Heather Murphy | Questions We Don't Ask

Stories in Our Roots 0:03
Welcome to the Stories in Our Roots podcast. I'm your host, Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives. Today, discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connected deeply with ourselves, those we love, and the world around us.

I'd like to welcome you to Stories in Our Roots. And I am Heather Murphy. Today, I want to talk about the questions we don't ask some of the interviews that I've done in the last month, both the ones that aired and the ones that are going to air next month got me thinking about this. Now, a couple years ago, I started scanning my grandmother's research binders, she has shelves have these binders that she has been working on for 60 years. And there was some discomfort in the family of who's going to get those binders, when she passes on. In order to kind of help alleviate some of that stress within the family, I decided I would scan on all the binders and get all the photos scanned, so that everyone in the family would have access to that. At first I wasn't very organized because I was kind of in like this panic state of I have to get this done as quickly as I can, in case the binders go to another part of the family that I and my part of the family and anybody else in the family who wants to would have digitized copies of this. So at first, I didn't quite label what I was scanning very well. But then I got that worked out. And I progressed along. And this project took a long time because there was just so much information in these research binders that my grandma had. Well, we finally got to the point where we were ready to let other family members know even like the extended family that we scanned all this information and we can send it out on flash drives for other people to have. I gave my grandma copies so that she could look through everything and make sure that everything's was the way that she wanted it to be. And she replied back to me like, what about the skeleton binder? And I was like, Oh, no, is that one of those binders that I scanned the very beginning and I didn't label my files very well. So I didn't know. And I looked through my information and I couldn't find it. And I was thinking, Oh, great. I have messed everything up. This is going to take hours and hours to undo. I brought my computer over to my grandma's house and was ready to spend the entire day figuring out what happened. It turns out that she missed that binder. She hadn't actually given it to me to scan. So everything was okay. She had gotten a different scanner by then and she was ready and willing to scan that binder herself. And my son didn't really want me home yet. He was so excited to have me gone for a few hours that I just hung out with my grandma for a few hours. She's scanning documents, and me working on some of our brick walls that needed DNA to help solve. And while I was working there with her, and I don't even know what exactly led to this conversation. She was scanning pictures about her father's side of the family. I was working on her mother's side of the family. And she told me about the day that her father died when she was nine years old. She told me how her dad was in the hospital. And her mom came and got her and her siblings. She was the oldest of five out of school and brought them to the hospital to see him but by the time they got to the hospital, he couldn't talk anymore. He wasn't aware of what was going on around him. And they brought the kids back to school. And when she came home after school, she found out that her dad had died. And that was a story that amazingly enough I had never thought to ask all I had in my brain was my grandma's died. Dad died when she was young. And I didn't think to ask what was that like grandma. Part of that was because that was a hard time in her life, I'm sure and I didn't want to bring up those feelings. Again. I didn't want to remind her of what that might felt like but how How valuable is it to me to know how that felt like for her, I found commonality with her and that, while my dad didn't die, when I was that age, he was in a really bad accident that completely changed our family. And at that same age, I can feel myself feeling similarly to the way she felt when her dad died. And I can see more commonalities and more frameworks going back to the generations of that feeling of being responsible for the family as a child. And I had never thought about that until I was spending time with my grandma on something that wasn't directly related. I didn't ask her that specific question. But something that we were working on reminded her of that, and she was able to tell me about it. Another thing that she talked about while we were visiting was how, until her 20s, she didn't know many of her dad's side of the family. And that does kind of blew my mind. Because here are my grandma that I know, has always known all the family and she can just talk about anyone and how they're related. And my grandpa's family is interrelated in their different ways, as well. And she knew his family since she was little. And so she talks about the family all the time, I was completely stunned that as a child, and until if she were she was married, she didn't know her relations on her dad's side of the family she didn't know cousins, aunts and uncles. And I never thought about that. I never thought to ask her about that, because I assumed all the relatives that she always talked about, were from both sides of the family. But they weren't. She told me a story about one relative on her dad's side of the family that told her that if she wanted to know about that side of the family that she should go ask this certain person. And so at some point had time she called that person, she set up a time that she could go to her home and ask these questions about her dad side of the family. She knocked on the door. And when the door opened, she was stunned. Because this woman's daughter who opened the door was someone my grandma knew really well that she had gone to school with that she had interacted with and she had no idea that she was so closely related. My grandma's great grandfather, she remembers him and he died when she was about 13 years old. And this is on her mother's side of the family. The thing about him is he was not raised by his birth family. We have one letter from a cousin that gives a little bit of information about what might have happened or what his birth surname might have been. But that's it. And she regrets that she didn't know more, that she didn't ask her great grandfather, about his childhood, he lived with a family that raised Him from about the age seven or eight. hindsight is 2020. Right. And as a 13 year old, you don't really think to ask your grandfather about his birth parents. She might not have even known that. The people who raised him weren't his birth family. But she always regretted that she didn't ask him more about it because she wonders what clues that could have led her to the answers. And the last couple years we've been working really hard with DNA to narrow it down and we're getting really close. And we've confirmed part of the family's story that the people that they were raised by were that his birth family was from his the woman that raised his family. And we have got that narrowed down. But we still don't know and she's been wondering this now for decades and wished she would have asked him earlier about it. So my question for you is what questions are you not asking your family members?

