Photo of my maternal Grandma on the right with her mother and siblings circa 1926. (I’ll tell you more about this family in later posts.)
When I got my DNA results back from Ancestry, I fell down a rabbit hole into the roots of the family tree. It’s quite dark down there. I was brought back up to breathe above the ground by connecting with the living—other branches of the tree—second cousins that I never knew I had.
None of us cousins were born yesterday, but we’ve been living parallel lives without connection for decades. As soon as they began to share their stories, I knew we were family because of the common threads. It seems our family has had a legacy of controlling parents, religious fanaticism, isolation, and emotional turmoil. And yet there are strong survivors among us.
I can’t begin to describe how reassuring it feels to realize there are people still alive who understand this shared generational trauma. I messaged with more than one person late into the night, then got up and talked on the phone until I was hoarse. My writer’s brain is spinning with all the stories.
For years, I’ve been working on spoken word poetry about the multi-generational stories of the women in my family tree. I’ve been able to add to that project this week, but I’m not quite ready for other ears to hear it yet.
The balance between unmasking to be authentic with cousins I never knew while sharing our stories and protecting my parents at the same time, feels like walking on a tightrope. It’s a struggle every morning when I get up to write. Especially now that my parents are older.
I love my parents. I forgive them for their mistakes. In their old age, I don’t wish them anything but comfort and peace. At the same time, the best way I can honor them is by telling the truth despite the fact that they and others might not agree. I settled this in my mind when I discovered that the words honor and honesty come from the same root word.
So what have I been doing besides playing detective on the family tree and helping my parents? I am finishing up two more chapters in my memoir and I hope to send them out this week.
I’m also listening to a new memoir titled, “Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult: a Memoir,” by Michelle Dowd. It’s about a girl who grew up in an apocalyptic family where comfort and care were considered sins. I’m curious to learn how Michelle broke free from her family and everything she knew to live in the outside world.
And I’m looking forward to the new Little Mermaid. It might seem like just a fairytale, but children’s fiction often speaks to the deeper truth of real life. I will never forget going to see the original Disney cartoon version in the theater in 1989. The only Disney cartoon I’d seen before that was Bambi. My parents forbid those shows while I was growing up because they contained witches and evil villains.
I didn’t even want to see this silly childish movie, but my fiancé insisted that we go. Sitting in the theater with popcorn and red vines, I was prepared to munch my way through it and forget about the show. What I forgot about were the snacks. My popcorn sat untouched while tears streamed down my face listening to Jodi Benson sing, “Part of Your World.”
It brought back the loneliness and ache of being a teenager who wasn’t allowed to go to high school or have friends. My isolated family rarely associated with other people except maybe once a week for church—if even that. I felt like I was living underwater and I craved to see the wider world where I could breathe. I wanted to know what normal people lived like. And my experiences as I negotiated this new world are what my current memoir is about. So you can bet I’ll be watching this new version—especially since Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a few new songs for it. (I adored his writing in Hamilton and Encanto.)
I just have to share a little more from what I’ve discovered at Ancestry.com
These are my father’s great-grandparents, James and Susannah May. They settled in Oregon, after James fought for the Union in the Civil War. They brought his mother (my 3x great-grandmother) with them from Indiana. She lived to 101. I never met any of them, and neither has my dad, but I just discovered three generations of my great-grands are buried in North Plains, Oregon—only six miles from my house. It’s bizarre to realize they probably walked on the same ground I have walked on.
My father’s other grandparents are buried near Gladstone, while my mother’s parents are buried in a quaint cemetery near their house in Redland. So my ancestors all came home to roost and rest in the Portland, Oregon area.
A few years ago, I made this art, but I wasn’t sure where my roots were. Now discovering more about my ancestors has answered that mystery.
All those years spent Chasing Eden, wondering where my home was—well now I know. Apparently my family has been keeping Oregon weird for generations. Today I changed my hometown to Portland, Oregon. It’s where some of my earliest memories were made, but it’s also where my people are from. It’s where many of them were born—including my paternal grandmother, my dad, and two of my siblings. And most important—the living whom I love—four nephews and my parents.
