Digging in the Dirt (Skeletons in the Closet)
Ah, those skeletons: Dealing with difficult family stories
Digging in the dirt
— Peter Gabriel, “Digging in the Dirt” (from the album, Us, 1992)
Stay with me, I need support
I’m digging in the dirt
To find the places I got hurt
Open up the places I got hurt
Be careful when you go digging through the dirt of your family’s past. You never know what skeletons you may find in your family’s closet! In this article, we’re going to discuss how we deal with difficult family stories when we encounter them, especially the stories that have been kept hidden. We’re going to discuss the impact of family secrets.
This article is part of a series about how learning the stories of our family history can create pathways to spiritual healing and wholeness.
Skeletons
When people undertake researching their family history, it is not uncommon to eventually come across a skeleton in the closet — a family secret — a difficult story that may have been covered up or supressed in some way.
We are shaped by our family histories, whether we like it or not. We are shaped by the good stories and the bad stories. We are shaped by the stories we know about and the stories that are kept hidden. The more we learn about our family histories, the better we can understand ourselves.
We are shaped by our parents, and so on…
If we are shaped by how our parents raised us, and our parents were shaped by how their parents raised them, then the events that affected our parents and grandparents’ lives have had an indirect impact on who we are. And, since our grandparents were shaped by their parents, then the lives of our great-grandparents have also had an indirect impact on who we are. In fact, we are indirectly shaped by the lives of all of our ancestors in some way or another.
Christopher Walken’s family’s skeleton in the closet
Academy Award-winning actor, Christopher Walken (Reservoir Dogs, Annie Hall, Jungle Book, et al), grew up not knowing who is real maternal grandfather was. The story of his family history was featured on an episode of Finding Your Roots, hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Discovering the stories of our ancestors can be a profoundly transformative experience; changing the way we see ourselves, our family, and our shared history.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Walken knew that the maternal grandfather he grew up with wasn’t his real grandfather, but his mother would never talk about who her real father was. Her birth certificate listed her as “illegitimate” with no father’s name recorded.
The show’s producers researched Walken’s family history and learned the truth about his real grandfather’s identity. He was a convict who had been arrested around the time of his daughter’s birth for selling stolen merchandise. He served five years in prison, and, shortly after his release from prison, he died, so he was never around to raise his daughter.
For Christopher Walken’s mother, the absence of her birth father would have had a strong impact on her childhood. And it would have shaped the person she became as an adult. And it would have had an impact on how she parented her three children, including Christopher Walken. And it would have indirectly impacted the person that Christopher Walken is today.
Walken’s mother refused to discuss the identity of her father. She would not allow the topic to be brought up. And she went to her grave not revealing the true identity of her father. She kept it secret. This was a story that was not told in Walken’s family, yet it still impacted Walken’s mother and her children. I need to underscore this point: even though Christopher Walken and his siblings knew nothing of the true identity of their maternal grandfather, his existence and the story of his life still had an impact on who they are today. Learning the truth helped Christopher Walken see his mother is a more sympathetic and even courageous light.
Even though Christopher Walken and his siblings knew nothing of the true identity of their maternal grandfather, his existence and the story of his life still had an impact on who they are today.
My own family’s skeleton in the closet
I discovered my own family’s skeleton in the closet. In the course of my own family history research, I learned some difficult truths about my great-grandfather. He was born in the midst of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and that shaped who he became as an adult. He was a respected and venerated police officer who rose through the ranks to become chief of our local police force. He was a decorated war vet. He was acknowledged for heroic conduct during a local violent labour dispute. And he was also the same person who was partially responsible for the wrongful imprisonment of scores of innocent Italians during WWII. He was also a violent father. And he was likely a little too friendly with the mafia. He was all of these things. He was both saint and sinner. He was human.
My great-grandfather’s involvement in the Italian internments was never mentioned in my family growing up. It was a hidden family secret. The person that he was impacted how he parented my grandfather, which impacted how my grandfather parented my father and how my father parented me and how I parented my children. The things I disliked about my father took on a new sympathetic framing for me as I learned more about my father’s childhood and his father’s childhood and his grandfather’s childhood. I was able to see all of them as the flawed, imperfect human beings that they were, all trying to do the best they could in the circumstances of their lives.
