Previously published on Facebook in 2020.
In a writing class - as is usual with writing prompts - what comes out is often not what you expect. My writing was laced with bitterness and resentment and it was the voice of my great-grandmother Anna Meckel. I cried during the sharing section (ugh but whatever) and I wrote "pining for the pines" of Germany but I was sure that Anna was born in Texas. This confused me and I looked it up after class.
She was born in Texas.
Her mother also was born in Texas - Henrietta Schulmeier
It was Henrietta's mother, Susanna, who bore the broken heart. Who spent a life regretting leaving the area of Menteroda and Thuringia, Germany. The mountains. The dense forest. The rivers, streams, ice, and snow.
Susanna Catharina Ackermann (Krause 2nd marriage) 1812 to 1869 was the daughter of Susane Magdalena Herold and Johann Christopher Ackermann.
Susanna Catharina married Johann Valentin Schulmeier and together with 4 children they left Germany in 1844. Susane Magdelena accompanied them but died en route in New Orleans, Lousiana as did Susanna and Johann's oldest son.
At age 32 she left the mountains and never saw them again. She arrived through New Orleans on the way to Texas freshly motherless and missing her firstborn. I can feel her exhaustion echoing down the ages.
I've been asking my Dead to tell me the stories that relate to very clear and obvious patterns in my family's lives. Your dead will tell you too if you ask but be sure you want them because they will not shut up once you open that door!
Anna poured out the bitterness and restless dissatisfaction today but it wasn't born in her. It was born in and handed from Susanna to Henrietta to Anna to her son Orbra to my mother (I won't speak for her here because I don't know her experience of this aspect) and to me.
Many many many immigrants came to America with a sense of adventure and hope. Susanna included.
What she didn't know is that her mother and oldest son would die along the way. That New Braunfels, Texas might as well be another planet from her beloved mountains. She couldn't have known ahead of time and she couldn't go home once she did. She lived with a bitter stuckness and rock-hard regret.
Rather than adapt and put roots down in the land (land stolen from Apache, Coahuiltecan, Jumano, and Tonkawa) where there are tons of trees and hills and water she closed up, went inward. Her regret turned to bitter resentment over what might have been had they never come to this new land without any snow. Her heart hardened at the choices made which were irreversible.
Did she even know how to grieve? Was she allowed to? She couldn't have known her physical body would experience an energetic death when they left their lands. She wouldnt have known to name her despair as a body grieving for the only land it had ever lived on.
She had no one to help her ground into this new place of rolling hills, bluebonnets, and boars.
I can't even imagine how hard the journey was and to lose 2 very important people along the way?
Devastating.
These things are handed down. These wounds, these unresolved miseries but the good news is we can change them when we know they exist.
We can witness our dead. We can hear their stories. We can heal their wounds and thereby our own.
Our dead can be heard and validayed by us in ways they could not be heard during their physical lives. Repeating patterns have an origin somewhere and our ancestors want us to heal these as much as ae do.
We all thrive when fully embodied in the present day. Our lives are meant to be our own. Our ancestors want us to be sovereign over our experiences.
And the best way start, is to invite them to tell us their stories.
XO,
LMW