Roots of Identity

Family psychology straddles both individual psychology and sociology. The Journal of Family Psychology states that family psychology "includes systems perspectives on the multiple influences on relationships, developmental perspectives on how relationships are formed and sustained over time, cultural perspectives on how society and traditions affect relationships, the intersection of individual differences and social relationships, and practice components in how to affect real and meaningful changes in couple, parent, and family relationships." Some individual psychological problems can be traced to what I call "family structure issues". This is where the structure of the family itself is the root of the issue. Omissions of the truth, partial truths, and outright lies about the structure of the family  —  who is related to whom and how  —  can cause varying levels of individual trauma and negative relationships. Surprisingly, this is where the role of genealogy can...

Who abandoned whom? Is the one who leaves, the same as the one who abandons? Or was the one who left, instead, abandoned by others, already in place, and leaving was the only solution left to keep their sanity? “When one is abandoned, one is left alone. This can happen through physical absence as well as physical presence. In fact to be abandoned by someone who is physically present is much more crazymaking.” – John Bradshaw Horace Allen "Al" Kerns , 27 years old, 1930. Al Kerns married Jessie Mae Longan sometime in January 1926, in Oklahoma. He was 23 years old and she was 18 years old, though she lied about her age on the marriage certificate and marked that she was 21 or older. Jessie Mae Longan , sometime before 1927. They had one child, Dovie Sue Kerns , born on 19 January 1927 in Skiatook, Tulsa County, Oklahoma, United States. She went by the name Sue. Dovie Sue Kerns , age 3, 1930. Tulsa County, Oklahoma I had known that Jessie was married 3 times. Nobody ever talke...

 Newspapers can make all the difference. You can find information that you never knew existed, or find parts of a life story that helps to paint a picture of a family member. Back row, left to right: Glenn, Daisy, Roy, Michael Ora. Second row: Freeda (leaning against her mother's leg), Addie (mother), Samuel (father), Dorothy, Archie. Seated in front of Samuel: Howard. Not pictured: Harriet, as she had recently passed away. My wife's grandmother was  Freeda McCarthy . Above is a photo of the McCarthy family, in Hand County, South Dakota.  Hand County, South Dakota It's a photo taken of a printout of a scanned photo. We would like to get an actual digital copy of the photo, if we can find out who has the original. We knew that Freeda was the girl leaning against her mother's leg. Her parents were  Samuel "Sam" McCarthy  and  Adaline "Addie" (Carl) McCarthy . We also knew that this was taken sometime after Freeda's older sister,  Harriet , had pass...

It starts with a death. Cirrhosis of the liver. So he was an alcoholic. I suppose that's not unusual in 1913, the year of his death, in Kentucky, home of moonshine and copper stills hidden away in the woods. I'm already unhappy for being related to this guy because he was clearly an alcoholic. He had a wife and a large family of 9 children. One of those children was my great-grandfather, who was responsible for me growing up not in Kentucky, but in Oklahoma. I'm not completely sure that that was an improvement. Surely any alcoholic was abusive. They usually are, right? His wife, Sarah, was probably relieved at his passing. Yet, here's a photo of Sarah, her hand on her husband's gravestone. There is a photo of him embedded at the top of the column. She's looking away, clearly distraught. Her sorrow is palpable through the grainy photograph. It was clear she missed him. It was clear that she loved him dearly, despite his faults. After all, she married him, stuck w...