One of my friends confided in me that she recently went on the Internet and searched for information on some family that she left behind. She said that since then she cannot get these people out of her mind even though more than a decade went by from when they lost contact and she searched for them again. She even dreamed of meeting some of the children she saw in pictures on the Internet. She hadn't really wondered about them through those years and she had no reason to think they missed her.
She found out about a divorce since she found out about a re-marriage, which she finds shocking. She knows where they live and work now. She's thinking about the positives and negatives of trying to reunite with them, or at least visit them. She did all that without any genealogy database research. However, she feels certain that if she does decide to reignite a relationship she needs to honesty tell them about the things they have said and done as individuals and collectively that hurt her and so her reason for moving on. She pretended not to hear or know when she was around them. She played dumb for many years. She doesn't want to be that way any more.
The reasons for her departure from this branch of her family are considerable. She said for years she made efforts to keep relationships going and found it to be very one sided. She also said that though her income was average she got the feeling they were dismissive of her because she was considered to be the poor relation. Last but not least, when she thought about it, theirs was a very different family culture, and she wasn't sure if this was just about their family or that culture. She thought of them as materialistic and greedy. She thought they were always looking at relationships in terms of what they were getting or not getting from people but didn't give as good as they got. She thought of them as poor examples of their religion. She thought the females dominated the men and the children were never raised to actually leave home. They were a rare multigenerational and extended family.
I could sense the pain in my friend. So I asked her to consider what she would want out of a reconnection after over a decade. Did she think maybe they changed or would be more participatory or nicer to her? (There is always the chance that they've changed! but do people ever really change because you want them to? Well, I've changed! Have you?) Would a reunion just result in more pain?
I don't have those answers for her but it occured to me that maybe she was inspired by the recogniztion of her own mortality to see them. Maybe she, at least, wanted to leave this earth without any grudges.
Can genealogy or family history projects heal families? I think the marketing of genealogy promotes that idea. My experiences is sometimes but it's not something to count on. When I was teaching genealogy I had students whose families were extremely cooperative and who could easily put together big books of photos, documents, and warm memories without actually doing research. Others were alone in the project from beginning to end.
I think just about every family has some secret that they collectively do not wish to discuss or recall. You could say whole families are haunted by something.
Such as?
Such as domestic violence, molestation, even a murder. Membership in Organized Crime or someone in prison. Sexist favoritism of the males in the family that left the females floundering or forced to endure unhappy marriages. Unwed motherhood was a big one, though far more common and acceptable now. Mixed marriages or someone leaving the religion of the family is also something that has ripped families apart in the past but is now more common and acceptable.
As a genealogist none of these things shock me.
