The difficulty of researching family secrets
The first question I often hear when I tell someone that I’ve written a book about a family secret is usually this: “Can you tell me the secret?”
Sure, I say. After I do, the next question is invariably something like this: “Can I tell you my family secret?”
It’s a universal subject. During the past two years, while researching my book, I have heard dozens of other family secrets: Hidden marriages, hidden divorces, hidden affairs, hidden crimes. Our family histories are filled with such ghosts, and still, they fascinate us, hold us in their thrall. In part, that’s because most of us rarely know much beyond the secret itself. Often, we are desperate to understand the reasons for the secrecy, but we don’t know the facts, the motivations, circumstances and the pressures that compelled someone to choose deceit rather than honesty. Sometimes, the story is buried behind a veil of official secrecy; more likely, it is blocked by family pretense and silence.
I encountered both in researching and writing Annie’s Ghosts.
In the name of privacy, state laws make it extremely difficult for anyone but the most determined to obtain records or other information about a mentally ill relative, even one who has died long ago. These laws, I have concluded, go overboard in preventing family members from asking legitimate questions, particularly about genetically based diseases.
Family secrets and official secrecy: a powerful combination that has made it nearly impossible to tell the story of thousands of people who lived, largely alone, in the nation’s mental institutions until the early 1970s, their names lost to time and memory.
That's one of the many reasons why I wanted to write Annie's Ghosts.
I don’t believe that our lives should be lived as open books, for anyone to read. I opted to tell the full story in Annie’s Ghosts. But even as I did, I wondered whether my mom, who died in 1999, would have approved of my decision.
One very simple test: If keeping a secret brings you pain (as I believe it did to my mom), then let the secret go.
Your thoughts?
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Cheryl wrote: "I have more layers of thoughts than should go into a comment box....here are a few."Giving Annie back her identity was one of the quiet satisfactions of researching and writing the book. Everyone has a story, but not everyone has someone to tell it. I learned, early in my research, that the government in Michigan (and, no doubt, in other states as well) receives inquiries every week from people only recently learned about a family member hidden away in an institution. State law, though, discourages them from pursuing any information.
We must respect privacy, but I think we must also respect history. If we close off records that document what happened, we close ourselves off from the past and what it can teach us.
Steve wrote:Giving Annie back her identity was one of the quiet satisfactions of researching and writing the..."
In an odd little way, it was one of the quiet satisfactions of reading the book too :) Annie is truly fortunate she had you as a nephew.
privacy vs. secrecy....I'd always want to respect the first as much as possible, but the second, it is a bit like a Pandora's box... Secrets can be a bit like roaches, a little light and we discover there are a lot more than we thought as they run to hide.
"In the name of privacy, state laws" I agree, adoption issues are similar in this. Who is the law actually protecting once someone is no longer alive?
I've never 'grown out of' wanting my mom's approval, even when I've chosen paths I knew she didn't like.
I heard Michel Kimmel speak the other day and he said "privilege is invisible to those who have it." Growing up without being teased and whispered about as one with the "crazy relative" might fall in the category of privilege. I'm better equipped to handle the knowledge as an adult and far enough removed by time, generations and distance (great-grandparent) to not be affected as much. I might feel different if I was living in a small area where everyone knows everyone and boredom breeds gossip.