Conversion, Genetics, and my 23andMe Story

This might be my longest posting gap ... ever. I haven't posted in two months. The excuse? Honestly, I don't know. I have three days a week to myself, where I drown myself in the part-time work I have and running errands against the clock before kids come home and my level of energy for the day crashes at crazy fast rates.

Sigh.

But here I am. Inspired, just a little, to say something. I got a notification from 23andMe.com, where I got some genetic testing done a few months back, to participate in a storytelling mission. Although they didn't accept my story, I thought y'all might want to read the short story I wrote about why I sprang for the 23andMe adventure.

The greatest impetus for me to do 23andMe was to find out if I had any Jewish ancestry, because I chose more than 10 years ago to journey into becoming a Jew. I converted to Judaism, and like many converts, I was immensely curious whether there was a hidden and lost thread of Jewish history in my family background that was trying to peek out through me. For many converts, finding that thread validates their choice to take the complicated and emotional path into conversion. I had done my family's genealogy and found lineage back to the 1700s on both sides thanks to my uncle being Mormon and there being massive research already done on my family. But despite my deepest digging, I only found one mysterious relative who was Polish, and I thought "maybe this is the connection to Ashkenazic Jewry I'm looking for.

Then I got my test results back. Not a lick of Jewish ancestry! As I suspected from my research, lots of British, French, and German in my background, but that's about it. I am, through and through, European, but not Ashkenazic in my genetic background.

In one sense, I was disappointed. I had hoped to find that thread, to know that I had picked up the thread. In another sense, I was proud to know that my compulsion to convert to Judaism and become a member of the Jewish people was truly authentic, completely my own. That it arose out of a place hidden for thousands and thousands of years, as the Jewish tradition says that every soul that converts stood at Sinai and accepted Torah. So, it appears my soul was there. But my ancestors were not. 

And that, friends, is my 23andMe story.

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Additionally, although I didn't say it above, my secondary reason for doing 23andMe was because I was hoping to find maybe some weird genetic marker for an illness or disease, something with insight into what my father has been dealing with for the past several years that remains undiagnosed. Alas, no major markers for any of the diseases or illnesses they catalog. Aside from being prone to being overweight, my genes are pretty good to go.

So, if you'd like to hop on the 23andMe bandwagon and see what your genetics have in store, click here and get a kit (referral link). Then, let me know what you find out!

The Awful(ly Awesome) Truth

You'll notice that this post has no commenting option. I've actually never done that before. I'm a firm believer in the flow of communication and reining things in if they get ugly. But on this post, well, the awful truth is that I don't really care what people think about my take on life.

After my post The Storyteller's Dilemma, I got a comment (that was deleted) saying that the pendulum is swinging to fast, that my choices and decisions are abrupt, that it's a sign of the delicate state of my mental health. Yes, I know, I deleted the comment and here I am telling you about it, but I'm talking about it on my terms.

Very few of you have been reading this blog since it started in April 2006. Even fewer of you (if there are any) have known me since I started college in 2002. I can count one person who reads this blog who knew me in 2001. Before that? None of you knew a lick about me. You only know what I tell you, and perhaps I haven't told you much. Maybe, just maybe, if you knew me better, you'd look at what seems like swift and abrupt pendulum swings as normative for me.

The thing is, not everyone lives in a world where you grow up on a street, you go to college in-town or away and move back to that same town you grew up in, you stay friends with all the people you grew up with, you probably marry one of them or your college sweetheart, you have some kids and send them to playdates with the people you grew up with, and you envision them all getting married in a big happy wedding someday. You have wine and cheese parties with friends you've known forever. You buy a house. You life happily ever after. And then you're buried in the plot you bought where you grew up next to the spouse you've been married to for 75 years.

That narrative, is, to be completely honest, not mine. It never has been. You're talking to someone who has had some crazy revelations in life that have resulted in a lot of life-altering changes. That's in my DNA, it's my "free spirit" nature as my father says. He's always told me to follow my sense of rightness and justness that resides in my heart, and that's what I do. The result of that? I make a lot of life change, sometimes abruptly. It's who I am.

Where do I begin? How about a sampling of the "unhealthy" abrupt changes I've made.

