Grandma Gone Wild
Black history and family storytelling became deeply personal to me once I started researching my own family and realized how easily names, photographs, memories, and entire life stories can disappear within just a generation or two. Over time, I became the historian of my family, the person responsible for gathering photographs, identifying relatives, preserving stories, and trying to piece together the lives of the people who came before us.
Today, I have thousands of old family photographs, most of them taken before the 1970s, with some dating back as far as 1910. Many were unidentified when I first found them. Some had no names written on the back, no dates, and no explanation of who the people were or how they connected to us. I’ve spent years studying faces, comparing photographs, reading old obituaries, searching records, and talking to relatives in order to preserve as much of our history as possible before more of it disappears.
What I discovered along the way is that this is not just my family’s story. So many Black families are facing the same thing. Boxes of old photographs. Funeral programs tucked into drawers. Stories told in fragments. Elders who know important family history but may never have been asked about it directly. Entire generations of people whose lives were never fully documented anywhere else.
That realization changed the direction of GrandmaGoneWild. What began as sharing old family photographs and personal memories online grew into a much deeper passion for Black history, genealogy, cultural preservation, and storytelling. People connected with the photographs, but they also connected with the emotions behind them. The desire to know where we come from. The fear of losing family history. The realization that many of our stories were never written down in the first place.
Family itself is at the center of all of this for me. I’m a mother of two and grandmother of nine. GrandmaGoneWild is more than a social media name. It reflects the way I try to move through life, especially when it comes to my grandchildren. I want them to know where they come from. I want them to understand the people whose sacrifices, struggles, faith, hard work, and resilience made their lives possible. I want them to know that history is not only found in textbooks. Sometimes it lives in old photographs, family stories, church records, recipes, traditions, and conversations that happen around kitchen tables.
I also want them to see that life does not stop at a certain age. I want them to see a grandmother who is still learning, building, creating, taking chances, chasing purpose, and believing there is still more life to live.
That mindset carries into everything I share here. Black history. Genealogy. Old photographs. Oral history. Cultural storytelling. Family memories. Historical research. Everyday life. All of it connects.
I also created a guide called What I Didn’t Ask to help other people begin preserving their own family history before important stories and information are lost.
To purchase a digital copy of What I Didn’t Ask, click below.