I sit today recently back from an ancestral pilgramage that was one of the life altering experiences of my lifetime. My experience in Rochester, New York was not the beginning of my journey and I’m sure it will not be the end. Yet I am called to write while the miracles experienced are still fresh; before I have resettled back in a more present dimension. My family’s stories are universal ones with storylines of painful hardship. I believe the pain of these common themes holds most of us back from exploring our ancestorial past. We wonder what good it will do to let ghosts out from contained closets. We believe touching skeltons will only reopen wounds that our family has done their best to leave behind. I share my journey so that you understand that ancestorial exploration is one of deep healing. By delving into our family’s legends, we can separate truth from myth. With each story hung on delineating branches, we can begin to see our ancestorial tree as a whole. Patterns begin to reveal themselves, and each individual tale get’s understood within a larger family context. With a broader understanding; empathy and respect begin to replace what once was judgment. With experiential empathy we are able to deeply forgive all that has taken place, and begin to release the ancestorial pain that holds each spirit back from ascending to higher places.
Being a history/psychology double major, I was deeply compelled to watch the television series Who Do You Think You Are? Each episode follows a different celebrity on a journey into a branch of their ancestry. I was enthralled as I watched Brooke Shields, Lionel Richie, Tim McGraw, Sarah Jessica Parker…and all the rest of the celebrities find deep insights into themselves and their families. Each intimate connection with their past appeared life altering to them. I began to wonder what I would find if I looked more deeply into my family tree. I wondered if I could find the source of all the pain that courses through my family lineage. After a few months of hypothetical pondering, I got onto Ancestry.com and began my journey. I was immediately hooked, and at times seemingly addicted. In free pockets of time, I began to fill in my family tree. That tree grew and expanded in branches that took me back to castles in Europe. I stopped tracing one Saxton line once I passed the existence of Christ. The size of my immediate family branch reduced from what seemed primary, to what is at most a tertiary branch of a tertiary branch… The stories of my immediate family were already being put into the reality of their respective sizes.
Through the resources on Ancestry.com, Wikipeadia, and search engines like Google, I was able to tease out the individual experiences that lay beyond the boundaries of my grandparents. The internet is a truly remarkable tool. You can access old newspaper clippings; details of old fraternal organizations; addresses and map locations of a house that existed 300 years ago; pictures of castles; church/synagogue histories… I traced back specific ancestors to their time of immigration, many of whom came over in the eary 1600′s. I could find the towns they immigrated from; the events that were taking place that motivated their move; the name and pictures of the ships they sailed on; the towns they settled into; the actual plots of land they pioneered; the Indian Tribes they interacted with; the legal issues they utilized the courts for…. From this vantage I could see that I come forth from a tree of means; both branches included. While coming from wealth might seem like a privilege, I discovered that many of my ancestors found themselves trapped in treachously obigating times. They were as bound as the surfs and indigents that surrounded them. There wasn’t freedom to question even at these high levels, to do so could bring torture, execution or casting out into destitution. Yet despite these circumstances I could see a pattern of taking risks to create something new. This was the first familial pattern I discovered.
As I have discovered through out my life, all aspects of our journeys and lives are intertwinned. From different vantages of my professional life, I was presented with the opportunity to deeply explore the two sided coin of the victim/offender. I know few who don’t identify themselves as a victim on some level. Many of us egoically base our life’s existence on this role. Yet for all the victims that exist, where are all the offenders to match? I was able to see how easily we all unconsciously victimize one another. I found that if we identify as victims, and haven’t taken responsibility to heal that pain… that we are, or will, also offend in like ways. With these new truths revealing themselves, I could see the reality of that wisdom interconnected in all the branches of my tree. Every member of my ancestorial family has a story of victimization, and each member passed their pain forward to the next generation through unconscious offending. Since no one wants to see themselves as offenders, no one takes reponsibility for their impact on future generations. The interlinking rings of victim and offending roles, keeps us all chained in darkness. Yet I also learned that we need not ingratiate ourselves in shame to gain forgiveness. Forgiveness is a shifting of energy from the dark to the light. The only thing needed to do so is to own responsibility. If we all can put our actions and journeys into greater context, it is much easier to do so. We are all responsibile, yet no one is to blame. In relinquishing egoic shame and embracing acknowledgment, love energy can begin to flow again.
At this point on my journey I stood at an overlook into a mountain range of ancestorial possibilities to explore. With the knowledge of the expansiveness of the routes, I decided to set a more specific mission. In time, I began to feel the call towards my more immediate maternal ancestorial home of Rochester, New York. There were definitely intreguing aspects of my father’s tree to explore, yet there wasn’t one singular hub. Both my mother’s maternal and paternal branches converge in Rochester; both going back to the early to early 1800′s. I began to feel a call home. Yet I understood that I had a lot of investigating to do before I would buy my ticket. My investation was to delve into the details of my family’s dark stories to excavate out the truth. I hoped that through truth there would come light; and through light come a resurgence of love energy into our tree.
