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You are here: Home / Archives for Story Telling

Considering Family in the Family Photo

February 5, 2017 By Patti Gillespie 1 Comment

It is such a wonderful experience sharing memories of our loving family members and remembering an event!  It’s even wonderful watching others share their joys.

But sometimes family photos bring more complicated emotions than happiness. Not everyone has a happy family or has happy memories of family life; it seems most of us have mixed memories of happiness and unhappiness, fear and bravery, brokenness and healing. Or something even darker.

This photo shows my mother and my father. Don’t they look all grown up in their 1950’s make-up and attire? My mother is seated; my father is standing and cutting the cake. They are seated in Don’s home with his father and step-mother looking on, his half-sisters stand round and his brother with his hand on Marion’s shoulder. Marion and Don are viewing the celebratory high school graduation cake in 1954 together in his family’s home.

After graduation, there is a year of college for both. The Autumn of 1955 is followed by Spring and me. With no father.  My mother has no husband, no provider, no in-laws, no child support, and no cake. Well, she does have cake sometimes.  Even her father evicted her.

But this photo also brings me peace. I didn’t know that my mother had a relationship with my father that included his family. I have few photos of her, and I love to look at how beautiful she is.

That little girl standing in her robe looking at the cake with less than enthusiasm grows up to be someone who welcomes me into her life. My father’s half-sister is my half-aunt, but I call her my aunt. We connected carefully on Ancestry when I started my tree, then we graduated to telephone; we met in August 2015 for a weekend.

After returning home, Aunt Linda, despite being busy with life, dug around until she found this photo and shared it with me.

So… this photo of such a complicated relationship and lack of relationship still brings me sadness–but it also brings me more. My aunt gave me a gift of her time and her love, and that brings me happiness.

Even if life doesn’t work the way we want or the way we think it should, there is still a chance that we will find family who care. May someone provide you a family photo, if you need one, someday.

Patti Gillespie, The Gen Lady

Filed Under: Genealogy, Memories, Story Telling Tagged With: blog, donald torres, Family Lines and Stories, family photos, Genealogy, linda torres, marion todd, Patti Gillespie

All Research Begins with “Me”

January 18, 2017 By wiseadmin 4 Comments

hortonhearsawhobookcoverReading stories was my main interest in life as a child, and as an only child with alcoholic parents I had a great deal of time on my hands. Reading the compassionate Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss out loud from cover to cover before I was 5 years old remains a favorite memory. Shortly thereafter I was able to inhale all picture books available to me before I was 6 and begin chapter books before I was 7. By the time I was 12, I was reading Russian and French literature with their themes of hopelessness, revenge, and religious repression.

These same works of literature created an understanding in me that impacts my genealogical work today: people are complicated. I find that humanity is indeed courageous and sordid, innocent and cowardly, noble and muddled. Fast forward to a mature adulthood and I realized that I am no different from this humanity, and that I, too, am complicated and full of contradictions.

Consequently, accepting my own complexity truly prepares me to be a family historian and a genealogical researcher: I am too flawed to judge, but I am not too blind to see. We each have a personal story to tell with a familial story to tell of present and past, courage and virtue, sacrifice and selfishness. Understanding this when I research, I do not take that famous broad brush and paint an individual villain or victim, but, instead, I use a pencil with an eraser writing of a life from the uncovered facts—while accepting that I cannot know all the facts and factors or all the motivations behind our life choices.

For example, when I began researching why my family seemed so broken, I was much younger and still too damaged by the choices of my ancestors. Years later when I had finished raising a very strong-willed, large, and complicated family amidst plenty of parenting mistakes, I had a different perspective on runaway mothers, absentee fathers and generations of alcoholism. I cannot deny that I could have done better, but I did the best I understood—and that is now part of my life story.

Genealogical storytelling, I believe, is about discovering information through reliable documentation and putting it into humanitarian context; I believe that it is about celebrating with those who succeed, sorrowing for the broken, and rejoicing for those who keep trying.

So let all the stories of celebration, sorrow, rejoicing, and complexity begin here at Family Lines and Stories. Today.

Patti Gillespie, The Gen Lady

Filed Under: Genealogy, Literature, Memories, Story Telling, Uncategorized Tagged With: Genealogical Researcher, Genealogy, Genealogy Research, Patti Gillespie

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Welcome to Family Lines and Stories

Family Lines and Stories is my way of helping to find and tell your family stories—whether it is through professional ancestral research, oral interview, publishing the information, blogging, or fun and instructional presentation. Searching and finding our ancestors and placing them in context with historical events of the nation or even the world is an exhilarating adventure! Let’s find and tell your family story together.

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Patti Gillespie, B.A., M.S.

Genealogist
940-328-2104
FamLStories@gmail.com

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