FAMILY/SELF-REFLECTION

My Family Sailed Over Here

and I am grateful for it!

Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash

I am the granddaughter of a grandson of an immigrant, a courageous young widow who clutched her five year old son’s hand as they boarded a schooner from Belfast to sail into a new life, any type of life, here in New York

and settled in the city to become a laundress but eventually remarried and added to the family line as they created new stories to recount to the next generation and the next and the next.

This weekend, I watched the tall ships float down the Hudson River as a powerful reminder of our global connections

and I gratefully acknowledged that we are a land peopled by immigrants, widows and children, families and singles, youth and elderly, all leaving the comfortable and familiar to embark upon a new land buoyed by hope and inspiration, supported by dreams, steering lives into the unknown.

I am the granddaughter of a grandson of an immigrant who gathered the courage to sail here and begin again.

I hope courage keeps running in the family.

©Thalia Dunn 2026

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