VIDEO: Family History Helped Me Find Where I Belong
Every family has a story. When your world feels like it’s falling apart, looking backward might just be the way forward.
Jeremiah’s family faced hardship, division, and misunderstanding. But one meaningful conversation with his grandfather changed everything. Through family history, he found connection, clarity, and a sense of belonging that transcended pain.
Family history isn’t just about names and dates—it’s about identity, purpose, and remembering we’re part of something greater.
The Hearts of the Children Shall Turn to Their Mothers
Editor’s Note: Mariah is currently directing a short film called Two Heartbeats, click here and here for the previous articles about the project. If you would be willing to follow, share, or chip in a few dollars to the project, it would help the team so much. They are down to their final few days and will not get any of the pledged funds unless they reach the 80% mark. CLICK HERE to learn more about their crowdfunding campaign. Thank you!
Cover image: Image from the most recent shoot for the short film Two Heartbeats.
Nothing gives you empathy for your mother like becoming a mother yourself. You just can’t know the all-encompassing sacrifice that a baby demands until that baby is yours and needs you desperately. It isn’t just about the lost sleep, the round the clock feeding, or the way your body becomes unrecognizable to yourself. It’s also about all the ways your mind is tangled in a host of new concerns and obligations and a worry that could never be more deeply personal than it is now. Even should someone give you a weekend away, some part of your mind will stay with your child every moment. You really can’t ever fully go away again. And to think, someone did all that for me too?
I look at my own mother and my grandmothers though and they seem so grounded, so self-assured. I am the 10th of 11 children and didn’t meet my mother in this life until she was already past so many of the fumbles and insecurities of younger years. It might be easy to mistakenly believe that she had some deeper strength that allowed her to dodge the foibles of early motherhood completely, but strength is something you build, not just something you are born with. And thankfully, my mother is a writer and left a little record of the moments that I would need to relate to in my own first mothering moments.
She wrote a little essay collection while she was pregnant with me. In it, she wrote:
What I did yesterday is usually not on yesterday’s “List of Things to Do”. I feel wonderful each day when I make that list, emptying my brain of all the pieces and fragments and putting them in a clean unthreatening list. This was yesterday’s list:
- Clean out the girls’ dresser drawers.
- Reorganize bedroom closet.
- Vacuum under bed.
- Polish bedroom furniture.
- Mend girls’ clothes
It went on. I could imagine the girl’s bedroom well organized and deeply clean by the end of the day. This is what really happened. When I pulled open the dresser drawer, the knob came off and the screw rolled somewhere underneath the dresser, lost forever like my blue earring and gray coat button. I took the matching screw and went to the hardware store and, while I was there, came upon a wonderful sale on tomato plants. It was only on my way home I realized I’d forgotten the screw. I still felt okay though because I spent the rest of the day planting tomatoes. Last night it froze and the girls’ bedroom is still messy.
Somehow reading about how she felt like she had a handle on her day and then having the actual handle fall off the drawer on the very first task on the list and derail the whole thing comforts me immensely. I do not wish ill on my past, earnest mama, but it stands as a beautiful reminder of why we come to this life in generations and not all at once. She had already had countless such days by the time I was born and could offer some insight as I encountered the first of mine. We do not struggle through the exact stage together, she went a little ahead of me so she could help prepare me for how it would be.
My grandma on my father’s side lived to be 100 years old. I still have the invitation to her 100th birthday party on my fridge and guests ask all the time when the party is even though it happened 6 years ago. She lived a remarkable life and touched countless people. When I dropped by her house on her actual 100th birthday to bring her a birthday banner, there were already several visitors there and several more arrived before I left.
She seemed to me to be someone who had everything figured out and approached life with the kind of boldness, warmth, love, and vibrancy that I aspire to (and seem too often to fall short of). Her funeral featured pictures of her unforgettable experiences; one showed her on a camel, in her 90s, with arms outstretched and the city of Jerusalem laid out in its limestone and gold behind her. But another stuck with me even a little bit more. It was a picture of her holding her first baby. She was standing somewhere heavily wooded, partially facing away and possibly trying (but failing) to turn the baby toward the camera for the picture.
