This is many things:
a loving and caring apology, a request for forgiveness, and also simultaneously a reqest for loving and caring apology, mutual forgiveness, full understanding, and overdue family reconciliation that would honor all our mothers, as well as our fathers, and all their children and kin with kindness.
I have let a combination of hurt feelings, culturally induced illusions of separation, and a propensity for too patient hope for spontaneous healing which comes from passage of time instead of a painless and practical plan for something better, stand in my way, and that has hurt and depleted all of us.
As we all know, there was a falling out of our family that occurred shortly after the passing from our midst on Earth of our Mother/Aunt and a central family personage, our Beautiful Harriet in about 25 years ago. If we could see her now, our Harriet would be in her early 90’s, and as she was then, very young looking and young at heart for her age. .
25 years ago, when Harriet passed, one of my cousins, Rollin, with much good intent, attempted to act as an attorney for our family in relations to the handling of my mother’s financial inheritance (her legacy of love and our unforgettable memories of her are the most important inheritance), and I, and initially also Julianne in initial her communications to me, did not want him to do this. Subsequently, when I made the mistake on Harriet’s attorney’s (very bad) advise of having both Julianne and I get each our own attorney, Julianne changed her mind and invited Rollin to act as her attorney. Complex family interactions followed, leading to a breach in my relations as a circle with cousins Diana, Steven as much as Rollin, to a milder extent, Sam and eventually, especially when she moved back to Chicago from Florida, Our Aunt Jackie, Harriet’s Sister.
This situation had an impact on my relationship with my Sister Julianne Marie and Nephew Louis Z, and our family fulfillment of potential as a whole, and was never completely healed or transcended, for many reasons, including geographical distance that may have been felt to make communication seem awkward. But, I and many wiser than I who would also agree, because of this, we must all now look at ways to understand what happened more fully, reconcile as closely related family, and seek and obtain help to do so if we need it.
First, I want to say that while my intentions have always been respectful, emotionally caring and loving to all people, especially all known family, particularly those with whom I shared many positive memories, I have made many serious mistakes that have made matters worse and not better, and I sincerely apologize and seek forgiveness for those mistakes. I also want and already forgive mistakes made toward me, but for the forgiveness to be real, the mistakes need to be more mutually acknowledged and understood.
I want you to know that my original resistance to Rollin serving as attorney for us had many origins. On another branch of our family, a contemporary age male first elder sibling cousin was a first beneficiary of my father’s sudden diabetic blindness-induced confused and desperate attack on my mother’s and sister’s right to inherit from him, and I think this cousin’s mother was especially motivated to assist her eldest child and son, because of patterns in their family. As a result of this trauma, I did not trust contemporary family men who were “too close” to the situation, feared that this role could lead to betrayal and emotional anguish of my sister as well as me and my mother’s intentions for her daughters and grandson. My fear of betrayals from these previous traumas fell on Rollin, also an oldest male cousin. I overreacted, and that was a great mistake. Had we had therapy at the time, Rollin would have understood me better, and not taken my intensity as a personal attack, but one born of great hurt from mistakes my father and his family, including an older sibling male cousin who was favored by his mother, had made decades earlier, and something meant to protect all of us, and keep our family relations out of the often difficult realm of money (especially because many have come to realize that unilateral focus on money itself is not an indicator of any real or sustainable wealth or health) matters. I have actually come to feel that it is always unwise for family to act as lawyers for family, especially close family, if there is no companionate intervention by therapists or conflict resolution experts who would have some understanding of what such dual-roles do to family relationships, and also, what a legal approach to family inheritance leaves out. But these mistakes are past.
As you know, I have also sought an gained considerable contact with other branches of family, particularly with many many cousins of Rae, and also Julian’s family branch namesakes, as well as other branches of family to Julianne, Louis and I. It particularly saddens me that because I was away from your area, I could only communicate this by letters, and occasional phone calls, and it was not shared easily for everyone’s benefit. But it still can be. I am sure it would do everyone good.
Years ago, actually around 1984, I tried to get the aunt. uncle and cousins on my father’s side of the family to apologize to my mother and sister regarding hurts caused by complex events surrounding my father’s inheritance. The aunt made some gesture toward my mother, but got bogged down in a strange preoccupation of asking my mother to find a vase that my father had kept of his mothers’s, that my mother was unware of and could not locate, and the effort derailed.before the next generation could be helpfully engaged. I now regret that I attempted this without seeking therapeutic or clergy help. Maybe it would have gotten further.
