Tamara Buzyna Adams always knew her grandmother's diaries were there. Five volumes. Over 100 years old. Written in Russian by an 11-year-old girl living on a steamship in the Black Sea during the Russian Civil War.

Nobody ever opened them. Nobody asked. Then COVID hit, her mother made a decision, and Tamara spent the next five years finding out what was inside.

What she found changed everything. She tracked down descendants of people who were on the same ship and gave strangers the story of their own people.

Her one tangible step for anyone who wants to start: digitize what you have before it is gone. Watch the full video episode on YouTube at tamigarcia.com or search for Roots Renewed.

Marla Teyolia grew up four miles from the Mexican border, the only one in her family born in the United States. In her 20s, she was meditating behind a locked bedroom door so her mother would not see her. Thirty years later, she runs a coaching firm, works with executives at some of the world's most powerful institutions, and still communes with her ancestors every morning. She never had to choose between those worlds. She just had to wait until the roots were strong enough.

This is a conversation about curanderismo and what it actually is, about the gold necklace that broke in the ocean when she was ten and what it meant, about the night the ancestors woke her up at 2:58AM with instructions, and about why she believes you cannot AI your way out of the need to reconnect with your humanity.

Watch the full video episode on YouTube at tamideegarcia or search Roots Renewed.

She code-switched so completely that one day a childhood friend said — "I forgot you were Chinese."

Lisa Dare grew up Chinese at home and white everywhere else. In this episode she talks about what it cost to fit in, what a trip to China changed in her, and what she is doing now to stay connected to where she comes from. Watch the full video episode on YouTube at tamigarcia.com.