When I first saw that picture, years before, the baby in it was already in his 50s. The mama in it was long past the uncertainties of first motherhood by that point, but when I saw the picture again at the funeral, my own first baby was nearly the same age as hers was in the picture. I saw myself in her and I wanted to step into her shoes to feel closer to her and to hope for a trajectory as wonderful as hers was from there.
So, a few weeks later, we did a copycat photo shoot, where I got to have my own version of that picture:
Some experiences transcend time. Two Heartbeats captures the strength passed from mother to daughter, connecting generations through shared love and sacrifice.
I’ve pondered on this picture a lot in the last few weeks of pre-production on my film project Two Heartbeats. The script, which weaves together the lives of two women from two different eras (the 1950s and today) started out as a chance to explore the contrasting experiences of those times, but ended up being a meditation on something else entirely. What if you could see the strongest woman you know before she was so strong? What if the moment of peak difficulty you’re in right now was one she went through too?
That is what Two Heartbeats is about. It is about the strength we gain from our mothers and grandmothers because they went ahead of us and experienced motherhood first.
It has been such a thrilling project to see come to life. If you’re so inclined, we are trying to reach the greenlight on our funding (80% mark) before the time runs out. Even a small donation makes a big difference. And if not, hitting the “follow” button on the project will help you keep in touch with its progress and opens up additional resources from the site once we have 250 followers.
CLICK HERE to see the campaign and learn more about how you can help make this project happen.
New Film Explores the Private Struggles of Motherhood Across Generations
Support the short film “Two Heartbeats” by CLICKING HERE.
I recently ushered at the Sundance Film Festival for my 10th year. I enjoy getting to stand by and observe the comings and goings of the various film industry professionals and watch the films they have earnestly made or are earnestly looking to buy. One event I stood in this year was a collection of short films made by burgeoning young filmmakers specially chosen by the Sundance Institute to be encouraged in the next step in their professional journeys.
I watched each of the nine or ten short films with interest, though in the end felt like my kind of story wasn’t up there so maybe I wouldn’t fit in with this burgeoning filmmaker crowd.
But the truth is, if your story is missing from the line-up, that probably means it’s waiting for you to tell it.
Here is the story I am hoping to tell and I need your help to tell it:
Support the short film “Two Heartbeats” by CLICKING HERE.
After the nausea of my very first pregnancy began to settle, but before the burst of nesting energy that comes in the second trimester, another elusive feeling began to creep in. I started to see my due date as a deadline. I had until April 20 to accomplish everything left I wanted to in life because after that, I couldn’t do any of it anymore. It was a strange feeling, and I tried to find the source of it, the origin of the quiet message that having a baby means your life is over.
Societal messaging is a subtle and yet powerful thing. And none of us know just how much our thinking and our experience is a product of the time that we live in. I noticed that I was living in a time where the messaging for women about what we should and shouldn’t be doing was a cacophony of critical and competing ideas.
We were told we can be anything, but supported in very little of it. The role of mother seemed to be a sideline that you can fit in, but only if it doesn’t become all that you are. Be there for your children and don’t make a single mistake, but also it’s not really worth anything unless you also come to the table professionally outside of your home. Have a baby if you must, but don’t let it define you.
It left me quite confused as to who this tender little someone hiccupping in my belly was going to make me. And it made me long for a different time when the messages for women were simpler. Or at least I perceived them as simpler. I imagined myself pregnant in the 1950s and wondered if that would quiet the swarm of messages and disappointments and confusion in my mind.
Among other things, I couldn’t help but think, “this would be fun to explore in a film.”
Five years later, I found myself in a similar stage of pregnancy with my third child and thought, “I’ve got a baby bump, I wonder what I could do with that story I used to muse about.”
Modern motherhood in focus—“Two Heartbeats” connects past and present experiences of first-time mothers.
