To Those Who Come After
This is what I want you to know.
I know it looks a little bit crazy, to spend all this time digging up little bits of information about all those who came before me. And perhaps it is. But this is why I do it:
These people were real.
They lived and died and loved. They felt hope and fear and knew what it was to dream of possibilities. They were farmers and carpenters and blacksmiths and pebble polishers and jacks-of-all-trades. They raised families and moved across wilderness and cleared land and built homes and sometimes wondered where their next meal was going to come from. One built the cabinet that stands in Mom’s office; one was considered an “unusual woman with unique powers” and so was tried as a witch; one was deaf from a childhood injury but lived a full and happy life; one brought his family from bustling Glasgow to quiet Otsego county; one fought the Revolutionary War after it was dropped on his doorstep; one went south to fight the Confederates and left a piece of his soul there. Far too many of them have names I don’t even know.
But it’s only because of each one of them that I am here.
None of them was famous or rich or got their name in a history book. But their lives mattered. These people that I come from did great things in small ways, and because of them their families grew and their communities thrived and land was made livable. Nothing would be the same if it hadn’t been for the lives they lived.
And here’s the thing: if the lives of these simple farmers and overlooked women mattered, then my life matters, too. And so does yours. Remember that.
I take this time and do this work so that I can hear their stories and learn their lessons. I do this work because each of these people - these lives - are worth being remembered.
Jilleen Walch Phillips
New York
April 14, 2022
“Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.”
― Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World