Imagine love energy as the water and nurishment that flows through the branches of trees, enabling it to grow and bear fruit. In all of our ancestorial trees, events and conditions have occured that have affected the flow of energy, each impacting growth conditions of later generations. If we are to look out into the forest that is humanity, I believe we will find blight. Blight is a rapid expansive discoloration and wilting in a tree, that can lead to it’s destruction. In order to turn around the life condition of these woods, we need to look up into the canopy and take responsibility for each tree. We need not feel shame; for shame is fear. We must look up in observation, understanding and respect for blight which can also be seen as a natural force of death. Yet then begin to reverse the energy. With my vantage of total forgiveness and gratitude, I was open to finding the stories of my ancestors and supporting them through the realization that to free themselves, and us, all they need to do it to take responsibility. Over time, each ancestor did just that…
The first ancestor I will introduce you to is Hanna. Hanna was born in 1773 in Middletown, Connecticut and married John, a man whose ancestory can be linked to the originating of that town four generations back. Hanna’s family was settled, established and comfortable. At the same time, with all the immigration and development in Middletown, land and opportunities were becoming limited. John’s father, Ben, had fought in the Revolutionary War and knew of lands west that were fertile and plentiful. On the romantic notion of expanding territory, John decided to move Hanna and their young son west. As a woman, Hanna has little say in the decision. No matter her feelings, she packed the wagon and head west into deep virgin forest. The trees were so wide it would take three men holding hands to wrap their circumference. The trees were so tall and plentiful, almost no light penetrated their canopy. It took six axed trees to fall one. From nothing, Hanna must help create everything. There is man’s work, which excludes women’s work. Yet when a woman’s work is done, she then must also ax, clear, build, plant, hoe, chop, dig. If she doesn’t her family won’t survive.
On my journey I was able to stand on Hanna’s grave and channel her sobs. She first wept for the burden of her existence and how back breaking it was. She died wondering what her laborously hard life was worth. She then wept in the understanding that she did create a legacy. Then we both wept together. I was able to find the well she dug with her own hands, 30 feet deep and walled in stone. Then Hanna helped me understand the buckets, and buckets, and buckets, and buckets that she pulled up from that well. She lived in the blackness of a crude log cabin. Hanna trudged day after day, despite being pregnant six times and then loosing three of those children.
Through Hanna I was able to understand the impact of immigration on our love lines. Hanna did not have the luxury of being homesick, depressed, angry, resentful, sad, ill or scared. In order to literally survive, she needed to shut most, if not all, emotional functioning down so that she could get out of bed each day and get through the back breaking work ahead. If she didn’t, her family might not find, grow or store enough food for the winter. Her empathy, for herself and others, needed to atrophy so that she could literally kill if needed. Hanna’s heart center needed to close down. This doesn’t mean she wasn’t a pleasant, kind or generous person on some levels. Yet under the surface she needed to be tough as nails. While she felt love for her children, Hanna couldn’t be too intimately bound to them. She grieved each loss, but couldn’t be devasted. In order for her living children to survive, Hanna had to impart the same sense of lack of empathy or emoting. Ultimately, Hanna’s living children did live on, not only to survive but thrive. Hanna was backed with a long lineage of energetic support. Despite the blockages she needed to create to survive, there was enough ancestorial love energy behind her to break through to her children – for whom only upwardly expansive energy is evident.
All of us have immigrating ancestors. Through their survival we learn to work instead of feel. While we lend a hand generously where we can, survival is ultimately for the fittest. Empathy and emotions are luxuries. People who do nothing are lazy. Efforts towards oneself is selfishness. I wonder how many generations it takes to grow out of survival mentality. Many immigrants not only had to completely disconnected from their family, but also from their hallowed homeland. Hanna wasn’t completely cut off from her family energy. There are others in my family tree that were, and you can see the great effort and then inability to keep a forward love flow into future generations.
The next incredible ancestor I want you to meet is Victor, who was born in 1879 in Syracuse. His father William (Wilhelm) immigrated all by himself from Baden, Germany at the age of 20. While he came into a society that was moderately established, he had no family or homeland energy behind him. He also chose to disconnect from what was most likely a Jewish heritage. Unfortunately, William contracted syphilis somewhere on his journey, which was untreatable at the time. In his system cellularly, he unknowingly passed syphilis complications onto his two children. Not only did William have to shut off his heart center to immigrate, he also suffered variable degrees of insanity from the syphilis. Although William maintained a reputable coopering business, at home Victor delt with his father’s explosive moods and high expections to establish a family reputation. The love flow from William to Victor was greatly limited. Despite this, Victor moved to Rochester and established a very successful engraving business.