I am also writing at this time again to the cousins on that branch of family. I feel that they also owe apology to my sister and I, and to the memory our mother for the unintended hurt that came of those even older past events I know those cousins later did develop some problems and separations of their own, and also may have so far failed their best potential, because of failing an attempt at understanding the emotional consequences of what occurred, and some level of reconciliation. I urge you not to make the same mistake.
Your family has a much longer and even deeper connection to ours. What I am not clear on is whether any of the (several other family names)~Soskin~ family is able to acknowledge a simple but very impactful, important mistake they have made and are still making toward me/my Sister and Nephew and me, and our Mother’s memory, even in this week and month and period of remembrance. It is my belief that by acknowledging this simple very human, understandable but family-hurting mistake, the ~Soskins~ will not only help me, my Sister and Nephew, but even themselves and particularly their next generations. Only good can come of increased and deeper understanding and some greater measure of family understanding and reconciliation.
As you know, I sought therapy, clergy help and mediation for our family at the time of the falling out, but these options were refused. In addition, in the years after the falling out, I sent the members of your part of our family many beautiful Wholliday cards, wishing you and all Love, Life and Peace, usually four times a year, for many many years. I also sent several Holiday food baskets, a wedding gift to Donna and Steven, gifts for Ryan and Sarah’s Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, gifts for Abby and Eric’s Births, yearly gifts to Sam and Jackie on Father’s and Mother’s Days, yearly birthday flower bouquets to Auntie Jackie, sent cheerful and beautiful cards to Diana and Donna on several Mother’s Day with no attempt to connect with me (so I stoppped and also deferred sending Father’s Days cards to the first cousins who were already rejecting me, because that would have made matters even more uneven at a certain level), and called several times to introduce you all to genealogically related family I had discovered who were excited to know about us, some of whom made contact with you as a result of my efforts.
I am not a person to hold a grudge, and it was my delight to do all these things. I do not regret them at all. But what I now realize is very curious, and important to notice, is that with the exception of many birthday cards to me from Auntie Jackie while she was living in Florida and subseqent phone warm conversations with her, and thank you notes for the flower bouquets from when she first returned to Chicago, I have never received any Wholliday card, thank you note, a call to see how I was doing, or any basic contact, from Diana and Rollin and Steven (and Donna, who I now understand sadly no longer lives with Steven). Jackie, Diana, Steven, Rollin did speak with me graciously when I called to mourn Sam’s passing and had sent flowers then, too, and at that time, Rollin and I actually spoke words of mutual apology and forgiveness for what had happened in the past. I thought that we were on the way to family reconciliation, but I was premature, and as I say, many gifts and cards since then and overtures to familyhood have been ignored completely by Diana, Rollin and Steven (and Donna, who I now understand is living apart from Steven.) In almost all cases, even when the results seemed positive, contact was initiated by me, but no one else..
In over 25 years, from family of cousins who in childhood and up to age 37 I saw several times a month, I received not one initiated contact. Indeed, even though Rollin and Diana came to my wedding reception, they did not give a wedding gift; Steven did not come to my wedding reception, and sent no wedding gift either. Looking back even further, when Rollin and Steven graduated from Law School, I was delighted to send them both gifts. But when I received my Ph.D. I received no gift from either Rollin or Steven (I do not know if they sent my sister a gift when she got her Paralegal degree, I suspect they did not, but even if they did, this would also then be a very uneven message regarding us, whether as cousins or sisters).It has been a one way street for love for my experience of “first” cousinhood for over 25 years
All during this time, Diana and Rollin were having considerable contact with my Sister and Nephew. Although I never specifically told her, I think and feel sure that, at some level, my Sister was very aware that Diana and Rollin were not reciprocating cards, calls or gifts of any kind to me. When relatives who I had reintroduced to Jackie and your family came to visit in your area, my Sister called me to specifically note that I was not included by phone, even though I had made inclusions by or letter invitations to Jackie when I was involved in several similar visits and connections. It was obvious, even to my Sister who was herself deeply caught in this forcefield especially repeatedly with Rollin and Diana, that your family was treating me as an excluded outsider, at best tolerated marginally if I initiated contact, but not welcomed at all, despite our long memories of closeness during the first almost four decades or so years of our lives, and our shared heritage as children of two Sisters who were our Mothers.
This has a very unfortunate impact of making me less inclined to visit Chicago, something which I now realize was the worst mistake I ever made. It deprived us all of new beginnings with many new and newly discovered family that lived in the Chicago area. I should moved back or at least have visited in Chicago, but kept hoping my Sister and Nephew would visit me first in Maryland, as other members of my family had been doing. By the time my Sister did eventually visit me in Maryland and I saw her in Chicago, some entrenched patterns were affecting her, me and my Nephew, that were exascerbated by their experience, under the surface, a very complex one, of being with closest relatives who had shown such favoritism for one sister while excluding the other for even basic and needed reparative contact, for such a long period of time.
