Whilst practicing piano recently, I discovered there was a French composer with the German last name of Waldteufel. If Stefan's last name had been Waldteufel, I would have totally given up my name and become Mrs. Stefan Waldteufel.
🌲👿
(Wald means forest and Teufel means devil).
Happy birthday, babe.
Too many therapists assume the role of advocate — possibly rendering them worse than no therapist at all. Their patients should dump them and find replacements who are brutally unafraid of crushing their egos.
From Why I fired my therapists, by Foster Kamer, August 16, 2023, in The Washington Post.
I completely agree.
This article isn't against therapy. It's against just what it says: therapists who don't challenge you, the patient, therapists who never tell you that you are wrong, who just agree with you always and what you want to do and that tell you that anyone you feel wronged by is "toxic."
That's not therapy and it's not helpful.
That isn't to say that there aren't toxic people and that you shouldn't avoid toxic people. But if your therapist is never confronting you about your own behavior, is never questioning you about decisions going forward, you don't have a therapist - you have a lackey. If you like absolutely everything your therapist says and always feel great, never ever confronted or questioned after you leave a therapy appointment, fire your therapist.
The doctrine of the material efficacy of prayer reduces the Creator to a cosmic bellhop of a not very bright or reliable kind.
-- Herbert J. Muller, educator, historian, and author (1905-1980)It dawned on me today that I am the same age that my father was when he committed suicide.
Before I go further, do not message me to chastise me for saying committed suicide. I know that a lot of people now say died by suicide. I refuse to say that in this case. This was an act carefully planned and thoughtfully undertaken and meant to hurt others - I have the letter to prove that. It was not something that randomly happened. He did not die by shark attack. He committed to the act.
Anyway...
In my younger days, in some very dark times, what kept me from committing suicide was knowing what it would do to my family. When I was in a dark place in my teens and 20s - and there were many times I was - the idea that I would be responsible for destroying my paternal grandmother, in particular, was enough to come up with another way, ANY way, to get through the day. My Dad died just after I turned 30, and that year became one of the worst, probably the worst, of my life, both because of what he did and a lot of other circumstances - yet, by then, suicide was no longer an option to consider, as it had been when I was far younger.
So much of depression is biological - there's no question of that. If you don't believe that, just look at all of the successful people who kill themselves, and all the people who are facing unbelievably difficult circumstances and don't ever consider it. I also don't think depression is entirely biological and, absolutely, bad events can trigger depression. I don't think the biological underpinnings of depression or extreme anxiety can be ignored, BUT, I also don't think talk therapy and working to retrain your brain can be ignored either - it's not a one or the other debate. My father, in many ways, reveled in thinking about all of the ways he believed he had been wronged, or all the ways he believed he lacked what he thought others had - it was how he chose to define himself for decades. He wore it like a badge of honor. But he also never got quality therapy and he never got away from all the things that triggered his depression.
My brain is different than it was in my teens and 20s. I can see it in reading my journals and thinking how I processed information and how I thought about myself. I'm not entirely sure why, on my late 50s, my brain does not work that way anymore - I don't get as upset or as resentful about things as I did then. I think that's from a combination of actions I've taken to change - to change how I spend my day, in changing where I live, in work to change how I think about things AND a change in my brain chemistry that's come from... I don't know what. Age? How I spend my time? Not that I haven't had recent dark times - I've had some hopeless months in my 40s and 50s. But suicide is no longer an option. I hope it never is.
Years ago, Dan Savage and his partner, Terry, unintentionally started a worldwide campaign against gay teen suicide: "It Gets Better." I'm not gay, but I identified with their advice a LOT. I know that they were emphasizing to teens that, if you tough it out and get through high school and get out of that school and town, it almost instantly gets better. But I think some of their words fit a lot of people who are struggling with the darkest of thoughts:
However bad it is now, it gets better. And it can get great. It can get awesome. Your life can be amazing. But you have to tough this period of your life out, and you have to live your life so that you are around for it to get amazing. And it can and it will.
I believe that. And not just because of my own experience, not just because of all of the amazing things I've experienced in my 30s and 40s and 50s. I believe it because I've known people who have lost everything - their homes, their families, their entire towns, and in moments, their dignity and their bodily autonomy - and I have seen how they have created and embraced their post-trauma lives. I have seen how they value just walking down a street safely. I have seen how they relish food and music. These are people who have seen the absolute worst humans are capable of, and have had the most horrible things done to them. That trauma is still a part of them, a huge part of them - but it's not all they are. I am grateful to have had them in my life, to keep my faith in humanity - and myself - alive.