Family Secrets
Family secrets can create invisible emotional prisons that bind us up behind emotional bars that we cannot see. We may stumble through life constrained by those emotional bars and find ourselves bashing our heads against barriers that we don’t even know exist.
“While keeping a family secret from the outside world may be advisable in some instances for privacy or protection, keeping secrets within the family can prove problematic. Here are five reasons why:
“5 Reasons Why Keeping Family Secrets Could Be Harmful” – PsychCentral.com
- Keeping secrets can destroy relationships.
- Keeping secrets can affect children’s lives.
- Keeping secrets can cause suspicion and resentment.
- Keeping secrets can create a false sense of reality.
- Keeping secrets can cause stress-related illness.”
When family secrets are revealed, it can sometimes result in “a-ha” moments where something murky in our lives suddenly makes sense. It may create sympathies for what our parents, grandparents or other ancestors lived through. Where those family members may have had a negative impact on us, it may help us to view their lives with more compassion, and possibly even with understanding and forgiveness.
Revealing family secrets can also sometimes cause resentments for family members. Some secrets may be hard to learn about. Some family members may feel that those secrets should remain secret. But secrets are inherently unhealthy by nature. And those secrets can impact us like ghosts, whether we realize it or not. When secrets are revealed, even if they’re difficult to hear about, that revelation has the potential power to set us free from whatever emotional prison those ghosts created for us.
(Jesus said,) “…and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8.32
Saints and Sinners
Once a parent or grandparent has died, it is common for us to form a distorted image of them that is either saint or sinner. If they had a positive impact on our lives, then we may remember them as all good and nearly perfect. If they had a negative impact on our lives, then we may remember them as all bad with no redeeming qualities. When in reality, good or bad, they were probably a mixture of both. They did some things well and some things badly. They were neither saint nor sinner. They were flawed, imperfect human beings, just like us.
Flawed, imperfect human beings
Revealing family secrets, even difficult ones, can help us see our parents, grandparents, or ancestors as more human — flawed, not perfect, not all good and not all bad. It can help us see them as having done the best they could in the circumstances of their lives. And when we finally learn about circumstances that may have been previously kept hidden, it can help us to be more sympathetic to the challenges they had to live through.
And, in that moment, we may that find something in us feels a little bit better, a little bit healed, a little bit more whole. You may find that you have a clearer sense of who you are and why you are the person you are.
From generation to generation
There is a difficult passage found in the biblical book of Deuteronomy:
“…I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me….”
Deuteronomy 5:9-10
Some people read this text and believe that God punishes children for the actions of their parents. That would be a cruel God. I think such a superficial interpretation of this text is a misunderstanding complicated by issues of translation from an ancient language and ancient context into a modern language and context. I fundamentally reject the notion of a God who punishes children for the actions of their parents, or a God who punishes anyone for the actions of someone else. We are all responsible for our own actions. However, I do believe that we are often subjected to the consequences of other people’s actions, and that may feel like unfair punishment. In that sense, it may sometimes feel like we are being punished for the actions of our parents.
I believe in a God of love. Another way of interpreting this passage, in the context of this blog series, may be to see it as the voice of one who feels unfairly punished because of the actions (known or unknown) of their parents or ancestors. The struggles in our parents’ and ancestors’ lives do impact our lives and the lives of our children, and their children too. Negative experiences can impact families for as much as four generations or more, if they are not addressed and healed. Unhealed trauma often just perpetuates down through generations until it is healed. But when those struggles are addressed and healed, they can be transformed into blessings that can last a thousand generations.
Unhealed trauma often just perpetuates down through generations until it is healed. But when those struggles are addressed and healed, they can be transformed into blessings that can last a thousand generations.
Ryk Brown
This is part of an ongoing personal blog series exploring the relationship between family history and spirituality.