Favoritism toward one sibling over another is a very loaded gift for the “favored” sibling. It teaches a superficial hierarchy of gratification, but denies a deeper and very necessary understanding of self and others under the surface. Some years after I was living in Maryland, Julianne called me and told me she realized that she and Rollin and Diana had treated me very badly and cruelly in the period following our Mother Harriet’s passing, and apologized to me for it. But looking back, I don’t think she asked Rollin and Dianato apologize to me or join her in any apology to me. I think she, a single mother, was afraid of losing Rollin and Diana’s support and approval, which thus, was coming at an unspoken and maybe not consciously recognized emotional price.
As you know, the situation of our family and other factors came together to cause me great anxiety about my Sister and Nephew about four years ago. The situation was
exasperated by our geographical distance, and incomplete and confusing communications. I developed what would best be called something like Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, if there needs to be a name for it, that lasted for about a year. After a great deal of introspection assisted by my education in human development, family anthropology and therapy, I came to understand better my own feelings and reactions that led up to that experience, and came to realize I had much in common with other sensitive, idealistic and intelligent people who have had similar experiences, and recovered, often with much greater insight and understanding, as a result of the experience..
There are several things I realize about our family, including Diana’s family of origin, too (since I think there has been some marginalized sisterhood/siblinghood in her family and complex issues involving women’s, and women’s and men’s relationships), and thinking of us as cousins and aunts and remembering Harriet and Sam, that parental and extended family separations, and favoratism between siblings, especially of an older over younger sibling (which, because it is culturally most common has a particularly destructive impact), did not start with our generation; that a man playing a lead role in the division of women and distrust or lack of support among women did not start with our generation, and sometimes broke up the whole family, leaving much separation and even time in orphanages, as was suffered by Sam and Max; and that these issues always hurt next or what is called “skip” generations, whether obviously, or subtly but just negatively, in one way or another, unless they are understood and healed.
I have learned that many if not most familyes are troubled and their potential sapped by emotional cut-off, and at least 50% of families endure the complex effects of intense sibling hierarchy or bullying/bullying alliances (which tends to occur in families where there has been an experience of division), which includes inability to listen as well as talk as a basic practice, and hurtful or prolonged exclusion, not only in childhood, but throughout life. Wouldn’t it be amazing if our family could turn this around, and find a path of kindness again? We obviously have the intellectual power to do this; the only question is whether we have the emotional intelligence to do so.
I know our Mother Harreit did give many generous gifts to her Siste Jackie, both in the period in which they were young Sisters helping Rae, and also throughout her life, including to her sister’s husband and family. In her heart, she felt she had already given her good will many times over. But if I had it to over again, I would have advised Our Mother~Aunt Harriet, to include her Sister Our Aunt, Jackie, in her will and trust in some important way, even if it be simply but movingly leaving her some favorite precious hats, jewelry, photographs and paintings, and a message in words that reminded them that their relationship was one the most important in modeling love and connection for family for decades. I have sent Jackie gifts with this in mind and heart, and told Jackie this several times, but we cannot state it enough, because the sisterhood relationship is very unique, until recent times almost forgotten compared to brotherhood, and needed to be reparatively honoedr all generations and familyes.
I would also have advised her then, what I have learned now, that our current measures of wealth, money itself, is especially failing to reflect the labors of love of women, especially women in families, and thereby also failing to tap into the caring qualities and awareness of too many men.
The state where I live now, Maryland, is currently the only state in the country currently which counts the work of parenting, childcare and family time, and volunteering, all so heavily done by women, and environmental stewardship of what is often called Mother Nature, in an estimate of real and sustainable wealth. If our Grandmother Rae, who raised both Jackie and Harriet, and My Mother Harriet, and any women and men who sought to bring the whole family together with love, were to have their real value assessed in these terms, it would have been so very large as to defy description. Every time anyone, particularly a female, is excluded, too long separated from (especially emotionally) or degraded by an extended family, it’s the whole family’s sustainability and real wealth that goes down, especially for future generations.
This is the real inheritance we have trifled with as a family. It has had ripple effects, too, in that the ethical wholistic good we could have done as kind and intelligent and especially on our generations, educated Kin of Kindness was truncated, and cooperative mutually syngergistic creativity and love remains underdeveloped. I pray we can find a way to get it back on all branches of known and yet to be discovered family, and will do everything in my power to make that possible, for the sake of my precious nephew and all his cousins, female and male, our next generations, as well as my sister and I, and our cousins, who were meant to be Intergenerational Kin of Kindness, not emotional Grudge Holding Emotional Prosecutors, Dividers and Deniers, or Strangers.