Again: things aren't all puppies and sunshine now. I still have dark moments. I'm gutted over gaining all of the weight back that I worked so hard to lose - weight that came back largely because of perimenopause. I still sometimes spiral down when I think about how much I miss my career. But I've made a lot of adjustments in how I live life. I've been tenacious in trying to make things better for myself. I try to spend as many hours trying to improve things, trying to stay curious, as I do lamenting how much life can suck eggs.
And I also know I'm lucky: I fell in love with movies. I have had amazing friends. I was able to move away from a place where I experienced my first traumas. I've had amazing jobs. I've seen and experienced glorious moments. I found a partner to face my later years with, who loves me but also challenges me. Had I stayed where I was born, I'm not sure I would have made it.
My Dad chose to miss the weddings of all four of his children, the opportunity to have four wonderful sons and daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren and a great-grandchild. He chose to miss what very likely would have been the very best part of his life.
In contrast, I don't think for me, at 57, that the years ahead of me are going to be the best of my life. That's because my life up to now has been rather spectacular. However, I have so much I'm looking forward to and working towards and learning. I hope I can keep this outlook - it's taken a while to get it, and I'm going to do all I can to keep cultivating it.
Also:
Articles telling you how to deal with depression are bullsh*t
She believes people who travel do ONE kind of travel: they go to another place, a famous region or city, and try to tick off boxes of things to see. And that these travelers do things abroad that they don't do in their own communities and actually don't enjoy - they do it just because it's foreign.
I have no idea why NPR nor Vox gave this woman a platform.
At one point, she mocked people for going to organ concerts in Europe but not in their own communities. Um... there are no organ concerts where I live. And there are no, massive, huge cathedrals where an organ concert blankets you with sound anywhere near I live.
She would probably mock me for loving the day I rode a bicycle around Hopkins, Belize in February and smirk, "Why not do that in your own community?" I don't do it here because there are no lightly traveled dirt roads in my neighborhood that take me to beautiful views of the ocean, or to an out-of-the-way coffee shop with no drive through - just locals and a large porch where I can watch the children walk to the only school in town. Because there's no beach in my town, and if there were, and I rode to a hotel here and said, "Hi, I'm not a guest here, but can I go sit out on your beach access?" they would laugh and call security - instead of welcoming me in and giving me and my husband free sodas. Because when I ride my bike here where I live, which I do for work, I have to ride with an eye to a great deal of traffic and people who wouldn't mind at all if they hit me, and I have to ride quickly, not leisurely. Because there's no restaurant with wood-fired pizza right on the non-existant beach where I live that I can ride my bicycle to. And if I went all the way to the Oregon coast, even with that beach access, none of the aforementioned is possible, because there are no charming dirt roads and small neighborhoods along the beach - just oh-so-busy Highway 101, massive resorts and private communities with their own private roads and no public beach access. No, there's no way to replicate that amazing day I had in Belize here in Oregon, you twit.
Another reason I love to travel, especially abroad, is that I am fascinated at how I get treated as a stranger abroad. I'm obviously out-of-place, and most people are so welcoming, even if I don't speak any of their local language. It restores my faith in humanity, especially because I live in Oregon, a state that is NOT known for its hospitality, a state that is NOT known for its diversity, and where you have to be conscious that the guy who feels you cut him off in traffic or that you are trespassing or that hates the bumper sticker on your motorcycle is likely armed with a loaded gun.
And even though I am not from Oregon, and deride the people here a LOT here on this blog, I have seen more of Oregon than most Oregonians, and have loved it. Because I travel. Camping in my backyard is not the same as camping in the Alvord Desert and looking out on that vast emptiness of the playa - and the night sky above. I've never seen anything like Crater Lake in any of the 40 countries I've visited. Reading about the takeover of Alpine, Oregon by a religious cult is one thing - but actually going there and seeing the remains of red paint in the stock room at the restaurant and talking to locals about that time made it oh-so-real.
