Episode 23: The Bones Remember: : Answering Ancestral Longing as a Cultural Orphan

In this soulful and reflective episode, Jenn shares the winding path that led her back to Sardinia, tracing a journey that began long before she ever set foot on the island. Through story, ancestral memory, and lived experience, she explores the concept of cultural orphanhood—what it means to feel disconnected from both the land of your birth and the ancestral homelands you’ve never known.

She speaks about the layered experience of returning to Europe as an American of European descent, and the grief that can arise when you realize how much was lost—or mocked—through assimilation.

She reflects on being adopted, and how that shaped her understanding of belonging; about hearing a message from the land itself; about the difference between ethnicity and nationality; and about the mythic memory that lives in our blood, in our bones, in the land.

Jenn also shares the very real challenges of life in Sardinia—language barriers, social isolation, neurodivergent parenting in a traditional village—and the unexpected gifts that came from being held by the land when the community couldn’t.

This episode is a love letter to the ones who left, the ones who stayed, and the ones—like Jenn—who’ve come back, not to reclaim, but to remember.