I also have come to realize that not all people realize they can make therapeutic or clergy resources work for them to help on difficult family issues. Our society does little to help people realize the need for therapeutic talking, relationship and spiritual intervention for family problems. Sometimes, people are induced by the norms and conventions of a superficial culture to accept and literally resign themselves to mere “secondary gain”, which can even be at an emotional level, of a false and temporary personal illusion of “success” or “closure” while their actions or bystander role in others hurtful actions cause pain or reduce happiness for others, even themselves at a certain level. They may need a gentle push from others, as a Greek Chorus, so to speak, to convince them that some greater level of introspection and self-and-mutual understanding, and forgiveness with restored mutual respect and love, is needed.
What I asking from you and encouraging you to do is simple, that:
Jackie, Diana, Rollin, Steven (and it would also benefit Donna and thereby, all your next generations)
each do simple 3-way calls starting with dialing me and connecting immediately to my Sister and Nephew, and say merely:
“I and We also want and see the need for mutual forgiveness. We and I understand, empathize and honor our cousin Rachelle’s explanation and apology of why she overreacted to Rollin in years past in the aftermath of our Aunt Harriet’s passing, and are also very sorry I and we did not reciprocate Rachelle’s efforts of connection, reparation and outreach over many years since or initiate any of our own, and behaved and let our own family behave so unevenly toward two Sisters. We are sorry for any complexities that this caused Rachelle, Julianne and Louis and our family and extended family as a whole. Everyone makes mistakes, even when trying to do their best. That’s why words of forgiveness and a will to mutual and inclusive understanding are important to us, too.
I have asked Jackie to do this on each of her recent birthdays, and on her most recent two birthdays, she actually agreed, and admitted she should have and should. But I think she fears her children would not approve. Making this call in truly respectful remembrance of her Sister Harriet would likely extend Jackie’s life and health..I encourage you to do this this week.
Today, it is must easier to communicate jointly by phone and even video than even five years ago. It wouldn’t be that hard to bridge the gaps again, from time to time, and
would make planning real multibranch family reunions possible. In addition, therapeutic family reconciliation resources also can assist us in this way, immediately, if you need this.
I want you to know, I have also found other Margulies~Silverman~Soskin~ women and men among others, who are only more slightly distantly related to us and you genealogically, and are related by culture, to keep in touch with and “adopt”, and if you will not do this quickly now, as (hopefully temporary) substitute “first” cousins if needed, who I will ask to speak reparatively for you, each and all, immediately, in the above way, if you are unable or unwilling to make these healing calls yourselves now.
The above calls that I am suggesting you make, would end our too long days of disrespect to not only all of us, but also both Harriet and Sam, who, if they and we had all had the luxury of non-separation geographically/telephonically and some loving assistance, would not want to see this lack of mutuality and inclusion go on, slowly but surely impacting so many of their progeny and people they had shared thousands of hours of their lifetimes with. I feel sure that the extent to which it occurred in the 1990’s, and even in the earlier memories of his life and family, it did actually shorten Sam’s life, too.
Please understand, I do not think this type of problem in families began with you or our family. But that does not diminish the need for caring mutuality, understanding, and a new beginning. If I do not hear from you in a positive way regarding this message, I will gently disclose your names to 100 and if needed, 1000 talk-oriented therapists and forgiveness oriented clergy, who do observe confidentiality and hear this information to care about people and not to embarrass them. At least then you would not hold the false illusion that such extreme splitting behavior toward what should all be kind and mutually caring family, who have an ethical responsibility not only to each other, but to our understanding of human culture, would go entirely unnoticed in this world, which is all often too uncaring to familyes and people, who then only perpetuate hurtful patterns by complex sins of emotional ommission as well as commission. We, me and my sister and our two cousins who are brothers, had too much talent and intelligence, and will to do good in the world, to let this happen to us, yet we did, and it has already deeply affected others who we love most, and I feel, as a ripple effect, many more. I am sure many of these therapists will be willing to act as conduits to see us get some of the additional help we needed as family years ago, still need as too many familyes do, and deserve, if we are all to live up to out best potentials as whole, caring and self-and-other(s) aware human beings.
I see now I should have done this years ago. I apologize that ironically it was my own bountiful and indeed infinite good will and patient nature that led me to assume and attribute too much healing impact to the simple passage of time and basic gestures of caring. But time did not heal these wounds, to all of us, (whether or not we are all ready to admit this has hurt everyone of us in some important way) and we need to seek out better healing now.