Yes, there are people that travel just to tick off boxes. There are people who won't go to any public lands just a few miles from their home, won't go hiking, won't go to any of the outdoor presentations about nature, but will plan a trip to Yellowstone - and spend most of the time in their car, driving through the park, or going to Old Faithful and then getting angry they couldn't get closer to film it on their phone. There are people that go to the Louvre and try to see the entire museum in a day. There are people that will go to an outdoor cafe in Italy and think it's magical - but not go to any in their own community (and even fight against a cafe that tries to create such). I know those people too. But they hardly represent most travelers.
I don't travel for bragging rights. I don't travel to tick off boxes. I travel to get closer to history, to experience different cultures, to have experiences I can't have locally and to feel some distance from my every day life. Yes, I share photos of my travels - I'm happy. Why wouldn't I share photos of me being happy?! There is no local experience in my country that can match me weeping at the ancient pyramids of Egypt, Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. And it wasn't until I went to the ceremonial mounds of Ireland, Scotland and Northern France that I realized how much my country has lost by not preserving the mounds of the Mississippian culture in what is now the USA, the culture here before Europeans came.
Reading about a place is great - but when I stand in that place I have read about in history, I am often overwhelmed with emotion. I've read so much about ancient Roman and Greek civilizations - I even took an entire university course in such back in my college days. But standing in Pompeii or Herculaneum or Petra or the Colosseum in Rome... history was alive. I could (and did) place my hand upon a rock carved by someone thousands of years ago. I walked on streets once, and still, bustling with people. It is astounding to see what could be done with just hand tools, with no machinery as we know it. You wonder if they were smarter than us now.
And what I love about fellow travelers, the people this philosopher doesn't seem to know at all, is that they also immerse themselves in local experiences in their own communities, or not too far away. They are the ones with a wood-fired pizza oven in their own backyard, who go hear a bluegrass band playing at a local pub, who dance to the Tejano band at the local farmer's market, who go to history presentations at the local library, who go hear the handbell concert at the Methodist church across the street from their house, who visit the nearest Halal market to buy what's needed to prepare a special supper that night (and practice some of my five words of Arabic or Dari with local staff).
I really hope no one listened to this woman and her snobby mocking nonsense. I hope no one who was planning to travel abroad, especially the first time, is now rethinking the trip because of her.
I'm firmly with Mark Twain (in The Innocents Abroad, 1869) on this one:
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
But I'm continuing to do research on my family tree. These are my new geneology quests:
This blog is about that last bullet point.
A few years ago, after meticulously color-coding every one of my DNA matches on Ancestry.com based on which branch of the family we were related, I noticed that many of my closest DNA relatives on a certain great-grandmother's family tree were black - including my closest relative on that branch. One of those DNA relatives that also had a family tree up on Ancestry.com had her grandfather listed as having an unknown father, and her grandfather was in the trees of most of those other black cousins of mine that had trees up (not everyone puts up trees).
I'm going to call this man, her grandfather, Mr. Smith, but that's not his name.
Through a lot of DNA comparisons and cross-referencing, and date and place comparisons and whatnot, I figured out who our common ancestors are for my black cousins: my fourth great-grandfather and his wife, who lived in Hale County, Alabama (and had a farm and ranch that sprawled into Perry County).
Now I'm trying to figure out if the direct paternal link to my family - to our family - is through one of my fourth great-grandfather's sons or grandsons. For sure, it's one or the other. That's beyond debate.
Mr. Smith was born in 1919 in Alabama - after the Civil War but at a time, in the Southern states, when black Americans remained oppressed and terrorized. Perhaps Mr. Smith's mother would say she wasn't pressured into whatever this "relationship" might have been - but at the very least, the power dynamic of this biological mother and father was extraordinarily and uncomfortably unbalanced, so it makes me uncomfortable for her.
Was the mother of Mr. Smith a servant in the white family's house? Was she the daughter of a servant or the daughter of a worker on the farm? How did she and the descendent of my ancestor know each other?
Per info on ancestry.com, I know her name, that she was 25 when her son was born in Uniontown, Alabama, and that she was 26 when, in 1920, she married the man who fathered her other, later children.
I know Mr. Smith died in 2008 in Bessemer, Jefferson County, Alabama, USA. I know the names of his children. I even know the names of some of his grandchildren.
But I don't know enough yet to figure out exactly who Mr. Smith's biological father was.
