Cooking Up Content

This year has been an odd one and cooking up content for a blog seems trivial, but with so much talk on dark subjects, I thought I’d share something that I was involved in when our world was upended.

This year has made us aware of all we missed, but instead of grieving and pining, we can use our emotions to fuel our ambition. We have all learned to fend off sadness and quell despair by staying busy. It's a life lesson that will carry us through.

With Mars in Capricorn, I have a love of genealogy and family history. After being satisfied with the results I gathered from my mother’s line, out of nowhere, I got a photograph from a cousin on my father’s side of a man that I believe was my great grandfather, Juan Martinez Jacques. It’s a small photo and was probably taken in Durango. It's a rather modern suit and was probably taken around 1910.

Juan Martinez Jacques

I should preface this by saying I did my DNA test in March and got the results in May. I had planned to share them with my mother. Anyone who has any curiosity about those that came before you and gave their lives and endured hardship to pass the torch of life should honor their memory by taking a DNA test to find your exact origins.

People have always migrated to seek a better life. And although in the past, travel wasn’t as easy as now, it was done for survival. That in itself gives me a sense of gratitude.

I was astonished that I had far more Spanish blood and less Mexican blood than I presumed. I also expected because of my maternal Grandmother’s coloring and features that we had Austrian blood. Wrong. Instead, I have Portuguese blood and that threw me for a loop. However, since her family came from the North of Spain, it makes perfect sense. And on my father's side, I have far less Basque blood than I expected based on what my brother told me, but have a small percentage of French blood.

The majority of my makeup comes from the Iberian Peninsula however there was a direct line, an exact pinpoint to my Father’s origins in Mexico.

A genealogy search can be easily done through either Church or Customs records. But there’s nothing like a DNA test that will give you a jump start on your bloodline. Do it, now, the only thing you’ll wonder is why you waited so long.