The blockchain is a distributed ledger.
Imagine the old days when the accountant had a leather bound ledger where they kept the balances of every transaction for the company.
The distributed ledger is a database of ALL transactions in the bitcoin univerise. The entries are public. They include a transaction address, a sender address, and a receiver address.
Mining is the process where blocks of recorded transactions are verified against the “ledger” to insure that both parties are legit and than they have the “inventory” to make the transaction valid. These miners are rewarded for their efforts through fees and additional mined bitcoins.
Everything is open. If you know your address, you can pull all of your transactions. This whole stuff about “anonymity” is just not true.
If this helps, let me know. If you want something clarified, I will do what I can.
Thank you! I appreciate the explanation.