When I was a kid, I was involved in dance classes for seven years. Suddenly, at the age of 11, I decided I was done. It wasn't for me. Years of investment, and nope, done. My entire childhood I wanted to be an artist. I took classes, entered contests, again, lots of investment, and then in the eighth grade I met a girl who was really good, so I up and quit artistry. In ninth grade I decided I wanted to be a photo journalist. By the end of the semester, I decided I wanted to be a writer (well, that one stuck, sort of). In ninth grade, I decided I wanted to play volleyball, having never been athletic in my entire life. One year later, I was done with it. When I was a senior in high school, I decided I wanted to date a girl, so I dated a girl for a year. And then that phase of my life passed. I changed my major about two months into college from English to Journalism. I was going to be a copy editor forever! I was so passionate, I loved it. One year into a gig at The Washington Post, I quit. (People nearly murdered me for this -- who quits The Washington Post?) I moved to Chicago for a boy. I decided I didn't want to get married. I left the boy. I left Chicago. I pursued a degree in Judaic Studies (one of my happiest times). I decided I wanted to be a professor, only a year or so later after getting my degree to realize that it probably wasn't the best fit. I wanted to be a Hebrew Language Educator, that lasted about nine months. Heck, even when I converted to Reform Judaism that didn't stick long. I asked for a get, got it a week later, picked up and restarted in Colorado. I started talking to a Lubavitcher online, was smitten, but ended up dating a non-Jew instead. I was convinced it was the best, most right thing for me. I swore off marriage and children. We broke up after five months, and I'm talking to the Lubavitcher again. I've been working in the nonprofit world for a few years, and I've decided that maybe it's not the right fit for me. And so on, and so forth ...

Changes.
Changes.
Changes.

My life is peppered with constant change. It's how I function. To the curious onlooker, it may not look healthy.

The only words/actions/things that I have changed and stuck to 100 percent?

Tzniut
Kashrut
Coffee
Bibliophile
Big Sister
Aunt
etc.

And none of those require me to be in the same place and with the same person doing the same thing at the same time.

"What about roots!?" people ask.

For some people, with a strong, deep-seeded family situation, roots are important, location is important, relationships are important. For someone like me, who doesn't know her extended family and took to genealogical research to find some semblance of self and who converted to Judaism and became a part of the vast network of Jews around the world, my lifestyle makes sense. The Wandering Jew. It's a concept people.

It doesn't make me sick, or mentally ill, or a bad person. Okay? Okay.

Back to your regularly scheduled blogging ...

The Storyteller's Dilemma

I used to think I was good at everything. At least, everything I put my mind to and am passionate about. But I'm wondering if my passion for something doesn't necessarily mean I should pursue it. Professionally, especially, personally perhaps.

There's one thing I've always been good at, and that's storytelling. When I was a kid I "published" several "books" through our elementary school's "publishing house." One on ballet, another on my dog. I still have them somewhere. For some reason, I thought I had something to say, so I wrote it down and illustrated it.

My oldest diary starts in 1992, when I was 9 years old. Shockingly, it was a Precious Moments journal. We lived a few minutes from the location of the Precious Moments Chapel in Southern Missouri, so it was natural that I loved the stuff. Since 1992, I filled journal after journal. When I was in high school I did what I'll call "mixed media" journals. I took things I posted on my LiveJournal, things I cut out of magazines, and I put them together into an emotional explosion of my life as a teenager. In 2006, I started Just Call Me Chaviva to catalog my Jewish journey. Oddly enough, I didn't start the blog at the beginning of my journey to Judaism, but rather the moment I lept from the mikvah. That was the beginning of a chapter, if you will. At some point in college, I became the Kvetching Editor, and since then I've successfully branded myself, my vision, my story, in kind.

I tell stories. Mostly I tell stories that ooze out of my own experiences, and that's what I've always been good at. Maybe people like me aren't meant to exist in the real world, but rather in words and pages and compositions.

Of course, the question is, how do you monetize yourself?

Or, better yet, do you even want to monetize yourself? In a perfect world, I'd have millions of dollars in my pocket and I'd just write. And write. And write. Until my fingers curled from overuse.

I guess I'm not sure what I'm doing right now. Emotionally, I'm invested in finding a spouse and making cute little mini mes. Professionally, I guess I feel confused. I'm trying to figure out whether my personal passions translate into professional success. And if they don't, then where that leaves me.

I wish I could fall in line. Life would be easier that way. I don't know how I ended up this way, but for some reason all I have in me is letters and words and sentences and paragraphs and narratives.