A BLOG FOR MY ANCESTORS: personal history

Fear

Fear has kept me silent before and sometimes it still does. I hate that kind of fear. It can be constricting, debilitating and shameful. It creates resentment of oneself. Even now and after many years, I feel uncomfortable just thinking and writing about it.

I used to fear speaking out because of the violence and anger that it would create within my home. That is the fear that sealed my mouth shut and helped me pretend in order to survive.

Now I am just fearful of being misjudged due to the social and religious stigmas attached to domestic violence. I have worked so hard to put my life back together over the last decade and I don't want to be perceived as victim again, EVER!

During recent years, I have had this strong urge to thoroughly write my own personal history as a way to continue healing, but I haven't done it.

I have dismissed this prompting many times by reminding myself that I have been given a new life and I need to move forward and that the person I was - is no longer and the years I lived with domestic violence are just faded memories of a very bad nightmare. However, 'stuffing' the experience has never felt right to me and it wasn't just a bad dream. It really happened.

This was the first family photo taken of us at the beginning of our journey of healing. The girls often express how this was one of the happiest summers of our lives. I felt like a caged bird that had been set free. I was so grateful that my children were able to finally have a happy mama. I was determined to set an example of strength and courage for them.

Then I started doing family history and something quite amazing happened. When I started digging into the past, I discovered ancestral stories of sorrow and joy, death and birth, marriage and divorce. There were inspirational stories of journeys completed and knowledge gained. Spiritual and emotional growth were intertwined among generations where some individuals suffered addictions, loneliness, suicide, and trauma.

Many of those stories were never spoken or told because of social norms or fear of shame. I knew that I needed to include them so that history of my family would be real and authentic. I felt that this knowledge would somehow bless the posterity of my ancestors. I just didn’t realize that these blessings would begin with me.

While I have been gathering and learning about the histories of the people in my family, I have become more confident and proud of even the most difficult parts of my own personal history. Authentically writing the stories of my ancestors has helped me overcome the fear of sharing the hardest parts of my own.

Reading about the tragedies, as well as the triumphs of my ancestors, has helped me to make personal connections with them across generations of time. They seem more real to me. I feel like my familiar support system includes those that have gone on before and they are cheering me on in heaven. I am strengthened by their examples and I am learning wisdom from all of their varied choices and different journeys.

This type of perspective has helped me to see more clearly how the adversity in my life has been an important part of appreciating the joy that I now experience. My joy and gratitude far outweighs any fear that I may still feel and as Great Grandpa Goulé would say, "It has given me the gumption to speak out."

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1:20 PM
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Skeletons

adversity

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton,

you may as well make it dance.”

-George Bernard Shaw

So, what do you do when you find a giant, 165 year old skeleton in the closet? You get all the women in the family together to ruminate the discovery. Our first annual Smith|Goulé family history girls-night-out happened on the eve of Halloween. It was an eventful evening for our family. The first of its kind and a tradition we hope will continue for years to come.

A few weeks before we all gathered in a large hotel room in Park City, one of my aunts made an unexpected discovery. She had been perusing old English newspapers online through the FindMyPast website. After typing in the name of Louis Henry Goulé and to her surprise many articles popped up in the result field giving accounts of the same 1845 event: Murder at Durham!

There were numerous accounts of the murder and it was the topic of much discussion in the town of Durham at the time. Louis Henry was well-known as the Superintendent of the Police. He shot his wife, Emma in the arm after a fit of jealousy. On the night of June 10, 1845, Louis Henry accused her of spending too much time with another man. Emma adamantly denied his accusations in the presence of other family members before she was shot. She died 6 days later from lockjaw caused by the gunshot wound. Louis Henry was found guilty of manslaughter on grounds of insanity and sentenced to three years prison time. He was acquitted of more severe charges which would have surely resulted in a hanging sentence and ultimately the end of that branch of my family tree.

This 3rd great-grandfather of mine left prison a changed man. He moved back to Ombersley where he originated and where his extended family still resided. He attended school to become a veterinarian and then married my 3rd great-grandmother, Mary Ann Knott. Together they had three children (he had no children with his first wife) and lived a seemingly quiet life after that.

My great-grandfather, Harry Thornley never spoke about this story or his grandfather to anyone in the family. We don't even know if he knew about it himself. It truly was a skeleton buried deep within our family closet until this month and 165 years later.

During our girls weekend we discussed all of this and then the victim, Emma Gyles. She had married one of our ancestors and her life had been cut short at just 31 years of age because of her husband's impulsive choice to be violent. We pulled out our laptops and spent time researching her family members. We read about her feisty attitude described in the testimonies of others and celebrated her assertiveness. We tried to pay homage to her by talking about what her life might have been like at that time. We all mourned her passing while trying to imagine how difficult it was for her family to overcome this loss in their lives.

