Horizontal Family

Family – Vertical Vs Horizontal

When I think about family, I think about how we are related. There is a vertical family. Your parents and grandparents above you. Your children and grandchildren below you. Then there is the horizontal family. Your siblings, and their children and their children’s children. And further along the horizontal spectrum, your parents’ siblings, and their children and their children’s children.

With the loss of CJ and my parents, my horizontal family has become even more important to me.

My mother came from a family of thirteen, so that horizontal family is far reaching. There are first cousins, second cousins and third cousins once removed and so many more. There are even double first cousins – my mother’s sister married my dad’s brother, so we have the same lineage on both sides.

Over the last couple of years, we have been getting together for lunch a few times a year, and for me it has been wonderful to reconnect with them.

Reconnecting led me to want to make a family tree for us all. And what a daunting task it has turned out to be. From thirteen siblings, there were at least fifty children who had multiple generations of children.

I was intrigued by the idea of creating this family tree, to help me feel connected to these legions of others connected through family. The work is huge. It has taken me months just to figure out how to proceed. I have worked my way through two plus generations, but the tree has grown significantly from those two generations.

I have been stalled with the work but have renewed energy to gather all the information and start to put it together.

This tree is so important to me now with CJ gone. I want to see and feel these connections.

Let’s see how it goes – I am looking forward to the work.