3 Reasons You Should Avoid Researching Your Family Tree

I thought a cool blog idea for NaBloPoMo would be to share with you some rich family history of mine. I have on my mothers' mothers' mother's side a famous (albeit for a terrible reason) ancestor. Colonel John Chivington, whom you can Wikipedia is my relative. My great-grandma's uncle apparently. He's famous for a shitty reason but basically he murdered a whole group of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek. Pretty brutally too. Like he and his troops were a bunch of sick people. Ick.

 He was also the  first Grand Master of Masons of Colorado. So that's good right? From what I've read women can't join (figures) but that there are a couple of branch offs that will admit only women (Order of the Amaranth). Maybe I'll join? Probably not.

Since he was in good with the Masons he's buried in Denver in this really cool cemetery that my gram and I visited when I was 16. First time I had ever been in a Mausoleum and it was pretty cool. He wasn't in it but whatever. So that's one reason to avoid researching your family tree, you know, obscure famous relative that's famous for a terrible reason.

I thought instead of just telling you all about Monsieur Murderpants I'd show you my family tree and how cool it is to be able to go back and trace your roots. You know because roots are important. Your family is what shapes you, helps refine who you are, ect. Well, if you're like me and you're not apart of the hunky-dory "perfect" family then there might be some, erm, holes in your history.

I've alluded to my troubled past before. On Friday I mentioned being abused and anyone who knows me personally knows it's not secret. My life is kind of sort of fucked up but isn't everyone's? I mean doesn't everyone have a skeleton or two that they aren't proud of or hate or just want to forget? I've got a few. I'm an open gal and even though I wanted to share my tree with you I can't. It's incomplete. So as you can see this would be one of the reasons you should avoid researching your family tree.

Let's go over what we have so far:

• Find an ancestor that is famous for a bad reason
• You don't know your family

So what do you guys think would be the real reason you shouldn't research your family history? Let's go with this final reason. It makes you sad.

My biological father, my "sperm donor" as I like to call him even though that's not really what he is, that's more a figurative term for him (sorry test-tube babies!) was abusive. He will hence forth referred to as Abusive Dad. He abused my mother and sister, drove my sister to run away, forced my mom and I into countless battered women's shelters and almost killed my mother. Issues much?

Anyways I have all this knowledge of my mom's side of the family, all these stories but from him? Nothing. I don't know if his parents were only children, I don't know my cousins and I barely know my half-sisters. I might be Mexican royalty or something (half-sisters say we aren't) but if I was I won't ever know because I'm terrified of anything related to him.

I barely was able to piece together him, his brother and sisters and my grandparents before I was out of clues. And let me assure you, the entire half hour it took to simply input EVERYTHING about my mom's side of the family was the same amount of time it took me to find just my grandma Esther's death record and I knew all of that information.

I am furious. I didn't even know I felt this way. It was like I hit a trip wire I didn't know was there and this emotional bomb has gone off. I feel like a part of me is missing. There's a giant hole in who I am and I wasn't even aware of it! Talk about thinking you know someone huh? But this hole wouldn't be there if my entire life I wasn't terrified to have any contact with anyone he knew because he could find me.

This is why you don't go on ancestry.com, because.... EMOTIONAL BOMBS YA'LL. Anyways, moral of this story is I discovered more about myself and my emotional problems than I ever thought necessary. So much so that this little Grizzly had to call her Mama Bear and talk her through her emotional psychosis. She reminded me that Abusive Dad loved me, that it was his only redeeming quality and she stayed because I was safer with him than if she ran with me. That he would repeatedly try to kill her to have me all to himself. I shudder to think what my life would have been like with him. It was no cake walk with my mom but at least I knew she loved me. At least I knew Best Dad Ever loved me and could never doubt it and I wasn't even his real child.

So there you have it, three reasons to avoid looking up your ancestry, to avoid digging up old graves because you might not like the skeletons you find or the emotions you feel when you find them. I'm putting these bones to rest.

P.S: I honestly thought about not publishing this. But then I realized that there are probably a bunch of people like me. People who had horrid pasts, who might need someone to talk to. I'm here for you. My e-mail address is there and you can reach out any time. You are never alone. There's about 7 billion people in this world and that number is growing every day. The odds are in your favor that one of those people have experienced or are experiencing the same thing. It helps to talk. I call my mom or talk to my friends or I blog about my issues.

 You are never without a friend, I'm only an e-mail away.