itself.

A few weeks ago, I met with the registrar from the Daughters of the American Revolution to begin formally documenting parts of my lineage. Coming out of that meeting, the feeling that settled in was not pride or excitement. It was reverence. Because the deeper I go into this work, the more history stops feeling like something we read about, and starts feeling like something we are still inside of.

Back in November, I wrote a letter titled The Bridge Between Worlds after discovering that one of my ancestors, William Adams, came to Massachusetts in the early 1600s. At the time, what struck me was proximity, how close that history suddenly felt. But over the last month, that thread has deepened. What I originally understood as timing revealed itself as connection. The Adams branch that led to my lineage and the branch that would later lead to John Adams were already intertwined generations before America even existed. Their grandfathers were brothers. Not separate stories, but shared origin.

From there, the thread continued. The Revolutionary War. Through documentation, I confirmed that multiple of my ancestors served during that time, John Goldsmith and Jacob Davis among them. Men who stepped forward during a moment when this country was still only an idea, something fragile being shaped in real time.

The settlers built.

The patriots protected.

And then, the Mayflower. At that point, after tracing early settlers, uncovering connections to colonial families, and confirming Revolutionary War service, I remember joking with my mom that the only thing left would be finding someone on the Mayflower. So I looked. And there he was. William Bradford, my 12th great grandfather. A passenger aboard the Mayflower and the long-serving governor of Plymouth Colony.

And this is where I had to pause, not out of awe, but out of responsibility. Because while his role is undeniably important in the history of this country, I do not believe in telling a polished version of the past that only highlights what is easy to celebrate. He was a leader. A builder. A man who helped establish one of the earliest colonial governments in New England. And he was also part of a system that displaced Indigenous people, enforced rigid belief structures, and participated in a version of “order” that did not include everyone equally.

Both of those truths exist.

And if I am going to look backward to understand where I come from, I have to be willing to hold both, the contributions and the consequences. The vision and the impact. The building and the cost. Because history is not clean. And neither are we. But maybe that is part of the point. Not to inherit a story that is perfect, but to inherit one that asks us to be more aware, more honest, and more intentional with what we choose to carry forward. And again, it did not feel grand. It felt grounding. Like another piece of a much larger story quietly finding its place.

And then, on St. Patrick’s Day, while on the phone with my mother, the final piece revealed itself. Salem. It did not begin there. It arrived last. Almost as if the thread had saved its most complex and revealing lesson for the end.

I had made an offhand comment, saying I did not know why, but I had this feeling there had to be a connection to Salem. So I followed the line, clicking through one familiar name that kept drawing me back. And then it opened. Abigail Faulkner. My 9th great grandmother. A woman at the center of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.

She was not on the edges of that history; she was in it. Accused during a time when fear spread faster than reason, when suspicion became evidence, and when communities turned inward on themselves. Abigail was arrested, examined, and ultimately convicted of witchcraft. She was sentenced to death. And yet…she lived.

Her execution was delayed because she was pregnant at the time. That delay became the reason she survived, while many others were not given that same chance. But what stays with me is not only that she survived. It is what she did after. She did not disappear quietly back into life. She petitioned. She spoke. She fought to clear her name and restore her family’s standing in a time when most women had little voice, and even less power. She lived forward after being named something she was not. And that… feels like a lesson that does not belong only to history.

When I look at each of these discoveries on their own, they are meaningful. But when I look at them together, something else becomes clear. This is not just lineage. It is pattern.

The Adams connection.
The Revolutionary War patriots.
The Mayflower.
And finally, Salem.

Each one carrying its own version of the same themes:

Building.
Protecting.
Leading.
Enduring.
Reclaiming.

The same way we move through our own lives. The same way we sometimes circle the same lesson, trying to understand it from a different angle until we are finally ready to face it directly. And maybe that is the real reason I started this. Not just to know where I come from, but to understand what has been trying to move through me.

Because when I step back now, I do not just see history. I see reflection. And I find myself asking a different question entirely: What am I meant to do with what I now understand? Because I am not here to build a colony. I am not here to fight a war. But I am here to build something.

A sanctuary.

A space rooted in healing, reflection, philosophy, and community. A place where people can step out of the constant urgency of modern life and reconnect with themselves again. Because somewhere along the way, we learned how to work… how to achieve… how to stay busy…

…but not how to be.

Not how to regulate.
Not how to listen inward.
Not how to live in a way that actually supports our wellbeing.

And maybe that is the work now. If those before me were called to build, to govern, to protect, and to endure…then perhaps this time is asking for something different. Something quieter. But no less important. To restore. To help people remember how to live again. Not just survive.

Maybe that is why this thread keeps pulling. Because when I step back and look at it as a whole, what I see is not just history, it is a pattern. A pattern of survival in moments that were, by all accounts, unsurvivable. Crossing an ocean for two months into the unknown, not knowing if land would ever appear. Living through the formation of a country still trying to define itself, where war was not an idea but a lived reality. Enduring a time when accusation alone could cost you your life, and fear overpowered truth. These were not small moments. These were lives lived inside of intensity, uncertainty, and risk.

And yet, they continued. Not perfectly. Not without consequence. But they continued. And when I look at that, I do not feel called to glorify survival. I feel called to understand it. To recognize the pattern of what it means to endure… and to ask what happens when that is no longer the only option.

Because maybe that is where we are now. Not in a time where survival is the only measure of success, but in a time where we are being asked something different. To slow down. To become aware. To stop circling the same patterns simply because they are familiar. To finally ask, what does it look like to live beyond survival?

Maybe that is why this thread keeps pulling. Because when we understand where we come from, we begin to understand what we are carrying. And once we see the pattern clearly, truly see it, instead of working around it, we are given a choice. We can continue it. Or we can shift it.

Maybe we are the generation that no longer has to live in constant endurance. Maybe we are the ones who get to take everything that was carried forward, the strength, the resilience, the ability to persist, and transform it into something new.

Something intentional.

Something rooted.

Something whole.

Maybe…it is finally our time not just to survive, but to thrive.

With steady hands and an open heart,
Kelley