Life Stories

My children are pressing me to write my life story and include my memories about my parents and grandparents. Sadly, in my family (except for me) people tended to marry or have children late in life. They don't remember their grandparents. After I agreed, I started thinking about it - and this is something that I have had a lot of experience with in genealogy. People come in with stories to "prove" about their families and many times it only has a passing acquaintance with what really happened. Sometimes they are invented, others dropped entirely, and still more are changed a bit to put the people in a better or worse light. And it isn't all deliberate! People forget, hear things differently, etc. Stuff happens and other people don't always know the whole story.

But back to the point. Just how much should future generations know? Like every family, we had our dark secrets. Do they really need to be passed along? I feel conflicted by loyalties. Do I keep my parents secrets? Do I tell all? What do you think?

If my parents wouldn't mention it to my children, neither would I.
I sit and think, "Would I tell MY grandkids this if it involved me?"...If I answer "No", then I refrain.

Interesting!

I don't really have much in terms of a family dynamic...so I don't know. I will say that I enjoy hearing my grandmother's stories, the good ones and the 'bad' ones. We had some especially crazy nutty whackjobs in our past and in a way, it's sort of comforting to know we weren't always high and mighty? And I'm not the only nut? I guess it depends on your children, how much they take things personally and how much importance faith and value they place on their family and history.

For example, most people in my family are mortified to hear their grandmother did this-and-that; I found out for example this year my great-great grandparents burned their house for insurance money, which nobody knew. Gasp! Do I care? No, not really, I found it an amusing and entertaining story but I don't place value from it on MY life. But some people would.

PS - It's an honor they've asked you to do so! That's super.

Tina: That's what my parents and their generation thought and because of it we grew up thinking that only one of the aunts and uncles had ever been divorced, everyone had done really well in college and there was no alcoholism in the family! I remember, after my mother died and we learned she had been married briefly before marrying my dad, asking an aunt and she told me that it was none of my business. Later, when there was only one aunt left, she finally agreed to tell me about it but I don't know if it was anywhere close to the truth.

I sort of believe that it would be helpful to see the family patterns, especially with things like alcoholism with children of alcoholics growing up to marry alcoholics. The longer I live the more I realize that people "do what they know" and patterns are repeated within families for generations. Some of those patterns need to be broken.

TED: It think it was nice of them too. I agree with you about the family stories. It makes our fore bearers more human to realize that they made mistakes. The way my mother talked I got the idea that I had to be perfect in order to fit in with the family and I was never going to measure up to that.

But do my grandkids need to know I had an abortion? Or why? There are some things that just don't need to be known.
Things that have no bearing on the family.
But then, my family was never ashamed of their past. Divorce happens. It's not shameful. I don't try to hide the warts, I just don't think my grandkids need to know EVERY single thing.

Oh, and your mother's divorce before she married your father and had you really is none of your business. She thought that, anyway, or you would have known.

I dunno, Tina. I gotta say openness is something I value. I grew up with my mother, and remember her dating in her early 20s, and was there for her first and only wedding when I was 10 but I would certainly want to know if she'd been married before, supposing I had come around later. That doesn't mean every single detail (gods know when sex comes up I cover my ears and yell) but if there was someone special that made an impact on her life - for better or worse or a little of both - I think it's fair to know at least a little about them. The reason my mother's boyfriends never came back was because, naturally, they didn't want to shack up with a single mom. For better or worse, I had that impact on her life, but by not aborting me she carried the weight of the impact I had. For better or worse, facing reality for me is good.

I agree that they don't have to know every single thing but Tina, if I do a genealogical search for my mother her marriage and divorce will come up. (Your abortion will not.) It is part of the public record. So is anything published in a newspaper. I see what you are saying, that she chose to let her children find out from other sources. I, too, will keep secrets about other people that will never (I hope) come up in the public records but one's that are on record?

gillyflower wrote:I remember, after my mother died and we learned she had been married briefly before marrying my dad, asking an aunt and she told me that it was none of my business. Later, when there was only one aunt left, she finally agreed to tell me about it but I don't know if it was anywhere close to the truth.

This whole topic is fraught with mixed feelings for me as will become clearer when I reply to more of Gilly's OP.

At this point, my reaction would be that unless there was something major which could have future impact upon your life and your children's like a half-sibling given up for adoption that came of the brief marriage, you probably don't need to know anything more than the fact that your mother was briefly married. So, in a way, I feel that the details aren't any of your business.

However, I think that once children are old enough to understand, certainly when they're adults, concealing from them the basic fact of a brief marriage is pointless and seems like a lack of trust and a betrayal should the children ultimately learn of it.

I sort of believe that it would be helpful to see the family patterns, especially with things like alcoholism with children of alcoholics growing up to marry alcoholics. The longer I live the more I realize that people "do what they know" and patterns are repeated within families for generations. Some of those patterns need to be broken.

Precisely. So many things of this type are the result of genetics, we now know.

In my case, my mother was probably manic-depressive. I'm not sure, as the episodes she had which I remember were always explained away as something less embarrassing. One was, "Your mother accidentally took too much allergy medicine."

When I was fourteen, she had a major psychotic break...possibly induced by the hormone fluctuations of menopause. By that point, I knew enough to realize that something truly bizarre was going on. She eventually was hospitalized for over a month, but there really wasn't a great deal that could be done in the mid-1960's for bipolar disease if that's what it was. I don't recall that there was any explanation given for what happened then. As usual, everyone pretended that nothing peculiar had occurred once she came home again, behaving pretty normally. She'd been in the hospital 350 miles away, and now she was home again. Life goes on.

