Hello Blogoverse,
I know it has been quite some time since I last wrote a blog post. I have been quite incognito of late. In my defense, I have been working hard readjusting to life back in the States after spending almost two years abroad.
I am currently living in the Bay area and working for a non profit during the week. This is my view every day from work.
On the weekends I spend time building my jewelry business and empire and will be on consignment in a boutique near Lake Merritt this spring. (More to come on this later). My goal is to get in at least 9 more shops before the end of 2015.
I have also being hanging out with these amazing women on the weekends as well.
The latter part of 2014, I found myself diving heavily into my family tree and DNA. I have found out some interesting things about the blood flowing through my veins and I have reconnected with family that were disconnected from each other due to slavery, war and Jim Crow.
Although I do not know the connection just yet of some of my new ‘cousins’ and may never know, it still feels good to reconnect with the ancestors and bring their stories to life. This year I have made plans to travel to parts of the U.S in search of genealogical documents in order to tie up some ends that have become brick walls. It is all very exciting to me. I do consider myself a bit of an historian and I do love a good scavenger hunt.
Due to the above research, I have decided to plan a big trip for my 40th birthday in 2016. I am hoping to go to Zanzibar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles and hopefully a few friends and family members will tag along.
For 2015: I plan to do many things. One I am focusing on my health. Last year I was diagnosed with an hereditary disease that caused a lot of stress. This is one of the reasons I stopped blogging for a while. I was constantly tired and I had to deal with inflamed joints and fatigued muscles. Plus the stress of my new job was exacerbating the symptoms. But this year I hope to get back to blogging regularly. Especially, food, my travels, my jewelry designs and outfits (post weight loss). I will be focusing on my health, eating healthy, exercising regularly, and breathing—out loud.So here’s to a wonderful 2015. May all your dreams come true may the odds be ever in your favor!
So I have been away from my blog for quite some time because to be honest, I haven’t had any new content to post and I have found myself knee deep in genealogy and DNA research.
I recently received my DNA results from Ancestry.com on my genetic breakdown and I was really shocked by some of the results. I did accurately guess that I would be about 80% African, 15% European and 5% Native American based on the family folklore . I am according to ancestry, 85% African, 13% European, 1% S Asian (India), 1% Polynesian.
The last two caught me off guard but there may be an explanation behind it. Some of my forebears may have come from the island of Madagascar. At the moment that is just speculation until my mom does her test this week and send it back to 23andme.
Once I loaded my raw dna to the site Gedmatch.com, it further broke down my percentages.
So far I have been reconnected with some amazing extended family, white, black and Jewish, grounding my connection to Africa and America (the world even). I’ve traced one branch of my tree to 1760 thanks to the help of this fella and another branch to around 1668 (still working on this one). Here are some of the pictures of my immediate family and some of the family that I have been reconnected to through DNA. More to come in the next couple of days. I have made some amazing discoveries these last few weeks.
Until next blog… Toodles :D
officialjameelajamil:
Kim Kardashian got her vagina out this week in a desperate attempt to break the internet. Sadly for her, the internet remained rather unscathed. If you listened very very carefully… you may have heard a few eyelashes batting, and maybe a few women lightly banging their heads on desks and nearby…
Speak the truf!