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Heather Murphy 10:11
Before we get into what those questions might be, let's talk about why you don't ask those questions. Because if you don't understand why you're not asking them, if you're not able to get rid of that block, then you're not going to ask the questions, even if you know what you want to ask. So first of all, life is busy, everybody is busy. And that kind of seems to be the catch all excuse for everything. I'm too busy to ask these questions. They're too busy to answer the questions. And we wait for a time sometime in the future. And sometimes that time never comes and that person passes away or they get all timers, or something happens that we have lost that opportunity. So we can't let this excuse of I'm busy, they're busy getting our way. Because at some point, we'll regret letting buisiness get in the way of the information that we really want. Another reason why we might not ask these questions is because other family members might not be forthcoming in talking about these things. Sometimes family members are like, well, that's the past just, that's the past doesn't matter anymore. And they're not going to talk to you or maybe your relationship with them is a little bit strained and you don't know how to talk with them. Some of the answers to these problems that we have have been encountered by other guests that have been on my podcast, one of the great suggestions is getting something gets some type of focal point, to focus your questions, to get a document or a photograph, and ask somebody about that specific thing. It doesn't take very long to ask somebody who's in this photograph and what was happening. Or to tell somebody, hey, I found this ancestor in the census, your grandfather in the census, and it said that he had this occupation? Can you tell me anything about that? Do you remember anything about what he did for work? As these little moments that we can take to ask just one or two questions, we do not need to think that we need to commit an hour. And one of the nice things about technology is that you can ask these questions just a little bit at a time. You don't have to physically be there, I think that's kind of part of the old mentality is that you have to physically be there as you're asking these questions. And because you're taking the time investment to gather all your equipment, and move everything to where that person is that you're going to dedicate an hour or two hours of time because of the upfront time investment. But with technology, all you have to do is send an email or a text or a photograph, and say, tell me about this one thing. It's a much lower time commitment for you, and a much lower time commitment for them. And so they're going to be able to answer these questions better for you. Sometimes you might not even know what questions to ask. Sometimes people say when you do just ask them in generalities, ask them about their life. They're like, Oh, I have nothing to say my life's not interesting. There's there's nothing to say. One of the things that you can do about that is make a timeline of your life, or make a timeline of their life. And think about the different things that have gone on in your life that you know about. And ask yourself if you know those things about your other family member, you know why you move to certain places? Do you know why they move to different places? You know why you chose a certain college to attend or why you picked a specific place to work. Do you know those same answers for your parents or your grandparents? Another thing to do as you build a timeline of their life, is to ask the question, why? Look at every single event in their life, and ask why did they do this? Why did they move? Why did they pick the occupation? And then ask them those why questions? Or how questions? How did you feel when this happened? What was it like when you moved to Germany with your husband who was in the military? What was that experience like for you? I know that my grandmother moved to Germany with my grandfather, when my mother was about seven years old. I have no idea how it felt to leave the United States and go to Germany. What kind of support system she had within the military? What my grandpa was doing the trips, they went on the places they saw, I don't have any of that, because I haven't asked. I just have the fact that they lived in Germany. So look at those facts on your family tree, make these timelines out and fill in the questions. Think about your ancestors, as whole people about your parents and your grandparents. And then think about how your grandparents knew their grandparents. What questions can you ask of those people that no record is going to tell you, they might hint at different things. But there's so many things that you can ask your family members that that are not going to be in records. And also keep in mind that it is not just your direct line that has those answers that you're looking for. You have aunts and uncles and you have great aunts and uncles and you have cousins that have interacted with the people that you have questions about. Sometimes different siblings have different all the time, different siblings have different relationships with their parents, I am six years older than my youngest sibling, her interaction with my parents is completely different than mine was the different experiences, they lived in a completely different place when I was away in college. I don't have those memories of what my mom did when they lived in that place. But my younger sister does. So how many other people can you ask questions of? And you'll be surprised at how many people are really willing, especially if you give them a specific thing to answer. Don't ask really broad questions, ads, ask specific questions. No matter how many questions you ask, and no matter how many people you interview, there's always going to come to a point, when you're going to say, I wish I would have asked this, that comes is the point where you can't beat yourself up over what you didn't ask. You have to look at what you did ask, even if it's only one or two questions, treasure, what you have, when the opportunity is gone. There's nothing that you can do. beating yourself up. If you didn't ask the questions. All you can do is move forward at that point. decide that yes, this certain person, you may not be able to ask those questions that you wanted to, but who else in your life is still around that you can ask those questions for and be proactive? And not wallowing in something that you can't change? There are so many questions, there are so many things that we can learn about our ancestors. If we decide to ask the questions, if we decide that we are not going to put off today, what we might not be able to do tomorrow, but not being overwhelmed that there is too much to do. That's another thing that gets in our way. We just feel Oh, there's too many questions to ask. There's too much to know. I'm just gonna wait until I have time to get all the answers. Well, let me tell you that time is not going to come. You're never going to have time to get all the answers. So why don't you focus on those things that are most important. And a lot of times this takes you thinking in a quiet time. As you look at your information, thinking about your family, what is it that you want to know most? Get those most important questions to you asked? And then as you do that other questions will come up that you can answer. But don't do it in a frenzy. Just do it with a clear mind and really think inside yourself. What is most important to me. Thank you for listening today. I hope you've got a few ideas and a little bit of motivation to go out and ask those questions to keep it simple, but to just start asking them and see what treasures that you can unfold as you ask the questions about your parents and grandparents and other family members. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Stories in Our Roots 19:13
Thank you for joining me today for Stories in Our Roots. Please help this podcast grow by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends. If you have feedback or would like to recommend someone to share their story head to storiesinourroots.com and fill out the forum. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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