A few years later, I was filling out college entry paperwork and was trying to complete a family medical history form, asking my mom for the "yes/no" answers on several questions. When I got to the question about mental illness, my mother said, "No, absolutely not."

Consequently, I ended up not knowing what the hell was going on. My intellect and knowledge told me one thing, but my parents assured me that there was nothing whatsoever of that sort going on and never had been.

I was over thirty when my mother had another episode, and this time, I decided to get to the bottom of it all. After a lengthy conversation, I finally got my aunt to admit that well, yes, what had been wrong with my mother for most of her life was mental illness of some sort. Her euphemism was "Your mother wasn't herself." I pinned her down and said, "What you mean is that she had a breakdown. She had some kind of mental illness." She looked away from me and replied as if the words were being dragged from her, "Well, yes. I guess that is what it was."

It took me a long time to understand and begin to forgive my parents for concealing this from us.

So, I am adamant that basic facts such as this MUST be told to one's children. Otherwise, they may become victims of a family tendency they know nothing about. Forewarned is forearmed.

The way my mother talked I got the idea that I had to be perfect in order to fit in with the family and I was never going to measure up to that.

Same here.

Honesty is liberating. When people know what they're dealing with, they can come to terms with it. Lying and concealment breed more craziness.

So I would advise people, "Tell your kids the basics. Decide how much detail you feel comfortable revealing and how much you feel they might need to know. But TELL THEM SOMETHING!"

Here's another reason why I feel children should be told the bare fact of a parent's previous marriage(s).

I think it was my hubby's senior year in high school or perhaps shortly after he graduated that he was eating in a restaurant in Brooklyn where he grew up. He was with some friends, probably D&D buddies, when a woman none of them knew came over to the table and said to hubby, "You're 'Stan Smith's' son, aren't you?"

Hubby said he looked at her like who the hell are you and why are you asking me that but said that yes, he was.

She said she'd been sure of it, since he was the image of his father as a teenager...when he'd been briefly married to this woman!

Hubby was simply appalled. He'd had no idea whatsoever.

He said the woman immediately realized from the stricken look on hubby's face that she'd dropped a bombshell. She apologized profusely and quickly left, he added.

Come to find out when he quizzed his dad that it was true, but his parents hadn't ever thought it important that the kids know since the marriage was brief, only about a year, I think his father said.

Hubby laughs about it now, and so does his dad. As DIL told me once, "Who'd ever suppose that in a city as big as Brooklyn, my ex-wife whom I hadn't seen for over 20 years would happen to run across my son?"

But because such weird things can and do happen, that's another reason why I think kids need to be told the essentials.

I've been a lot more open with my children than my parents were with us. But then they were older when they had us so probably that's a generation skipped and they grew up in a world that was long gone.

I am with you Dot that mental illness needs to be addressed. My ex-husband's mother was mentally ill but their family refused to admit it (although when she got to be 60 they could call it Alzheimer's and did - that seemed to be more acceptable to them) and then he went down the same path. You better believe that the girls and I have discussed it because they have been afraid that they have the genes.

My grandmother's aunt passed away from what her family called Consumption (TB), but my grandmother was certain it was breast cancer (which was never discussed back then). Ironically, she beat it 4 times....so it's good to know the real genetic history.

The way to repeat the mistakes of the past is to conceal the horrors we survived. The way to make sure your children will be ashamed of their failures is to edit your own past, and leave them the image of your final self to measure themselves against. None of us had it together back then, and revisionist history prevents understanding between generations.

Ignorance is not bliss, it is the basis of ambush. There is nothing more terrible, than watching the same mistakes playing out again, because everybody in the succeeding generations has lied about the consequences of their own decisions.

Keep the information broad and general unless there is a really important reason to get into ugly specifics, but pain only has value if it educates, and the pain of our past is only worthy if it allows us to prepare those who come after so they don't face the same choices we did.

Similiar, to Gilly in some ways my parents are the designated Geneology trackers for both their families-so when they discovered people with our surname with no obvious ties to us-it was in their sphere to track it down-turns out my Dad's uncle was briefly married to a woman not mentioned in the family histories-we knew about the others-after he went off to WWII she kept his name and had children-created a whole family line of unrelated people with our surname-we saw no reason to tell my uncle's children or grandchildren unless they ask

On a lighter note, I think it's important to make a record, written or audio/video, of the family stories you remember hearing when you were growing up as well as your recollections of your parents and other relatives of their generation.

I was very fortunate in that my parents were adamant that my sister and I visit as many relatives as could be arranged. I grew up in northwest Kansas with both sets of grandparents living nearby. However, my dad came from the standard large Catholic family--14 kids. And his parents were from large families.

We ended up meeting all of my grandmother's surviving siblings...a half dozen altogether. That was a project since Dad had been born in Washington state where all of Grandma's siblings but one still lived.

I thought all that traveling just to meet/visit relatives was boooorrrrring when I was a kid, but now, I think back on how Great Aunt Lena's hands were shaped just like mine, and she had curly hair, too. I thought my curls came solely from Grandpa and his side of the family. Nope. Little things like that may be more valued as children get older. My maternal grandmother died several years before I was born, but I've been told more than once that my eyes are shaped like hers and nearly the same color.

So, tell the stories to your kids and make a record of them as well. Someday, they will be a cherished legacy if they aren't at the moment. And don't forget to add how you and your spouse met along with anything special that happened to the two of you before the kids came along even though you may already have told these stories to your kids. They may not think to tell them to your grandkids and certainly won't tell them just as you would.