Family Secrets : You couldn’t make it up.

 

John Bradshaw heralded the Codependency movement way back in the mid 80′s and in 1995 his book – FAMILY SECRETS : What you don’t know CAN hurt you – provided the base line for further dysfunctional family structures. Any Bradshaw book will encourage discussion and his focus on genetic patterning helped me fight liver disease. I was eager to find any clue for a cure and it led me to working with " The Gift of History " – taking time to find out where I  came from and what patterns I inherited.  Unless you are an IV drug user, Chronic Hepatitis B Virus is mainly a sexually transmitted disease and certainly this is how I contracted the virus in 1970 before becoming a super-carrier infecting everyone in my wake. Boy was I busy.

 

Working through recovery programmes, rebirthing and relationship seminars my family couldn’t hide under the bed. My family experience was no best-selling " Misery Lit " tome  -  no violence, abusive put downs or drunken parents so I felt like a fish out of water listening to heartbreak stories of others . Where did I fit in? Why had I ended up a sex addict, alcoholic, drug fucked bankrupt riddled with a terminal viral condition? If only Jessica was around from MURDER SHE WROTE – she can solve anything. 

 

I needed to dig deeper for the confirming clues.  My brother and I grew up in a confused vision of family as my mother was fostered so all our aunties weren’t blood relations or " real aunties " at all. In 1930 my mothers birth mother ( my granny ) paid another woman to bring her daughter up. This was not unusual before Social Services and she could afford it being an independant working woman.  Mums birth mother ( my granny ) was a street prostitute in the 1920s/30s in Kilburn High Road North London, eager to take advantage of the influx of Irish Male immigrants building the road infrastructure between the wars. My mother left the family home aged 3  with the woman I called " nanny " later to be told that nanny wasn’t a real nanny. Confused? She told us she remembered men coming to the house and being given sweets by them. Her older sister had already taking on the family business and for some reason my Mum escaped being put out on the streets as a child prostitute. Both myself and my brother developed  chronic alcoholism and it is likely that my genetic grandfather was a " punter " who " enjoyed a drink ". I must have been 10 or 11 when I was told the truth by my mum, that " nanny " wasn’t our real nanny. When I finally nailed my demons in 1982 accepting that I could no longer safely drink again the search for who, what & why went on.  I needed to know whose fault it was that booze was gonna be snatched from my hand for ever. Eventually I stopped blaming and started accepting.

 

One third of all Alcoholics have an alcoholic parent while the remainder often have an alcoholic grandparent. Alcoholism can skip a generation when the child decides not to be like " them ". Instead they inherit low esteem and a desire for control and respectability. This was my mother but toward the end of her life she developed an alcohol problem. This helped me to see that some weakness in DNA, some allergy to alcohol could be passed on through the genes. If this was so it prompted me to wonder what else I was carrying so I began to inspect what I DID know about in order to find the FAMILY SECRETS. 

 

On inspection of my own relationship structures where I would create a 15 – 20 year gap between male partners and myself, I discovered that when my father was born his Dad was 84 and his Mum just past 40. Both of them died soon after Dads birth so he was brought up by 2 older sisters, one was in the Salvation Army for 30 years and the other became a " ladies companion " a beard for lesbianism. When my Dad was old enough to fend for himself ( age 14 ) she travelled the world like Maggie Smith to Bette Davis in " Death On The Nile ". How fantastic is that? She ended up living in a rather expensive retirement home in Worthing paid for by the dead lover but after all that travelling she soon got bored so she got a job at Worthing Odeon Cinema as an usherette. Unfortunately she lied about her age and after a fall in the aisle with a hand-torch for company they discovered she was 73 so she lost her employ. Aunt Fan is part of my genetics. Bless her.

 

Todays task while flipping through the photo album is to trail back to what you know about your family. Like a jigsaw it’s best if you find the straight edge bits first ( the bits you know ) before settling focus on the hole in the doughnut before you. Walk, write, draw and think. Find out who you are and what you have inherited through no fault of your own. Example :  Me and my brother had bright red hair and freckles as a kid while Mum & dad had shades of Brown. Thanks Irish Punter Grandad for this cross to bear.

 

My Dad met my mum when he was 24 – she was 14.

 

. . . and so this Gary Glitter story will continue . . .