#51. Bad Blood: When History Isn’t Pretty

Episode 51 -- BTS: Bad Blood in Family Trees – Episode Script

[Narrator] Last week’s episode about my great-grandfather Alma Salm got me thinking. You see, as I talk about in the episode, some people in my family didn’t have great things to say about him. These are the older generations – contemporaries of his and his children’s generation. His grandchildren have better things to say, and his great-grandchildren, well let’s just say that I’m not the only one inspired by him.
But working through my great-grandfather’s story got me thinking about bad blood across family generations.
I reach out to a lot of POW family members when I’m researching Left Behind episodes. Most people I reach out to don’t respond – likely for several reasons including me not finding correct contact info, people don’t often respond to cold calling/emailing, and so on.
But…I’ve sometimes wondered if I’ve ever contacted someone who didn’t have a good relationship with the serviceman or woman – and thus doesn’t want to speak about him/her, so never responds to my request.
By the time I reach out to a family member, I’ve done quite a bit of research into the POW as well as their family tree. In fact, finding a POW’s potential family members typically involved me finding out as much as I can about a POW’s children, grandchildren, and so forth. And sometimes I uncover…skeletons. Uncomfortable things. Family secrets, if you will.
That sounds kinda creepy of me. And I admit that sometimes I feel like I know too much about a person when I reach out to him/her. At the same time, thorough research often involves uncovering the not-so-happily-ever-after things.
So, in the cases where I’ve found some not-happy things, I wonder if when I come knocking about creating a podcast episode a certain POW, if I come across people who want nothing to do with that individual.

And since this is a podcast about history – and everyone has a skeleton or two (of varying degrees) in their own or family’s history, I thought I’d touch on 7 ways someone interested in learning about their past family members might handle bad blood in their family tree.

1. Skip the painful parts and/or people
When my friend Addie’s (not her real name) grandfather died several years ago – hidden truths regarding abuse came out and shattered the extended family. Addie told me:
[Addie] “I’ve seen all the effects that abuse has caused, and it’s very likely that when someone abuses their family it’s because they were abused. So, I wonder how far back does the abuse go in my grandfather’s family. I have all of these suspicious thoughts, things I make up when I hear stories about that part of the family.”
[Narrator] So in a case like this — where the emotions are too raw, the pain still too painful, or the anger too strong — just skip it.
Look for stories about people on another side of your family.
Or perhaps skip over a specific person and move on to his/her parents.

2. Seek healing through understanding
That being said, discovering someone’s past can help understand why a person was the way they were and why they did the things they did.
In such cases, learning about someone’s life can help heal generational wounds.
(BTW – I’m not necessarily speaking of abuse, nor am I condoning any type of abusive behavior.)
In the case of my great-grandfather, Alma Salm, I wonder if his deepening religious zealousness stemmed from PTSD related to his time as a POW. Perhaps if his children and adult family members understood this, there could have been more understanding and patience toward him during his last years.
As another example, I didn’t like one of my grandfathers. He was, in my opinion, a jerk. And I’ve perversely enjoyed telling not-so-kind stories about him. Last summer, after I shared a few anecdotes about him, someone asked me: “I wonder what happened to him to make him act that way.”
This comment stopped me short, made me realize that I have my own issues with root causes. And perhaps I should have a little more compassion for my grandfather and maybe some curiosity as to what could have made him act the way he acted.

3. The passage of time decreases pain
That leads to my third suggestion, which is that the passage of time decreases pain.
[Narrator] The more removed from pain or embarrassment, the less likely we’ll be bothered by it or skittish to research it.
This reminds me of comments from several African American friends and acquaintances, that their older family members won’t talk about the family’s history because it’s painful.
And, the truth is, African American history in the US contain a lot of painful things endured by African American families: Segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow Laws, enslavement, and more.
But, I’ve also noticed that the generations who didn’t live through those things are more open to discovering their family’s past, pain and all. They are far enough removed from such trauma that the emotions and triggers are lessened or non-existent.
And the beautiful thing about this is that by discovering their family’s past, my African American friends and acquaintances are reclaiming a stolen history. And that is POWERFUL – because there’s something about feeling tied to past generations that is empowering for us all. (See episode XX about the power of multi-generational family stories.)
The farther away from an event that we get, the less embarrassment, pain, fear, or other negative emotion can impact us. And we can gain a better understanding of and compassion for who our people were and why they did the things they did.

5. Remember that others still feel the pain
In my or your quest to tell someone’s life story, we might ask people questions that could bring up their own pain, anger, or embarrassment. Emotions they may not be willing to talk about, share, or revisit.
I experienced this a bit when speaking to my grandmother about her father for the last episode. I already knew going into the interview that she didn’t have a close relationship with her father, and I mead sure to tread lightly and not push her to tell me things.
In such cases, I encourage people to be kind. Tread lightly. Respect someone’s emotions and don’t push for details they’re not willing to or comfortable sharing.

6. Choose love, compassion, and respect
Even if you and/or other family members are far past the pain, offering compassion toward the past people in your family can be empowering.
This is great advice from the niece of one of the POWs in Left Behind:
[Neice] “When you start searching the past, you have to remember they were humans! They had good, they had bad! But, as still true today, it’s not our job to judge them.”
[Narrator] Well said!
As we move backward in time, it’s sometimes tempting to romanticize distant family members and turn them into paragons of perfection. Or, conversely, see them as villains of the story. I know I do this for a couple of my grandparents. But trying to put ourselves in their shoes and attempting to imagine what their life was like can create great understanding and compassion — and even feelings of deeper personal connections that might impact your own life for good.
Someone told me:
[Someone] “I learned my 3rd great-grandfather committed suicide by hanging himself when he was in his 40s, close to my age now. So, I took a couple of days break after saying a prayer for him.”
[Narrator] A beautiful response for remembering a troubled soul in her family.

7. Consider the time period and accept the truth
My seventh and final piece of advice is to consider the time period an individual lives and accept the Truth..
As hard as it may be to face some things, it doesn’t change the fact those negative or embarrassing things may be true. Another family storyteller told me:
[Storyteller] “A lot of things that happen are just a sign of the times. [And we have] to understand the environment and mindset at that time.”
[Narrator] Now that is truth!
We don’t live in the same time, place, or culture as our ancestors. We don’t have the same perspective. We don’t have the same social and cultural norms. Some painful or embarrassing truths for us today were the norm for our ancestors. (Like first cousins marrying, to use a fairly light example among many heavy ones I could mention.)
If you find a painful or embarrassing truth, consider doing some historical/contextual research to see if it was part of a larger social norm. Such research could offer a new, interesting perspective on the situation. (First cousin marriage was fairly common in the early 1800s. In fact, wealthy English parents encouraged first cousins to marry to keep wealth and land within the family.)
And sometimes the embarrassing things are only embarrassing because of the times YOU live in.
For example: Australia was settled by English convicts shipped by the crown to the penal colonies Down Under. A lot of Australians today are descended from those settling convicts.
50+ years ago, having a convict in your tree was a source of embarrassment, a reason to fudge your genealogy, deny your true identity.
But the culture’s changed.
Today, having settler convicts in your family tree is a sort of badge of honor.
So something that seems embarrassing today, may not be so embarrassing 50 years from now. The time you live in affects you; the time your ancestors lived in affected them.
Sometimes it’s our own perspective that causes the pain.

Well, that’s Left Behind the Scenes for today. Be sure to like and subscribe so that you’re the first to know when I drop next week’s episode – where we’ll discover what happened when Japanese forces found and sabotaged the only water supply going to an island fort in Manila Bay.
Have a fantastic week.

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