Why discovering your ancestral roots can help you to truly feel like yourself

Since the age of six Greta Solomon knew she was a writer, but gained a richer sense of self when she discovered her ancestors were gifted storytellers too

There's a photo somewhere - taken to preserve history - of me swabbing my inner cheek with a cotton stick, ready for DNA testing to find my roots. Two years earlier, in 2008, my mother had died by suicide, aged 60. The coroner had said she was extraordinarily healthy for a woman her age, which only exposed the gulf between her physical and mental states. It was this sudden, shocking loss that propelled me to find a deeper meaning in my life.

My mother had left Jamaica aged 10 to join her father and stepmother in England. Similarly, my father left the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis as a teenager, to study maths and engineering. They met, married and settled in a suburb of London, where I was born and raised.