Victor was an intellect and innovator in a society that depended on social play and connections. By the 1920′s, Rochester was all about high living and doing deals at exclusive country clubs. Victor made his way into this exclusive world, but was never quite recognized by it’s inner circle, whom might have guessed at his father’s jewish roots. With little love energy passed onto him by his father, Victor was desperate to hold onto the energetic ego imitation he could create for himself – ultimately it ends up being his reputation. In the developing centuries of our country, reputation was everything. Your family literally couldn’t survive well without it. In a small world without much advertising and public relations, business was built on a man’s integrity and honesty. Reputation only later mutated into vanity.
Victor had two children and was well intended as a father. He provides everything for them. Both children go to top prep schools and colleges, both necessities of that era. Victor understands how imperative good marital matches were to one’s success. Despite not being a social creature himself, he carves out everything needed to give his children. He is a member of the most exclusive club in town and both his children marry high in society.
However, no matter how good Victor’s intentions – when in survival mode, we sometimes unconsciously turn victimization into offense. With a serious shortage of love energy to work off of, Victor thrives on his repulation. And due to his energetic dependecy on his reputation, Victor unconsciously fears his son’s possible success. His son bore his name and with greater success would be the “Victor” reputed and remembered over time. Despite all he materialistically gives, Victor under cuts his son’s confidence, abilities and sense of self. As with many children of parents’ of means, his son becomes an entitled playboy, who drowns his complete lack of self in alcohol. And by unknowlingly undercutting his son, Victor’s own legacy is unable to survive. Victor’s successful business is not completely able to survive the affects of the depression. He goes to work as a Division Head for a large corporation, but widdles his money away trying to maintain the appearance of what he once was.
In aging years the impact of William’s syphilis comes into play, as Victor finds himself slowly mentally deteriorating. Once he starts to hear voices, this once successful businessman and innovator, out of fear for his reputation shoots himself. And since Victor was too proud to share the cause of his mental deterioration, his son holds the blame and guilt for his death.
With closed and dwindled love flow from two, if not more, generations young Victor Jr is energetically on his knees – impodent in creating anything of significance for himself. He is so low, he feels completely unworthy to look his own children in the eye. Of course this shame is disguised with narcissistic indifference that his own children will never understand.
All of us have themes hanging on our branches related to sacrificing children to save or create reputations. Think of all the children of parents, both wealthy or not, who somehow can’t seem to create a life for themselves. While Victor unconsciously sabotaged his son, other parents put their children in the position of fullfilling their dreams. Think of how many doctors, lawyers, accountants, beauty queens, sports stars actually loath what they do. There are many of us who aren’t passionate about what we do but made our choices based on obligation and what would make our parent’s proud. We can also see many people who, like Victor Jr., seem unable to create a life for themselves. Instead of being lazy, we might view them as being deplete of ancestorial love energy. There are many, many more of us who function and create, but do so with what feels like a taxing exertion of energy.
The last ancestor I’m going to introduce you to is Mary, who was born in 1842. She was the second daughter of a farming mother, who unlike Hanna, had a harder time sustaining the energy for the daily grind. Mary is the second born; and like many elder children, help raise her siblings. She and her older sister Sarah are born a year or less apart. They are best friends. Sarah grows ill and dies when Mary is 16. Due to not wanting to show emotion, her father isn’t at the death bed. Due to not being able to handle reality; neither is her mother. Mary is left to wonder what more she could have done to save her sister. A year later her mother gives birth to Hiram; whom Mary carries responsibility for raising. At the age of 3 Hiram also grows ill. Mary is left to tend him. Despite her efforts, he also dies. Mary is left with guilt and self loathing for not being able to save these two precious lives.
In her self loathing, Mary becomes attracted to a timberworker and becomes pregant out of wedlock. The pregnancy is a huge shame to her family. While her father is a farmer, he also has ambitions to be Supervisor (Mayor) of the Town. A boy who has lived next door, to parents who were able to pass down a stronger sense of self, falls in love with Mary and her daughter. He, Burt, marries Mary and takes her daughter as his own. Mary who has little self esteem and a heart full of shame, finally has one person in the world who gives her attention, Burt. However, after they marry and move into together, Mary subconsciously grows jealous of Burt’s affections towards her daughter. She doesn’t understand that Burt has enough love to go around. An accident takes place. Nothing purposeful. Yet in the moment Mary doesn’t respond fast enough. There is that brief moment where the subconscious jealousy holds her back from responding. Once she gets into motion, it’s too late. Her baby is dead. This time there is an unspoken knowledge that Mary could have done more. The baby’s death is covered up and the child is disowned from family history. When Burt goes into mourning; Mary feels she has lost the only love she could have. The pain being too much; she completely shuts down. Her sadness mutates into self protective rage. When Burt comes out of his mourning, still dedicated to his wife; she is emotionally gone. Mary’s defenses render her unable to see Burt’s ongoing dedication. Ultimately Burt takes care of his wife through death, and dies less than a year later.
