Who do you think YOU are?

I recently got hooked on NBC's newest "reality" show "Who Do You Think You Are?". Holy crap! A network show that is actually delivering a quality show based on a great premise??!!?? Keep your eyes peeled on the horizon for the rest of the Horsemen, I'm pretty sure this is one of the lesser known signs of the Apocalypse.

Produced by Lisa Kudrow, the show follows a celebrity's journey back into their own family history. Sarah Jessica Parker discovers an ancestor who narrowly avoided being burned as a witch in Salem during it's darkest days. Her husband, Matthew Broderick, travels to Gettysburg to see where his great-great grandfather fought, and survived, one of the bloodiest battles to occur on American soil. Watching Lisa Kudrow visit the memorial where her great-grandmother, along with dozens of other Jews, was marched to the edge of a pit and then executed by Nazis was absolutely gut-wrenching.

Rather than turning this into a tawdry melodrama, using cheap ways of wringing an emotional response from the audience, Kudrow and NBC are letting the stories unfold at their own pace and those involved are reacting with such genuine emotion, it's easy to get swept up until the end of their journey. By the conclusion of each episode, you truly get a sense that the history of their families has filled these people with a greater sense of who they are and where they came from, and you can't help but feel fulfilled.

The main sponsor of the show is Ancestry.com, one of the most comprehensive genealogy sites on the internet. Monthly subscriptions start at around $30, and gives you access to an amazing array of information and also lets you hook up with other people researching your combined family lines. It's easy to lose track of time once you start down the path to discovering who you are and where you came from. There are scanned images of documents and pictures contributed by others on their own searches that can really help bring your history to life.

My journey has been wonderful so far. It's not easy, record keeping was pretty spotty back in the day, you have to be careful about making wrong turns and getting too far off track. I'm slowly making my way back to my oldest known ancestor, Edward Wightman, a man fondly known in the family as "Twice Baked Edward", the last of the religious martyrs in England to be burned at the stake. I've hit a few dead ends, but I'm having so much fun I don't care!

I highly recommend giving Ancestry.com a try and, if you have the means, sign up for a few months. I guarantee you'll be hooked in no time. It's not only about discovering family lost to time, but reconnecting with the family you've got now.

"Everyone has a story: discover yours"