family Archives | Page 14 of 17 | Dysfunctional Ever After

Finding my roots with Ancestry.com

Every April I get an itch. It’s the month my father died when I was six, and my body has yet to let me forget. The last itch came with the thirst to find out more about my dad’s family. His father walked out before he was even born, and so my dad never knew where he came from. Naturally, I took it upon myself to find out.

Thankfully we live in a digital world and I didn’t have to go courthouse to courthouse, state to state to find out where I come from. (Lord knows I never would have done that and my thirst would have gone unquenched until the day I died.) Ancestry.com has just about everything in one place, just waiting for us to connect the dots ourselves.

I started with my dad’s father. There were theories, of course, but no one actually knew where he went after he left my grandma. Ancestry brought up his death certificate and gave me enough information to do a quick Google search. Google brought me to his obituary and it was there that I found out my dad had adopted siblings he never knew about, and that my grandfather had moved to Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee with his new family.

Never one to understand boundaries, I reached out to the son mentioned in his obituary via Facebook. (The internet is a great place.) From there we got on the phone and started talking. It turns out my grandfather was pretty guarded when it came to Minnesota and the family he left here, it was a sore subject for him. While his son/my uncle knew my grandma’s name, he was shocked to hear that she had five kids and was pregnant with her sixth when my grandfather left. I might even say he was upset to hear it. Then again, wouldn’t you be?

After leaving Minnesota, he adopted his new wife’s children and raised them as his own. He opened a bowling alley for whatever reason, worked as a police officer for a hot minute, and even as a truck driver. I’m told he was generous (sometimes maybe too generous, especially with women) and had a great sense of humor. He was kind and left behind five grandchildren when he died. Funny enough, he carried around a sweat rag just like my dad. A few other traits he left to his abandoned children: diabetes and heart problems. Noteworthy parting gifts to be sure.

Fully satisfied with pictures, stories, and a dash of resentment, I pressed on down the line. All the way to my ninth great-grandfather – the man who brought my family to America. He a founder of Guilford, Connecticut. He came shortly after Columbus, fleeing religious persecution. He was appointed magistrate to administer justice and preserve peace in their new community, and died leaving my ninth great-grandmother and future generations a pretty penny to live off of. The money didn’t last, but his name did. It’s the same name my father had.

My family has a rich history, and I’m thankful I was able to discover it for my father. I hope he would have been proud of his roots. Proud of the man that founded a colony, proud of the family that fought in the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, proud of the farmers that provided for their family and community.

It means a lot to me that I was able to learn more about where I came from, a privilege my father never had but surely deserved. Everyone deserves to know where they came from, how they came to be, and who came before them. Good, bad, or ugly, these people paved the way for me to be the hot mess I am today.

Samm

Infertility and Me, a Love Story: Part 1

marriage, motherhood

I’ve written about my struggle with infertility in the past, you can find a pretty emotional post here. But I thought it time to write about what infertility means to me, and how it all began. So here we are.

Warning: This post may be considered graphic. Women have periods, weird.

I was sixteen or seventeen when I bled for nine months straight. The first few months I convinced myself that it was normal. I had just gotten off birth control. My body was making up for lost time. This happens, I thought. About month five or so I thought something was wrong. No, something was definitely wrong. But being the worry wart I am, I refused to go to the doctor. Cancer. I surely had cancer. I’m not going to go to the doctor for him to tell me have cancer. I refused. I was in high school, I was not going to be a cancer patient.

Month nine I started to get sick. I get easily dehydrated, but couldn’t seem to hydrate myself. I kept feeling faint, and just off. I went to urgent care. It was there that my blood was taken, I of course was told I should have come sooner, and upon me leaving, he told me to “prepare myself for the worst” when I meet with my OB/GYN next week.

Cancer. Surely I had cancer.

I was given pills to stop bleeding, which eventually I did. The next week I went to my OB/GYN who ran tests and assured me, no I did not have cancer. I was so relieved, but that relief was short lived. Suddenly she was saying things like “Endometriosis” and “Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome”. Before I could process what either one of those were, she said “It’s going to be very difficult for you to have children.” I started crying and she immediately began telling me stories of people she knew that were still able to get pregnant. This, I would soon learn, was what people do during conversations about infertility.

Comfortable words to end uncomfortable conversations.

I was in a relationship at the time with the man who would later become my husband. I was certain he would no longer want me. I knew he wanted kids. I knew he wanted a family. So surely he wouldn’t want me. But he did. He took the news very matter of factly. Seemingly without hesitation he accepted that this wasn’t just my reality, but his as well. A very noble and naive thing for an eighteen year old boy to do, and something I will forever appreciate.

Infertility isn’t so much an issue when you’re in high school or college. To be completely honest, it was helpful in many ways. But every once and a while I would get down. It pissed me off that I’d likely never be given the choice to have my own children, and it really pissed me off that no one seemed to understand. No one was in the place that they were even thinking about kids, or the possibility of not being able to have them. I felt like I was on an island.

Infertility when you’re married, now that is an issue. Your friends and family have babies and you’re expected to be their cheerleader on the sidelines. If you gripe at all, you’re selfish. People ask you when you’ll have yours, which hurts. People will stop asking, which will almost hurt more.

So you’ll try, you’ll fail. And in part two, you’ll find yourself at an adoption agency.

Find part two here.

Samm

being on my own

career, family

I took a job ten and a half hours and a time zone away in May. Telling my husband, employer, family, and friends was a whirlwind. Before I knew it I was in my car on my way to Northern Michigan. Alone.

I can honestly say I had never really been alone. I went from living with my parents and having them take care of me, to living with my roommates and soon-to-be husband who all took care of me (#ittakesavillage), to living with my husband. I didn’t know what being alone would mean for me.

But I do now. Now I can say I know what it means to be on my own, in a place where I don’t know anyone or where anything is. Now I can say I can do it, I can survive in the unknown. Not only that, but I can thrive. I found myself quickly adjusting to life in Northern Michigan. I had my lunch spot, where the short woman with the short hair knew my order after just going there a handful of times. She was there my first time, and told me all about the restaurant, what was good, what wasn’t her favorite. She quickly became a comforting face. I had a place I went when I needed to chill out. I knew the place I could hide my keys and shoes so no one could see them, and I could roam the beach barefoot. I found my local comfort creatures, the most important of which being Target. I got to know my colleagues as me, Samm. I got to be myself. Not the daughter, the wife, or the friend, just me. I was able to define myself, and be my own person, a luxury I’d never had the opportunity to enjoy.

Being alone is a beautiful thing, especially if it’s temporary. (Which, for the record, it always is.) I quite enjoy being married, having a home, and a dog that I’m responsible for. But I also enjoyed being off and alone. It gave me a renewed sense of confidence. In some odd way, it made me whole. I’m more secure in my marriage because I now know I don’t need my husband. I want my husband, but I most certainly do not need him. I do not need all my things. I want all my things, but I don’t need them.

I must say, it’s quite the relief knowing that at the end of the day, if you have to be alone, you can be.