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Researching your own families history and having to scrap together piece by piece w/only oral records of everything is hard. There's only pics and VHS tapes but my family has really nothing physical.
Also hard when mementos were left behind in their home country, a lot was forgotten or warped due to their trauma, and also some of us are thousands and thousands miles of apart due to borders, deportation, and ICE.
There's a lot the internet can give you. I know that and it has filled the gaps and helped me help my family put some things in a clearer context but academic account hold very little to their lived experiences and own knowledge, for me. I'm a oral history person, always been.
Like there's so much I do not have access to and so many connections I have lost out on. One thing that makes me absolutely depressed till this day is I was never that close to my late abuelos bc our family grew apart often, and my parents divorced early in my life.
Abuelo on my dad's side would give us these jars full of coins, all kinds, every now and then to give us some $$ but to also just make us happy and he'd put cute little stickers on em. I don't have many memories w/him bc I didn't see him much and when I did he was sick in bed.
You don't understand how much of my problems stem from being estranged from some family, missing out on connections, having folks deported, my parents giving up on teaching us anything but our grandparents tried, being in a family where there was little room to have long convos
Everybody was always busy. Hardly anyone had time for talks, long talks, and deep ones at that. Everybody was working, resting, then working again. Folks were in jail. Folks got deported. Folks were sick. Like so much disconnection and trauma forced onto our families.
I think if I was as close as some of my friends are to their family, extended family too, and close to where they have these long talks and hangouts I craved when I was little, I'd be in a much better place today. I've been alone and so disconnected from my folks all my life.
I've only recently begun to make up for all this lost time, estrangement, and drifts that have separated me from actually talking to family, outside of my mom and dad. Literally my mom and I only grew close when I was in sophomore year of high school! My dad too!
I've had to teach myself so much and heal a lot on my own. I've had to grow up a lot by myself and like help myself get through things so I've only recently begun to want to try and not let myself be permanently disconnected from family I truly want to have in my life.
Like this doesn't even explain the half of it but I want to do what my family has really been awful at, and that's actually being close and connected to one another. We r not a lovey dovey or tight knit family and I don't want that pattern to continue. I
Woops if you're actually reading this thread, sorry. This is my journal space
. Rlly wish to know more and do better for all of us. Some family I don't want to connect w/bc they're awful and just don't have the same views as me and would probably h8 half the identities I hold
. Rlly wish to know more and do better for all of us. Some family I don't want to connect w/bc they're awful and just don't have the same views as me and would probably h8 half the identities I hold
Pero like I am also highly aware that they don't understand much about these things, especially in a U.Sian context, and like I hope they'd be willing to change and think some would bc they love me but like sum others no tbh, especially the ableist transphobic men.