This week is not only the remembrance of Harriet’s Passing but Sam’s as well, and it is the week of Valentine’s Day, which is important to all women and men and children, whether they are female or male, and it especially about the need for mutual love between females and males. It is a time to remember all our parents, including Louis, too, as they were when they were yet young and youngest at heart, before they begen to make mistakes, and what their lives would have been like if they and their families had made fewer mistakes, and think of ourselves that way, too. We live in a society where, even though they have repeated been shown to have higher intelligence and ability than males in some ways while males have higher intelligence and ability in others, females in general are still less valued than males overall (the statistics on this are quite shocking and a wake up call to why humanity keeps endangering its own future generation after generation, because the hurting of females also leads inevitably to males hurting each other), but that could change literally overnight now, and it is especially incumbent on men, and women, to realize how important not just some, but all females are and were, and how important women’s and girls relationships, including cousins nieces and aunts and mothers and grandmothers, remembered as well as living, are to the survival and sustainablity of not only females, but males, boys and men, as well, and keeping us all young at heart.
I feel absolutely sure that if Julianne and my, and indeed, even Harriet and Jackie’s and other women and girls of our family’s relationship had received more respectful and mutual valuation and support, Steven and Donna and Abby and Eric would not be living apart. A world that is not kind to Louis Z and his many female cousins and sisterkind including friends, as much as brotherkind, on all branches of his family, known and yet to be discovered that I have told about him and he is beginning to learn more and more about, would also adversely affect his life, but appreciation of all that sisterhood as well as brotherhood would give everyone blessings longevity and quality of life beyond our current imaginings. A world that is not cognizant of the cousinhood of Sarah and Abby, will not be a good world for Eric and Ryan, neither emotionally and environmentally. But a family thar realizes we are all connected in every generation, sisters relationships appreciated reparatively and as much as brothers, would be a good world for all. Impediments to Julianne and my relationship would likely shorten Rollin’s lifespan and wholistic health in coming years, his relationship to Diana, and would affect both Sarah and Ryan eventually, but appreciation of Julianne and my Sisterhood, deeper remembrance of that of Jackie and Harriet as both truly precious to each other, and sisterhood on all branches and generations, such as that of Rae and Clara reunited in our minds and hearts, and those of the women of the ~Soskin~ family, including those who had to place their children in an orphanage, would bring everyone longer and better life.What goes around comes around, and we are, whether we acknowledge it or not, all in this together. It is best for everyone when this is acknowledged.
I am truly sorry for my part in this problem, and, as I have said, I made several mistakes that I regret and truly atone for profoundly. But I want to make things better again for all. I need to know that you all realize you each and we all played a part, made very serious mistakes too, and are able to say you are sorry for your parts, as I have. I need, and deep down, I think we all need to believe in something better than this. It could still be almost unimaginably better. In honor of those we have loved, love and still can come to love as all unique and Divinely Endowed human beings, we can still make it so.
~Soskin~ means literally SOS Save Our Ship or Salvation, for Kin. But SOS if it is to live up to the name, must be for not just one sibling in a family and but to both and all, sisters as much as brothers and female and male cousins and kin of all kind, and must realize that the “O” also stand for the “Other” gender as well as mine, and the “Other” birth order postition as well as mine, and Every One of each Other, because the fate of each Other is tied with Our Own, and never forget that to be, or reparatively value each and all Sister of SISKind/Sisterkind; not just some, but all females, who are so necessary to help their male Kin to become true Kinder brothers and together SIS~SOS: Save the Intergenerational~Interconnected Ship” , of female and male of all ages and generations, that is the true Salvation of Our Ship, our True Ship.. Sisterhood is one of the most precious and culturally endangered relationships of the human family, and attempts to not be inclusive in the Saving, even with good intentions, morphs into a form of hurtfulhelp that only causes complex problems later on. There can be no sustainable SOS without Full Appreciation of SIS. To be Kin must also include to be Kind, and inclusiveness, not exclusion, is the very definition of HumanKindness, ofLovingKindness. This is the kind of Kindship most worth striving for, and it is never too late to try. Such acts of apology, atonement and forgiveness and whole, true kindness, brings forth a better brotherhood, that fully values all sisterhood now and indeed retroactively, as well as for a better future, with deeper understanding, for All Children. I believe that wherever their Souls are, that is what all our parents and grandparents want for their Children, Grandchildren, Nieces, Nephews, and All of Us as Children of All Ages, I believe, ever capable of growing at any age.
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