Now, I know that the pop culture view of 1950s womanhood is far from idyllic. If the vintage ads are to be believed, women were often disrespectfully relegated to kitchen tasks and dirty diapers and not much more. But the women that I personally know who raised children or grew up in the 1950s don’t give that impression at all so I was determined to represent something more nuanced on screen.
My nana once quipped that because she raised her children before stay-pressed material, she “ironed her life away thinking beautiful thoughts”, which might confirm that pop culture picture. But my nana was also an auburn-haired fireball. She went back to college and graduated with honors when my mother was only 10. She was a gifted teacher and her table was always strewn with newspaper clippings that she used to compose scores of appreciative letters for wonderful things people had accomplished. And she accomplished so many of her own wonderful things. She served on the Jordan District School Board for 20 years and even became its president. She was honored as Midvale Woman of the Year.
And I suspect that last award wasn’t presented for her excellence in ironing.
Support the short film “Two Heartbeats” by CLICKING HERE.
But it isn’t either her hours of “ironing her life away” nor her list of accolades I would most want to talk with her about if she were still alive. It’s all the everyday feelings in between.
I couldn’t talk to either of my grandmas to fill out my 1950s first-time mama character (though I dearly wish I could), so I did the next best thing. I sat down with a few of my friends’ grandmothers, all in their 80s and 90s and asked them what it felt like to have a baby in the 1950s.
I was intending to talk until I had figured out the most compelling differences to portray, but I came away just feeling like we were kindred spirits with more alike between us than different. In fact, it was the stories that they might’ve deemed “too personal” to share under other circumstances that felt the most relatable to me. Somehow our private experiences if the jarring mental and physical and emotional transformation that becoming a mother entails, are also the most universal.
So, therein lies my film.
It quietly weaves a story of a first-time mother in 1953 with a first-time mother today as they go through the last few weeks of preparation before their first babies are born. It isn’t action packed or flashy. But it’s honest. And It will provide a platform to cinematically explore moments in the female experience that never make it to film.
The modern portion of this short film have already been shot, using myself and my real 8-month pregnant body in the principal role. I am so pleased with what we’ve captured so far and where it’s going. Now we are endeavoring to recreate the 1950s and we need your help.
A donation of even a few dollars can help not only bring this story to life, but become the training ground to continue to develop the passionate artists in Utah’s filmmaking community. You aren’t just supporting me on my third time directing a short film, you are giving the actors, director of photography, sound recordist, make-up artist, set dresser, producer, editor, and so many others a chance to continue to hone their skills and experience so that they have a chance to add their stories to the proverbial line-up too.
Mothers through the ages—help bring this beautiful intergenerational story to life in “Two Heartbeats.”
Sometimes it feels like our society today pits the different generations against each other throwing around their labels and making comedy of their contrasts, but we can and should derive strength from one another. My children are my hope and I want them to look back at me as proof that “dragons can be beaten”. We pave the way before to show that there is a way.
That is the theme at the heart of this film. My time on this project has already typified “the hearts of the children turning to their [mothers]” in a really profound way and I hope that’s what the audience takes out of it too. The struggles and the joys and the laughter and the sorrow that comes with becoming a mother is so personally impactful, but such it has always been, even if some of the trappings have changed. This is something that should unite women throughout history.
I can’t wait to explore these uniquely female experiences in a way that rarely gets screentime and I’m so grateful for your help in making it happen. Don’t forget to check out the incentives we have for different levels of donation and hit the “follow” button over on Seed and Spark even if you can’t donate. Getting past a certain threshold of followers opens up a host of available resources to us from the site, so even that is a big help.
And if you’re excited about this project, don’t forget to share this campaign on your social media so more people can hear about it. Particularly if you opt for the 50s glamour shot incentive, feel free to post it for everyone to enjoy and don’t forget to tell them where it came from.
Thank you for helping bring Two Heartbeats to life. I can’t wait to share it with you.
Support the short film “Two Heartbeats” by CLICKING HERE.
