The makings of me.

After a sincerely interesting conversation with a friend last night, I immediately thought about what I wanted to write about for my first blog entry ever. The conversation being had was concerning each other's family past. At least, the past we have experienced. The thought in my mind that kept creeping up however, was the past we didn't know about. That we will never know. The past of our past. What our grandparents experienced, where they thought their lives would lead, if they could even fathom that nowadays I would be the direct link to their futures.

The unfortunate part about this is that without investing some sort of money into research, you must rely on regurgitated facts from your family members to find anything out about the people responsible for you that you never knew. Normally this wouldn't be so bad, but you don't come from my family. Considering my own unfortunate memory abilities, I have never expected much from that of my family members memory's either. Not to mention bloodlines of booze and other sorts of chemical dependencies don't make for a compatible algorithm for calculating family history. Nevertheless, once and a while you get surprised by someones convincing story telling skills.

Throughout my entire life, the one story I will always remember about my ancestry came from my Great Uncle on my father's side. Since that side of the family is of Native American descent I can assure you this story will not intend to life your spirits. ( I did not mean for a pun right there, but it happened, enjoy it. ) The story is as follows:

Apparently My Great Great Grandfather was a Native American slave owner. A nasty old white man with money. At the good ol' slave trade one day he came across my Great Great Grandmother. Assumingly strong and beautiful, he saw many opportunities to be had with her. Upon purchase and once transported back to his home, he explained to his new purchase that her job was to do nothing more than whatever he asked her. Those demands included multiple child bearings, maintaining the house, and putting up with tons of abuse. Now don't forget, she was a slave. This gave my Great Great Grandfather the inclination for his ultimate punishment to my Great Great Grandmother. Due to fear of her trying to escape the miserable existence she had been purchased for, the decision was made that to keep her around there was only one solution: Slit both of her Achilles tendons. Therefore she suffered through giving birth, raising those children, and maintaining a home for an abusive husband all while not being to barely walk. This woman is one of the key reasons I am alive today and I will never even know her name because she was traded without any paperwork and was probably given some awful name like "Beth Anne" from my model-citizen Great Great Grandfather.


That's the type of stuff you hear from a book, not what you're expecting your Great Uncle to tell you over a bowl and good conversation. If he only knew what hearing that story did to my life.

This blog and all the changes I want to make happen in my life are all in her honor. I'll hopefully never have to deal with the kind of adversity she experienced, but if it weren't for her doing so, I wouldn't be able to type this right now. Through her slavery I have been freed, and I refuse to let the fear of chains ever stop me.