Ancestral Journeys: A tale of going home, for the first time

reflections on a journey to Slovenia

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Ljubljana / photo by detait on Unsplash

June 29, 2026 / Full Moon

As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

– Carson McCullers

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How auspicious that I happen to be writing this post close to the anniversary of Slovenia’s independence on June 25, 1991. Naj živi Slovenija!

This April I traveled to the country for my first-ever visit. But Slovenia has long been part of my life story, thanks to ancestors on my mom’s side. The fact that I finally got there this year is a tale of ignorance overcome, and of a heart opened up.

Here’s the story.

My mom and her siblings were first-generation immigrants. In the early 1910s, their parents—my grandparents—emigrated from Slovenia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They landed up in Cleveland, Ohio, along with thousands of other Slovenes (and other Eastern Europeans). Like a mythical tale, this story about their journey from “the old country” to a new land was told in many ways by my mom and her relations.

I tuned nearly all of it out.

I was a kid from Southern California, and tales about some unknown country in the middle of Europe meant nothing to me. I was busy trying to stay cool and keep up with my LA friends, many of whom were Chicana. As one of the only white girls in my class, I didn’t want to do anything else to call attention to myself, so claiming an identity from some weird European country wasn’t high on my list.

As the years went on, I tuned it out for other reasons. I was stubbornly trying to individuate myself from my mother, so anything important to her wasn’t important to me. I’m ashamed now as I write these words. Yes, your mindful Buddhist friend here was kind of an asshole to her mom for many years. (That’s the short version.)

Mom never made it to Slovenia, though she often talked about wanting to go there. She spoke some Slovenian, and my grandpa lived in our house for a number of years so I felt a bit of a connection through him. But still — it was a pretty distant concept for me, and it was never on my travel bucket list the way the way it was for mom.

Zoom ahead to this January. My cousin Barbara, my mom’s niece and also in the Slovenian lineage, passed away. After decades of being out of touch, Barbara and I had reconnected over the past few years and I so much enjoyed her friendship. She was significantly older than me, more like an aunt than a cousin, and held a lot of the family history that I wasn’t aware of. I appreciated listening to her stories and connecting the dots about mysterious family members.

Barbara also celebrated her Slovenian heritage and teased me that I need to learn how to make chicken paprikash, stat, otherwise I couldn’t be a real Slovenian. And oh yes, I needed to learn how to feed everyone, and at the same time to be incredibly frugal (another Slovenian trait, apparently).

my cousin Barbara and me

Barbara had a wicked sense of humor and it was pure delight to be back in touch again. We had so much fun together! Losing her to a recurrence of lung cancer was devastating.

I considered flying to San Antonio, Texas, for her funeral, and to support her kids (who are actually a lot closer to my age than Barbara was to me). But when I checked airfares, they were through the roof.

As I sifted through the Kayak fares, on a whim I checked flights to Ljubljana (Slovenia’s capital). They were actually cheaper than flights to San Antonio. I still don’t know the cause for this economic quirk! And then it was almost as if Barbara was in my right ear and my mom was whispering in my left ear: “You should go!”

I booked the flight for the end of April, having no idea what I would do or where I would stay. It was pure intuition, nudged by my beloved departed ones.

What I saw, heard, and felt there was amazing… spectacular…. a gift. I don’t think I have the right words to convey the feeling.

I’m not going to do a whole travelogue for you here, but I will share some images of this beautiful country and relate a few things that feel most important —

• I had such a strong sense of “coming home,” even though I’d never been to Slovenia. One day I was on a bus that passed my grandpa’s village, and a deep feeling stirred in me. I was seeing the hills and mountains he saw when he was growing up, before he had to leave in the chaos and violence of World War I. This part Alpine/part Mediterranean landscape was part of my heritage. I have never felt that kind of connection anywhere else, even in all the beautiful places I’ve lived.

• In a similar way, the language and culture felt completely familiar — even though I couldn’t understand most of what people were saying. Yes, many of them do speak English so it wasn’t hard to communicate, but even when they were speaking Slovenian I could feel some ancient knowledge getting activated in me and I got the gist of what was being said even though I could barely translate a word. Interesting, eh?! These were my people, I could feel that to my bones.

• Slovenians have a long and proud history of independence and fighting for freedom. The history is complicated, but over the centuries it’s involved being occupied by numerous foreign entities, including both Nazi Germany and fascist Italy during World War II. Something clicked inside me when I heard the stories of their resistance to these occupiers (and they paid a steep price for it, with thousands of Slovenes killed or sent to concentration camps). I found out that Slovenian kids learn about anarchism early in grade school, and that a semi-socialist government ensures a safety net for basic needs. Everything inside my freedom-loving spirit was singing “yes!”

Beyond being in a beautiful destination, it was like a part of me I didn’t even know was missing clicked back into alignment, as well as a deep sense of belonging.

Yes, I will go again. At least I hope to; in this volatile world, one never knows. No, I am not sure when. But the homing instinct has been activated, much to my delighted surprise.

If you’re curious about Slovenia, I Feel SLOVEnia is a great website to learn more about the country and travel destinations.

Pletna boats docking at the island on Lake Bled

Slovenian textiles, Lake Bled

Now I understand where my pastry fetish comes from… a fine piece of potica, served up with some strong Turkish coffee

I stumbled onto a Book Fair — Slovenes love books! This one is about their long tradition of protesting injustices.

Cool exhibit at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum on the Shrovetide tradition of Kurents — forest creatures who scare off evil spirits and usher in the springtime

The boatman giving me a thumbs up when I told him my grandpa was born in Vodice, Slovenia

Home… in the city of dragons

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