A few months ago, I crashed a party.
Technically, it wasn’t a party. It was a video conference that my friend knew I would appreciate.
So, she invited me to join a virtual alumni program her alma mater, Emory University, was hosting. The school invited one of its most popular, most loved and longest tenured professors to speak.
According to his university bio, Marshall P. Duke received his B.A. in general psychology from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Indiana University. Following two years of service as a psychologist in the Army, he joined the Emory faculty in 1970 — and he’s been teaching and researching ever since.
His topic “The Power of Family Stories” was right up my alley. At first, I felt a bit out of place. The people there were very Emory, which I didn’t know was a thing until that moment. However, after a few minutes, I let those misgivings go.
Duke was speaking my language.
Storytelling was prized in my family.
As a child, I couldn’t get enough stories from my grandparents, my great-grandparents, my aunts, uncles and more. Back then, it was not my place to tell stories. I was a child — I was a listener.
Duke’s presentation on the power of multi-generational family members sharing stories resonated with me. His research shows that family stories transmit resilience to children — the more children know their family stories the more resilient they are.
He said a child develops an intergenerational sense of self just by listening to the stories grandparents tell (can also be grandparent-type figures). Parents’ stories don’t have the same power as grandparents, according to Duke — and his research shows that the theory holds true for adopted children too.
I understood.
As a child, I begged older family members to tell stories. I had the good fortune to spend a lot of time with my grandparents back then. In thinking about the stories I begged them to tell again and again, I realize most of them were sad or about extreme hardship, even trauma.
On this side of things, I realize the parallels between the stories I loved hearing most and the themes of many Disney childhood classics.
I remember asking my grandfather on multiple occasions to tell me the story about the day his father died. I’m guessing that he told me that story at least 20 times when I was 5 years old. It’s a rather gruesome story about how he and his dad had been walking home through the woods, after working in a field. A storm came up. A limb fell and knocked the hoe my great-grandfather was carrying into his head.
My grandfather, who had been 17 at the time, rode a horse to town to get the doctor, who said he would “be on directly,” that he was eating supper at the moment. My grandfather rode his horse back home and his father died shortly thereafter.
I have carried elements of that story and so many others with me ever since. As an adolescent, I recognized that my grandparents, two of whom were born in the 1890s, were much older than my friends’ grandparents. My grandparents’ stories gave me glimpses into what life was like at the turn of the last century. I remember asking them about the first time they saw an airplane in the sky or the first time they rode in a car.
I hung on to the sentiments of their stories and carried them with me in a way that made Duke’s observations hyper-real.
Duke said that when we have a sense of our families, we have an image of what we are supposed to be “in our family constellation.” Additionally, the telling of the stories is life-affirming for the grandparents too.
Duke explained that our family stories become our own stories, yielding an understanding of individual responsibility to live in harmony with the bigger family story. With that lens, when I think about what I took from the story about my great-grandfather’s death, I believe the seeds were planted to go get help when it was needed and to be clear about the urgency of the situation, not taking no for an answer when need be.
Interestingly, having a story to own seems to be more important than the details of the story itself.
The moral of this story is: Tell them how you met. Tell them where you worked. Tell them about that time you broke your leg or about making jam with your grandmother.
We need more resilience in this world.
Tell them your stories.
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Life-affirming family stories help us understand our place in the world - The Advocate
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