Until this point, I had felt comfortable only sharing stories of my ancestors which included those in my direct line that had been victims and survivors of circumstance and abuse. I had never discovered a perpetrator directly in my ancestral line. I realized that I really only wanted to write stories about the heroes and heroines in my family; a woman that gave birth in a covered wagon with the threat of an Indian attack outside; brave young men escaping the French revolution in the dead of night; young girls helping their families settle the West and build up towns; brave men rescuing pioneers from certain death during a winter snowstorm.

This realization helped me understand that I also need to embrace all the tragedies that make up my family history. By doing so, I am acknowledging the pain and shame that comes to families who may have a member among them who chooses to cause violence, or impulsively makes poor choices negatively impacting the lives of others around them.

All of the sudden I felt so much compassion for families who suffer this type of adversity. I also realized how important it is to avoid any type of concluding judgements when discussing families or parents of perpetrators. Through the countless hours of time that I have spent researching my own family, I have also concluded that if any one of us is to dig long enough we will surely find deeply, embedded skeletons within each of our family closets. It is also important to remember that making poor choices is not in our DNA. Being a perpetrator of violence is not in a person's genetic make-up. It is a choice! Louis Henry Goulé made a very poor choice and it resulted in the death of his first wife. His actions should not cause me to feel shame, but should help me to feel greater empathy towards others.

Family History Girl's Night - After an afternoon at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah and a yummy dinner at Sugar House BBQ, we headed to a large family suite in a Park City Hotel.

We stayed up chatting and researching until 2 AM. We are so sleepy and tired in this picture!

Slumber Party!

Aunt Linda is up way past her bedtime!

The next morning and more exciting discoveries are made after just 5 hours of sleep! We had a hard time
stopping and saying our good-byes!

Beautiful mother and daughter look a likes, deep in thought and discussion!

Hey, Smith|Goulé women mark your calendars! Next year's Family History Girl's Weekend is already scheduled for November 11 & 12!

11:11 PM
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Thirst

adversity

My head injury was the catalyst that helped me to see how important it was for me to change my life. Up until the point of the horse accident, I realized that my children had mostly seen me sad, stressed, or scared. When I did seem happy, it was usually forced and fake for the children's sake. So while lying on my back in a horse corral and staring at the dark sky on that spring night in 2004, I thought to myself that if I die now my children will have never known me to be truly happy. That thought caused me to feel a deep sadness for my children. I wanted a chance to make that not be true and that is when I started to change my life.

Recovering from a traumatic brain injury is like being in a deep and sluggish fog that slowly starts to dissipate over time. I knew that I had hurt myself, especially my brain when my head made contact with the metal fence. However, I didn't know the extent of my injury immediately.

After arriving at the hospital by ambulance the night after the horse accident, my world started to get very foggy. I guess the adrenaline which had hit my blood stream after being thrown from the horse had finally stopped pumping through my veins. The swelling of my forehead had continued. Apparently the right side of my head had sort of a Frankenstein quality to it. At least that was what I was told by the ER nurse. It wasn't aesthetically comforting to know that my head looked large and squarish, but medically it was probably good news! Most of the swelling was occurring outside of my skull. Initial brain scans showed no bleeds on my brain and so the doctors stated I had a severe concussion and should consider myself lucky. They kept me for observation for a few more hours and since I had never lost consciousness, they released me.

I wanted to get home to my girls. My daughter was fine and I was so grateful knowing that nothing had been injured or broken on her little body. She had been released hours earlier after all of her scans and x-rays came back normal. So I tried to get out of my hospital bed and move to the wheel chair.

The problem is I couldn't walk. Whenever I moved the world started spinning so fast I had to fall to the floor and hold on for the ride and then hold perfectly still until it stopped. Even in bed I fought the vertigo. If I turned over or re-positioned my head, I felt myself and the bed start spinning in a fast circle. I was grateful the vertigo didn't cause nausea for me like it can for others, but I still couldn't function because I couldn't move. They told me that the intense vertigo would gradually go away and before I left the hospital they fitted me with a pair of crutches to use to get around.

So I went home and was soon left alone to recover with my six month old baby. Holding a baby while using crutches is impossible and since I was afraid of falling while carrying her, I crawled. I have memories of crawling across my bedroom floor to her crib. Using the crib to hoist myself up and get her out. Then I would use the crib with my one free arm to slowly drop to the ground and one arm crawl back to bed. It was awkward but safe and it got us to my bed where I could lay down and nurse her. She would sit and play on the bed until I crawled back to her crib and put her in. Thank goodness she hadn't started crawling yet herself.

