Underneath it all is the same hunger for numinous experience that humans have had since the beginning of time. But sometimes this hunger is exacerbated, for many people have lost their ancestors. They often do not know the names of those beyond their grandparents. They have lost, in particular, the family stories.*
We were talking the other day of the network of social agreements in which human beings live, and those in which women dwell. Some of the most potent of agreements originate in the family. I think of agreements as being:
- agreements for what gets talked about and how it gets talked about, or
- agreements for what is possible and not possible.
Agreements, by default, are unspoken and undistinguished, meaning they are not seen as agreements. They are seen instead as what is the case; in other words, The Truth.
In my extended family we have had an agreement that family history is not told. For example, I know virtually nothing about my grandparents. Both sets of grandparents had died before I was born, and even now I have no more than a handful of snippets about who they were.
You want to see the extent of this suppression. I am doggedly determined to discover such stories, and yet for decades I have not been successful in getting more than this handful. As a teenager, I was like a wild bird trapped inside a room, dashing myself against unseen walls of glass in my thirst for context and history.
Such has been the suppression of detail I concluded some time ago I was up against the most devastating of human experiences: shame. Shame is the big shaper of agreements.
Looked at one way, my maternal grandmother’s sketchy life story contains something that with contemporary eyes we may see as a source of shame, but I doubt it was what we think it was.
*
Her name was Eunice and she came from a family of piano-makers. She lived in London, around Kensington, and was the eldest of five children.
She had olive skin and long dark glossy hair that would remain free of grey until her death. She worked as a governess, and sometime in her late teens, her mother, an alcoholic by some reports, left the family and was never seen nor heard of again. Around that time, she fell in love with her first cousin, Percival. Her father forbade her to do so.
Soon after, she left England with Percival and travelled by ship to Australia, where a short time later they were married, in Queensland, I think. She sent wedding invitations to her family and never heard another word. She was 20 years old. She lived in various places in Australia, including, I discovered a few years ago, a house a few kilometres from where I live today. It was where they were living when Percival left for World War One.
She went on to have 10 children, 7 girls and 3 boys. My mother is the youngest.
My Auntie E – one of three remaining siblings – tells me no-one ever called her Mum or Mummy. It was always “Mother”, though Percival was always “Daddy”. When I ask her why the difference, she says she doesn’t know.
Maybe it was because she had been a governess … it just didn’t occur to us to call her Mummy.
She also tells me that my grandmother didn’t have any friends outside the family. “I suppose she had all of us children … and then maybe there was always shame for her.”
“Because she had married her first cousin?”
“Yes.”
*
Eunice died of bowel cancer, I think it was, in her 70s. Some years after her death, one of her cousins came from England to find her. It was too late. Another cousin once tried to track her down in Queensland but she had long since moved to another state.
In the 50+ years she lived in Australia, Eunice never heard from, nor spoke to her family again.
Years later, my Auntie J visited London and went to the family address. Eunice’s sister opened the door, took one look at her niece and made a cruel remark about her resemblance to her long lost sister.
*
* Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves
Image: Shlomi Nissim
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Great story–I’m glad you were able to find out the story. Most profound insight of the year: your statement that families agree on what is possible and not possible. I never thought of that but it is probably the fundamental determinant of how millions of people approach life. Unfortunately.
Wunderbar! Now let me deliver the coup de grace. Yes, I have had a few Australian Open drinks but I could not be more pleased with your comment, Tom
It doesn’t stop with our family. There’s the agreements about what’s poss and not poss we imbibe from our schooling, our gender, our socio-economic group, our country, our blah de blah, and most of all, ta da … from ourselves, ie, what we say to ourselves about what’s poss and not poss!
Add it all up and what do you get? What we call REALITY. That, my friend, is what we call reality.
As you say, most unfortunate determinant. However, if we start to distinguish agreements as agreements … totally different. Then, we can have some power and freedom about how to live!
Love, love xxx
Thanks! Yes the key is to recognize that agreements are just agreements with outdated, artificial, erroneous and possibly ignorant reasons for being around. But the idea of agreements raises lots of interesting implications. E.g., we can think of people who are limiting themselves because of agreements–are their people who go through life binding themselves to others’ agreements about them, themselves and the world? Or worse, think that a world view must be constructed based on other peoples’ agreements rather than what life tells them?
I hear you’ve gotten it and also what you’ve gotten .. “we can think of people who are limiting themselves because of agreeements.” That’s what I was communicating. Sometimes when I’m speaking to someone face to face they will get something; first time ever someone has gotten something through reading my words. Thank you for being such an awesome listener.
It’s not just some people limited by agreements. It’s all of us. You, me, everyone. There is no escape from them. What there is is distinguishing them.
Wow that’s a very powerful and rather beautiful story about your grandmother. I hope you can find out much more about her life. I agree with you that knowing & preserving family stories is incredibly important.
Thank you for appreciating her story, Jann. I found out the majority of details only a few hours before I wrote it. Very moved and excited, and passionate about finding out more.
Poor Eunice. It seems like such a small transgression and such a large (and long) punishment. The photo is wonderful and I have to tell you that I have been a fan of Clarissa Pinkola Estes since I picked up an audiotape of “In the House of the Riddle Mother” in 1993. Her voice is the voice of a storyteller: entertaining and instructive. I can remember listening to this tape with great enjoyment on more than one trip by ferry returning from the mainland,
That’s what I thought too. I cried writing this, for the pain she must have felt being without her family for most of her life and for her courage. I was also thinking about the sister back in London. She was abandoned by both her mother and her sister. I wonder if she had to bring up herself and the other three children.
It’s very interesting too how Eunice repeated the action of her mother. She took herself away. Wherever shame is operating, the same action will get repeated generation after generation. Until it’s completed on.
CPE is wonderful. I’ll look for the book you mention. I find her very stimulating. And she’s matter-of-fact and exhilarated in just the right places respectively.
A powerful story, Norelle. So much is acceptale today which wasn’t in your grandmother’s day. For instance, I discovered quite by accident that my great-grandmother was pregnant (OMG) when she married! While adding a name to our family bible, I saw that she had changed the date of my grandmother’s birth by wetting her finger and rubbing the original out. Family is so important, and to suffer the loss of an entire one through their own choice is a miserable legacy. Bravo for searching for the little you have found.
Arghhhh, the devastating detail … the wetted finger.
What an insightful remark about shame shaping those silent agreements. I’ll be chewing on that for a while.
A sad story, but you’ve done a beautiful job with it.
Thanks, Brandy. I’m proud to be able to tell her story, as sketchy as it is for now. Glad you heard something for yourself.
b e a u t i f u l …(as usual)
My grandma Pearl was a way ahead of her time. She taped all of her stories and poetry on an old tape recorder, which my cousin put together on a CD.
It was a PRICELESS gift.
Xxx Love to you.
Yep, priceless.x