I wrote in an earlier post this year about my "family scrapbook" project. I'm not quite finished yet...but I'm getting there. My last round of photo-collecting opportunities had to do with my maternal grandfather's side of the family. One of eight kids, there were only two who I understand made it to the U.S. from this teeny-tiny village in Croatia. My grandfather Eli....and his brother Jovo. As Eli settled here in a surburb of Detroit, my great-uncle Jovo settled in Chicago.
I always wanted to find out about my extended families as I was growing up, but it seemed I never got too far. Nobody knew the name of my grandmother's mother...then they didn't know the name of my grandfather's mother (this was on my mother's side). Then there was my father who never mentioned a sister he had and who had died when she was 14. I tell ya, trying to get information (let alone any photos!) from my parents was worse than trying to dig up bones with a plastic spoon! And to try and figure out who was who in relation to my grandparents' siblings on all sides was a joke. So I gave up---for a long long time.
It wasn't until around the year 2000 that I finally figured out how the internet could help me finally identify all these "relatives" I had both here in our country and abroad. Through some hardcore sleuthing, I found a first cousin in Sydney (my father's only brother's daughter!). Over the last ten years, I have made some easy and other times tenuous connections with cousins from both sides of my parents' families.
You know the saying, "Be careful what you wish for.."? I can now admit that finding out what I have since my scrapbook project began has brought up a whole lot more than just old photographs from the various branches of my family tree. It has brought up some hard truths that have helped me to understand the legacies I inherited as a result of being born into the family I was born into.
In psychology, we often work with clients to create genograms, which is very different from a typical family tree. Instead of focusing on names and dates to identify who was born when, who got married to who and had which kids, and when everyone died....genograms get into the "icky stuff" of family history. Who were the alcoholics, womanizers, gamblers, runaways, thieves, convicts, and relatives to one another. "How" any given genogram is customized is limited only by the creator's imagination. I've seen and created genograms for clients that document completed suicides occurring within a family history....incest....acts of violence....illegtimate children....and whatever else has happened "more than once" up and down one's family tree.
Digging up bones with a plastic spoon is one thing; having those bones handed to you like two-by-fours is quite another. For example, I had no idea I came from a long-enough line of womanizers on my maternal grandfather's side of the family. But I do. So much so that even today, in 2012, a seventy-year old male cousin of mine (who I have never met mind you!) cut himself off from his branch of our family decades ago and moved thousands of miles away. Never married...had no children himself...but when I was shown his photo on Facebook, he's quite the handsome devil even now. Go figure. I've tried contacting him, but I assume that effort will get me nowhere. After all, I'm part of "the family" and that's the last thing he wants anything to do with. It's somewhat sad too because we do the same work but with different titles attached. Go figure. Oh wait...that's what I am doing by all this family scrapbook work in the first place! Figuring...and understanding...and (hopefully!) continuing to break some of those old chains that have bound I and my cousins to one heck of a family tree for generations!
Nobody becomes a better person just because time has passed by. There are lessons in everything you've experienced...and in what your family has experienced before you. But if nobody stops to take a long-enough look and find out what those lessons actually are, then nobody will get better. So start looking.
I always wanted to find out about my extended families as I was growing up, but it seemed I never got too far. Nobody knew the name of my grandmother's mother...then they didn't know the name of my grandfather's mother (this was on my mother's side). Then there was my father who never mentioned a sister he had and who had died when she was 14. I tell ya, trying to get information (let alone any photos!) from my parents was worse than trying to dig up bones with a plastic spoon! And to try and figure out who was who in relation to my grandparents' siblings on all sides was a joke. So I gave up---for a long long time.
It wasn't until around the year 2000 that I finally figured out how the internet could help me finally identify all these "relatives" I had both here in our country and abroad. Through some hardcore sleuthing, I found a first cousin in Sydney (my father's only brother's daughter!). Over the last ten years, I have made some easy and other times tenuous connections with cousins from both sides of my parents' families.
You know the saying, "Be careful what you wish for.."? I can now admit that finding out what I have since my scrapbook project began has brought up a whole lot more than just old photographs from the various branches of my family tree. It has brought up some hard truths that have helped me to understand the legacies I inherited as a result of being born into the family I was born into.
In psychology, we often work with clients to create genograms, which is very different from a typical family tree. Instead of focusing on names and dates to identify who was born when, who got married to who and had which kids, and when everyone died....genograms get into the "icky stuff" of family history. Who were the alcoholics, womanizers, gamblers, runaways, thieves, convicts, and relatives to one another. "How" any given genogram is customized is limited only by the creator's imagination. I've seen and created genograms for clients that document completed suicides occurring within a family history....incest....acts of violence....illegtimate children....and whatever else has happened "more than once" up and down one's family tree.
Digging up bones with a plastic spoon is one thing; having those bones handed to you like two-by-fours is quite another. For example, I had no idea I came from a long-enough line of womanizers on my maternal grandfather's side of the family. But I do. So much so that even today, in 2012, a seventy-year old male cousin of mine (who I have never met mind you!) cut himself off from his branch of our family decades ago and moved thousands of miles away. Never married...had no children himself...but when I was shown his photo on Facebook, he's quite the handsome devil even now. Go figure. I've tried contacting him, but I assume that effort will get me nowhere. After all, I'm part of "the family" and that's the last thing he wants anything to do with. It's somewhat sad too because we do the same work but with different titles attached. Go figure. Oh wait...that's what I am doing by all this family scrapbook work in the first place! Figuring...and understanding...and (hopefully!) continuing to break some of those old chains that have bound I and my cousins to one heck of a family tree for generations!
Nobody becomes a better person just because time has passed by. There are lessons in everything you've experienced...and in what your family has experienced before you. But if nobody stops to take a long-enough look and find out what those lessons actually are, then nobody will get better. So start looking.