So, Hello Stumptown! This lumberman’s daughter is home to stay!
Peace and freedom,
Cherilyn
PS What about you? Have you found healing through studying your family tree?
Little Red Survivor Tips is always free. It’s just my thoughts about surviving at the intersection of family, narcissistic and religious abuse, and current events.
I also wrote a book Chasing Eden, about my strange childhood.
If you’d like to discuss writing memoirs, reading them, or would like a sneak peek at my next book, To Uneat an Elephant, you can subscribe below.
Oh!--also, I resonated with your eye-opening soul-surgery during the Disney movie. Mine was instigated by a chapter from L.M. Montgomery's "Chronicles of Avonlea."
I *know* it's "just a novel," but when that minister took away the violin from his grandson, I experienced the pain...of my own losses.
The violin had been the boy's only link to his dead father--whom the grandfather hadn't liked because he was a no-good musician, and had ostracized his only daughter for marrying him anyway. When the boy was left an orphan, he brought his father's violin and came to live with the grandfather. But the instrument and the musical glories the twelve-year-old *already* could draw from it--ahh, they brought back painful bitterness in the grandfather's heart. Taking it away, he put it away where the boy could never find it, and extracted the promise from the grief-stricken boy that he would never play again. Never.
But Old Able, on the other side of the village, had a fiddle and played it sometimes in his dooryard. And one day, chancing by his place, the boy stopped to listen...wandering closer. Old Able couldn't miss his entranced absorption, and offered the violin to him to play. And oh, could he play! Old Able had never heard such enchantment! On and on, the boy made the music sing and cry, 'til tears ran down Old Able's weathered cheeks!
But who should happen along about that time, but the grandfather. He recognized that music as far and away beyond anything Old Able had in him. He *knew* it was his grandson!--the grandson from whom he expected greater things than music!
Striding up to the young violinist, the grandfather surprised him from behind...taking the violin away and handing it back to Old Able--who looked on, slack-jawed, amazed and horrified. Lowering his voice to a threatening intensity, the grandfather reminded the boy of his promise, never to play violin again. He had broken it. He had breached his grandfather's trust. They would need to discuss what his punishment should be for such an egregious betrayal.
Old Able came up out of his splint-bottomed straight-backed chair fairly roaring with rage! What right had the old man to deprive the boy of his talent?!! Who did he think he was?--God Almighty?!!? That he should make a child promise such a thing, and expect him to deny the Gift of who he *was*! Old Able declared that it was the stupid things like that, that religious men did, that made him decide long ago never again to set foot in a church house! And he, wretched reprobate that he knew he was, wouldn't want to trade places with the self-righteous grandfather when they both stood before God on Judgment Day!
How did it end, that story? I don't remember. But the story has haunted me for years...
I, too, know people who meant well...but were just *wrong*.
They hurt a lot of people. They hurt me.
I've finally been able to truly trust God with my lost opportunities.
I know He has redeemed many of them.
In the Hereafter, I'm sure Jesus will help me find answers to my questions.
Meanwhile, I keep looking for His hand in my life.
It comforts me to know those other people are no longer in charge: *I* am--because *GOD* is!!!
I learned not long ago that one of our family names--way back--was Darling, as a middle name!
I love it! One of my second cousins has done a lot of genealogy work. I learned that from him.
I think, though, that 23andMe is what I need to do next. Or maybe I need to go back to Ancestry.com to see what they've come up with since the last time...which wasn't much. [Essentially, I'm from Northwestern Europe and the British Isles! Duh! But no Native American shows up???]
So, yes...understanding the roots helps us to better process our past and grasp who we are now and how we got here. Forgiveness, *and* gratitude. And healing. Good stuff.
Thanks, Cheri! I'm looking forward to your new chapters!