Your grandparents survived things you’ve only read about. Ask them. It shrinks a lot of problems.

The people at the far end of your family have lived through shortages, moves, wars and losses that reach you only as chapters in a book. Hearing it in a kitchen, in their own voice, changes the scale of your own week. Not because your trouble is fake, but because you learn that trouble has been survived in that very room.

Ask one of them a narrow question. What they ate when money was short, or what their first week somewhere new was like. Narrow questions get real answers, and you can record it on your phone if they are willing.