I reached out to the DNA match who had her grandfather, Mr. Smith, as having an unknown father. I wrote, in part:
Hello. My name is... You can google my full name and know more about me, if you wish. I apologize if I'm intruding, and if you don't feel like you want to respond, I won't at all be offended if you don't. We are DNA matches and I may know how, in general. My great-grandmother's family is from Alabama. I actually knew my great-grandmother - she lived to be almost 100. She was very tight-lipped about her childhood, and as I untangle her family tree via Ancestry, I understand why, more and more...
I have so rarely written anyone on ancestry, but when I started to see this thread among DNA matches, and you had written that [Mr. Smith], who our common relatives all have in their tree, as having an unknown father.... well, I thought, I’ll write her and see if she has some info…
And, of course, what is discovered, if we ever do discover anything, could be potentially painful - I'm not interested in being exploitative or salacious or traumatizing for anyone, and I wouldn’t hurt anyone for the world - I'm just curious, it’s interesting to investigate, etc. But I know this can be very personal for folks... I try to be sensitive and not flippant about what I find out...
I wrote a lot more, explaining the connection (incorrectly at the time - I've since corrected it). She responded graciously and curiously, and we've been in touch now for more than a year. She told me that her grandfather, Mr. Smith, was sent off to live with the family of his aunt elsewhere in Alabama for most of his childhood. She confirmed that the person who is my closest DNA match on my great-grandmother's side is her first cousin, a grandson of her grandfather. And she told me it was always known that Mr. Smith had a white father, and there is even a photo of a white man, which she shared with me, among his belongings - but no one in the family had any idea of who it was. When Mr. Smith died, his dementia prevented him from providing more information.
I'm not in touch with my closest DNA relative on my great-grandmother's side - his adoptive father, who is white, has his adopted son's tree up and shared his DNA results. I reached out, but got a tepid response.
I also have access to my maternal aunt's DNA results. Whereas this closest DNA relative on my great-grandmother's side is noted as a 4th to 6th Cousin to me, per 45 cM shared, that relative is my aunt's 2nd to 3rd Cousin with 107 cM shared.
My mother and aunts weren't aware of any of this. Their mother, my grandmother, an only child, died in 2017, before I knew any of this, and I don't think she knew any of this. Her mother, my great-grandmother, the only child of her mother, died in 1993, and she may have known (given how tight-lipped she was about her family, perhaps she knew and didn't want us to know she had black cousins), but if she did know, she took it with her to the grave.
But why does it matter? Why do I want to know? Mr. Smith isn't my ancestor. Solving this mystery will do nothing to help me know names of more of my own ancestors.
Part of it is that I like the idea of solving a mystery for someone else's family, a mystery that they never could have solved without me. Part of me feels like if someone wants to know their parentage, they have a right to know, and given how many of Mr. Smith's grandchildren and great-grandchildren are on Ancestry.com, there is a lot of them that want to know, and if I can be of help, I want to be. And part of me wants to acknowledge my own family's history, whether they did right or wrong, whether it's something to be proud of or something to be sad or angry about. I don't believe in blaming children for the wrongs of their ancestors, but I do believe that historical truths should be acknowledged, no matter how painful.
This experience has been interesting not only in the facts I've discovered for a branch of my family I didn't know existed, but also in seeing yet again how our country has not valued the history and experiences (and LIVES) of black Americans: before the 1950s (and probably after), they are left out of Census data, their marriages are often not officially recorded, they don't have obituaries in newspapers, and Newspapers.com doesn't always have what used to be called "Negro" newspapers scanned in its archives - because neither do many libraries. It's both sad and anger-inducing. It's deeply unfair and unjust.
So, now what? I'm not sure. As I said, over the years, I have meticulously color-coded my DNA matches, and I look at every new, relatively close DNA match, so I will know almost immediately if a new person takes the DNA test and is a match on any particular family line, including the one I'm talking about in this blog. I hope that someday soon I open up Ancestry to look at new DNA matches and see that a new match is a descendant of the man I suspect sired Mr. Smith and, therefore, might have the answer I'm looking for.
Otherwise, what records could I ask the libraries, historical societies or county clerks of Perry and Hale counties to look up for me that would help me? If you have ideas, DM me or say so in the comments, because I have no idea.
Also see:
Rethinking "indigenous" & DNA results
Ethnic, cultural, gender identity - good luck with your definitions
What is Southern heritage? What is worth celebrating?