Mary and Burt have one daughter, Celeste. It’s hard for Mary to look at Celeste without seeing her failures and lost child. She is cold and hard to Celeste. Celeste understands her responsibility for saving her mother’s reputation. She is a people pleaser, and rises to the expections of her mother. Celeste dutifully (if not subconsiously resentfully) marries the town star. Celeste and her husband, Frank, have an incredible social partnership. They make it into Rochester high society and rule it. He is a partner in a major bank and does business in private clubs and on golf courses. Celeste is expert in her role as socialite. Putting herself in the position where other women compete to be in her adoring presence. To be of the highest of social status, Celeste must leave the parenting of her three children to a nanny – a standard of the times. While she holds affection for her children, she holds no responsibility for their upbring outside of imparting tremendous pressure for them to conform, mold and follow the highest of social standards. The pressures in this high stratus social world is unrelenting and very conditional. In the end Celeste will have to cast off one of her own to protect all that she has created. Estrangement is quite common in this social class starting during the victorian era. Reputation is success and success is survival.
While Celeste is the pinnicle of grace, manners and well roundedness, all of Mary’s repressed rage, skips a generation and manifests in one of Celeste’s children. This rage will leap frog again into one of her great, great grandchildren. Emotions are energy and energy must go some place. Emotions that aren’t healed manifest in future generations. I found leap frogged personalities and temperments through out both branches.
Again there is no shame in Mary’s or Celeste’s stories because they are universal. Self loathing turns to self destruction. Unrelenting sadness mutating into protective rage. There are few children in existence that don’t take on responsibility for healing their parents in some form or fashion. And all unresolved emotions get passed onward, sometimes directly and other times leap frogging generations. Few parents in this world put their children before their reputations. And few parents have taken full responsibility in raising their children. Every family is a living breathing ecosystem. Everyone is made up of energy, which is interconnected. Emotions, experiences, illnesses, irresponsibilites are all stored in the body and passed forward cellularly. And of course there is the power of direct role modeling.
I feel nothing but extreme pride in Hanna, Victor, William, Mary, Celeste and every other member on this section of my family tree – for which there are several more. Through my encouragement they have all come forward to own their stories. You can see…while all are responsible, there is no one to blame. By owning their stories they broke their link on the victim/offender chain. They each took responsibility as parents and took back the pain they passed on to their children. In doing so, they freed themselves and all of us in the ancestorial tree.
So I’m sure you wonder how I was able to find all of this out. I opened my imagination, and followed all of the clues. In your ancestorial research you will be amazed at how your ancestors will talk through the information you find. There were literal conversations that took place based on the order in which I was able to find information. A dead end one week, completely opened up the next once. I researched the towns, businesses, country clubs, old newpaper clippings, house locations… It wasn’t my responsibility to find their stories. It was their responsibility to tell theirs. I just needed to remain open.
With all the stories revealed and research done, I boarded the plane to Rochester. The next four days were ones of continual serendipidy. You would be amazed at what comes across just by taking a house tour. I walked in Victor’s house. I saw my grandparents arguing through a literal confusion of definitive architectual styles. My grandfather lived off of “Heather Ave.” I went to a museum that had a “school room” within it. On a chair were only two yearbooks. My mother was in both of them. I found out I am named after Mary’s dead sister Sarah “Louise”. I stood in the cemetary surrounded by no less than 18 ancestors. I stood on each grave, open to hearing – feeling a message from any. I was in awe as I saw my families intertwined and buried together. I wept in knowing that I have a place. I have an extended family that isn’t passing on pain, but incredible strength and love. I belong in the world in a way I never have before. I am being taken care of now. The stories have melted away and we are all left with only love and pride. We are all free.
One of the many impacts from my journey will hopefully be the one I have on you in letting you know the possibilities for your own exploration. All you need is inquisitiveness, an open heart to your ancestors and an open mind to serenipidy. You may have one question to find that is quickly answered, or many that take time. You might research at home, or need to do ground work at actual sites. Local historians and extensive geneology departments at local libraries are treasure troves. The research isn’t difficult to do in the least. You’d be surprised what you can find from just looking at old phone directories. In whatever you do, keep in mind there is no such thing as linear time and all energy is connected. When one part of a system changes, the rest of the system is impacted as well. Healing can be foreward or backward in time. You may have some intuitive abilities that will allow you to hear them; if not know that they have the ability to hear you. Respect, understanding, forgiving and letting go of your own pain will have a more profound impact than you know. Open a portal into time, jump in and journey until you find the light.