|
What is Your Family Myth?
Exploring stories that shape families
BY ARLENE F. HARDER, MA, MFT
PLEASE NOTE: This piece is part of three articles dealing with rituals, rules and myths of families. Since all three use my family of origin as an example, you may understand this better if you also read: What Are Your Family Rules? and Family Rituals and Customs Reinforce Family Rules.
You may be familiar with the myths of ancient Greece or mythical tales of heroic exploits of heroes set down in legends. We know these myths aren't factually true, however, repeated over and over again, they help us understand how different aspects of the human character are formed and expressed.
Well, it seems that families also create myths. These are stories told by and about the family which relate incidents of the family's history or qualities of family members and are told and retold without regard to accuracy. Some are positive, some are not. But the effect and characteristics of myths are created through emotional content, the manner in which the story is told, or simply through the emotional impact the story has on the family.
I remember the beginning of an important Fabian myth in April, 1942. We were in the kitchen and my mother was crying. We asked why and she simply said, "Grandma Gilbertson died today of cancer." No details. Perhaps she didn't have the strength, or see the need, to decide how to embellish the lie. A true statement would have been, "Today Grandma Gilbertson committed suicide." Yet my mother's one sentence was repeated every time anyone talked about my father's mother.
It was thirty years later when I told my mother that I had learned the truth from an aunt. When I asked her why she had given a false explanation for Grandma's death, my mother answered simply. "Your father was afraid he might have inherited his mother's mental illness." My parents undoubtedly believed they were wise in choosing to deny the reality of how she died. Also, of course, this was during a time when suicide was seldom mentioned. So denial was a desirable alternative to the continual scrutiny and evaluation my father imagined he would face if we children, and others, knew the truth.
Consequently, this short, but powerful, myth was conceived and perpetuated to prevent us, and perhaps my father himself, from dealing with the issue of mental illness. It is also important to note that this is an example of the way in which my mother supported and protected my father, often to her own detriment. Another example is the way in which she deliberately suppressed her fine artistic abilities for years so that he could receive, from his own art work, the praise she felt his ego needed.
However, I believe there was an important correlation to this excuse for the falsehood. I infer this by observing the effect the myth had on our family. By protecting my father, it kept him as the absolute authority, greatly supporting the Fabian family construct. What would happen if my father was seen to have even the "possibility" of a tendency toward mental illness? I believe he imagined that any weakness or mistake of his could then undermine his position in the family. If we didn't know the truth, we children could not find, or think to look for, a chink in the armor of the absolute authority he wished to be.
A Few Additional Notes
After I left home and was struggling to understand who I was and why I did some of the things I did, my Aunt Ruth told me that my parents would often say they had " three children and Arlene." I was shocked at first by this statement, yet I also realized that it helped explain a number of things.
As I've studied psychology over the past twenty years, I've come to recognize the importance of temperament. My temperament squirmed and wiggled, it wouldn't sit still, it wouldn't stop asking questions and probing, even when it got me in trouble. I wasn't as malleable as my siblings.
Yet I can see now that my father tried in his own way to do the best he could with this little girl. For example, when the movie "National Velvet" starring Elizabeth Taylor came to our local theater, he took me to see it. I believe it was about the time of my twelfth birthday. And he sat through it twice!! I knew at the time that his willingness to do so was a real gift. But I didn't recognize he was trying hard to do something special for this awkward, challenging daughter of his, a daughter who wanted to be loved just as she was.
Another time I remember that was special was a week he and I spent at a cabin we had for retreats at Pell Lake in Wisconsin when we were living in Chicago. He needed to put on a new roof and I came along to "help", which meant I handed him boards and nails now and then. I suspect now that he wanted what today we would call a father-daughter "bonding experience. Certainly I did enjoy it. However, since I chafed so much under his parental style—and I realize the parenting advice of that era didn't emphasis the need to be more emotionally empathic with one's children—I failed to recognize at the time his effort to connect.
Since then I've become a parent myself (as well as a grandparent) and know all too well how much our intentions as parents can be misconstrued [see Letting Go of Our Adult Children: When What We Do is Never Enough]. I hope he knows I forgive him for not being the perfect parent I wanted and I hope he has forgiven me for giving him so much grief.
© Copyright 1983, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT, Revised 2005
| 