I don't know how long it was before my mother and sister arrived and saw me like this. They were shocked when they saw the condition that I was in and that I was alone. I hadn't thought to call for help, I was so out of it. I was a sight to behold. The large hematoma on my head had slowly changed to a deep purplish blue and the color dripped down my face under the skin. In addition, to the dramatic purple and blue hues on the right side of my face, my eye was black and swollen. My hair was matted and still had remnants of dirt from the horse arena. I was so grateful that they could help me wash it.

The doctors were correct. The vertigo slowly left over time and a week later I was back at work teaching and wearing sunglasses. I didn't want to scare my first graders when they looked at my face. The swelling had gone down but now my bruising was starting to turn green and brown on my face and neck. I still struggled with positional vertigo. When I would focus with my right eye to write on the board, my classroom would start spinning. If I changed position and held still it would eventually stop. There were other subtle things that I noticed. It was hard to stay focused on a task for an extended amount of time. For the first time in my life, I suffered from headaches. I would become extremely fatigued by the end of the day and then I started to get thirsty.

It wasn’t a normal thirst, like the kind I had experienced in the past. This intense thirst started gradually until it became so powerful that I would have licked up a dirty puddle off the ground if that is all I could have found to drink.

I first noticed it when I was pumping breast milk during morning recess for my baby. There were a couple of us working moms and so the school had turned a large closet in the building into a lactation room where we could plug in the pumps and collect the milk for our babies. I remember thinking. Wow, I'm really thirsty. It must be the change of the weather (it was getting hotter outside) or I must be producing more milk.

Every day I would get a little thirstier. Eventually, I got to the point where I was drinking a full water bottle hourly and then running to the bathroom to pee it all out. This lasted all day and all night long. For the hour that I would sleep in between hydrating and dehydrating sessions at night, I would dream of water. Water, Water, Water! Tall glasses of water, streams of ice cold water, waterfalls, waves of water and in my dreams I would be trying to drink the water and yet I never could get it to my mouth. I would wake up desperate for water and running to the bathroom to pee out more water. It was as if every cell in my body was shrinking and screaming for water at the same time. I would gulp it down and it still wasn't enough. It was exhausting and I knew something was seriously wrong with me.

I scheduled an appointment with my doctor. I needed to see him anyway. It had been a month since the accident. He specialized in emergency medicine and sports medicine and he knew right away what was wrong with me. “It sounds like you’ve injured your pituitary,” he stated matter of factly. “The small master regulatory gland located in the center of the brain. It's very hard to injure that." He said, "Especially without damaging other areas of the brain.” He ordered an MRI to confirm it and called me after receiving the results. He further explained, "Your pituitary was almost ripped from its location when you jolted your brain in the fall. Its blood supply was compromised." He concluded that my pituitary was no longer functioning and had begun to atrophy.

He also went on to explain that my body would no longer be able to retain water on its own. Treatment consists of taking a synthetic hormone every 4-6 hours daily or when the crazy thirst starts for the rest of my life in order to avoid dehydration. The medical diagnosis was Central Diabetes Insipidus.

"Be grateful you didn't break your neck or suffer cognitive brain damage," he went on to say. "It really is quite a miracle." I left slightly in shock and trying to feel grateful but mourning the loss of my pituitary. I began to wonder how my life would be affected by this change.

As my pituitary shrunk and atrophied, my courage grew. I knew now how short life could be now. A slight change in the angle I fell or the force of the fall could have easily changed the outcome of the injury causing it to be much more debilitating or fatal. How easy my life could have ended that night. Every day was a gift now and I knew it!

My mother once wisely said to me, "Wendy, you live with what you allow and if you choose to allow it and live with it, you must accept it!" Well, for almost 15 years I had lived with abuse and allowed it to happen. I wasn't going to accept it anymore.

I had given all of my power and control to someone else and trying to take that back is a very hard thing to do. It almost seems impossible at times.

I had made the mistake for years thinking that someone and something outside of myself was responsible for making me happy. I kept waiting for things to change, for him to change. When all a long I was the one needing to change in order to find happiness!

I felt empowered now and I couldn't be intimidated. I felt stronger and more confident with the knowledge that happiness was attainable and within my reach. I was determined to make a better life for my daughters.

Every time I felt thirsty, I was reminded of this and so constantly I was recommitting myself to moving forward with this change. If I felt weak I would eventually soon feel thirsty and then be reminded again. This process helped to strengthen me.

I knew that God had protected me and had spared my life. I felt His help and hand in my life. I also began to clearly see that my happiness did not include the man that I had been married to for all of those years.

When I started to express this and assert myself, the violence increased. However, my thirst for happiness and peace were far greater than my fears and so I was able to slowly begin to change my life.

12:09 PM
3 Comments

Fear

Skeletons

Thirst

Every time I felt thirsty, I was reminded of this and so constantly I was recommitting myself to moving forward with this change. If I felt weak I would eventually soon feel thirsty and then be reminded again. This process helped to strengthen me.

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