Family Genogram Analysis

“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, and bridge to our future” (Haley*). In the genogram presented, I was able to identify many characteristics, traits, behaviors, individual psychological features and even secrets about my family. My genogram is composed of 4 generations, beginning with grandparents from both sides, the middle sections of the genogram include my mother and father’s brothers and sisters, the second to last layer is their children, which is me and my cousins, and ending the genogram are the newborn babies that my cousins Talibah Alfred, and Mashay Hackshaw will be having February 2017 .
To commence, in the beginning stages of initiating my genogram I started with individual conversations with

family members and then with myself. Initially, I found that there were an endless amounts of physical, psychological, emotional boundaries that were present between family members. I discovered the distance involved between my family was more than geographical distance, but also emotional distance. Social placement, status, and roles are considered family functions leading to the members of the families finding their complex web of statues, or the positions that people occupy in a group or society, and roles or the behaviors associated with that position(Seccombe). To discover my family relationships, with respects to social placement, statuses, along with economic cooperation of the family unit I started with my grandmother. Jennifer Hackshaw, my grandmother, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad on September 13th, 1950 and was the head of household for all 6 of her children. With this information it was clear to observe that the roles or status of my family were different because of the different locations my grandmother/grandfather lived in. My biological grandfather passed away from diabetes and bone cancer, so I didn’t have a chance to speak to him, but through conversations with my mother their relationship was distant and hostile. This hostility originated from my grandfather’s infidelity, and also due to the fact he left to be with another family and denied being the father to my mother. Interestingly enough, his late wife wanted to meet us, so we meet with her Gail Bonnet, but my mother barely spoke to her father. My grandmother passed away prior to his death so it wasn’t until he was on his death bed until my mother got to speak to him again. In Trinidad, from endless conversations about the roles of women in the Caribbean and from a recent vacation there, I learned that it is the women’s job to find a man that can financially take care of them and the family. With more research, Afro-Trinidadian women enjoy some autonomy, or the right or condition of self-government, and power within domestic domains and are often heads of households. Fictive kinship and god-parents are important institutions within the Trinidadian culture. The saying “It takes a village to raise a child”, is very common among Trinidadian families. In particular, my grandma was in charge and the roles of her brothers, sisters, fictive kinships included authoritarian roles which each child must be quick to learn discipline. Each of grandaunt and granduncle had different disciple styles which in affected each child and through Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory I was intrigued to find out which subconscious themes each of my aunts , uncles and even mother withheld. Back chat, or talking back, is not permitted and taught early, a “harden” child, or a wajang (rowdy, unclothed) youth involved in “commesse”, or scandal/social conflict, is an embarrassment to the family(REDDOCK). These terms are extremely familiar to me and my family and by acknowledging those terms and taking a Child development class I was able to discover the psychological and emotional boundaries that the second generation of my family has with my grandma’s sister or my grandaunt which we call Tanty Norma. Tanty Norma was very strict in discipline with all of my uncles and aunts, and through interviews I see that they cannot speak to my grandma about certain topics, in fear that she will lash out and feel disrespected. Although not expressed on the genogram, my grandaunts daughter Janice Porter is cutoff from the family because of her actions against her own mother and against my uncles and aunts. Janice Porter has stolen disability money from my grandaunt, bought a house in Trinidad with my granduncles money and never told any of the family until she sold it to another owner, and has lied tremendously. This information was important in understanding why the family for a short time viewed her socioeconomic status as outstanding but discouraged her as an individual based upon her actions. Additionally, in studying the relationships of my family if you look at the chart there is a blue squiggly line indication physical abuse. The family cutoff another individual by the name of Keith Campbell, because of the physical abuse he performed on my aunt Rhonda Tapper when she was 27 years old. This placed a physical, psychological, and emotional barrier upon the family causing a pattern of crisis. My mother in specific, because my aunt and mother were very close. They have a child together by the name of Tristian Campbell so eventually through time, communication and forgiveness my mother was able to repair to the cutoff because my mother acted as the middle man between the couple. She would travel to Trinidad , where Keith and Tristian live to drop off clothes, shoes , water, and gifts that my aunt would send. An important relationship within generations was the relationship between me, my brother Shawn Hackshaw, and cousin Marcus and Mark Alfred. Marcus Alfred was our cousin on our father’s side and he committed suicide April 7th, 2015. The news triggered an emotional crisis within the family. My brother received phone calls from multiple family members on our father’s side , and in some way this death brought the family together, but also caused distance because the conversation about suicide and mental health is not a topic discussed in family relationships. All in all, examining the relationships across all three generations I was able to reveal the roles, and boundaries each individual had and its impact on the latter of the generations.
Moreover, with critical examination I observed a various amount of communication styles within the three generations.

There are plenty family issues, and two major family secrets, and I also observed deeper conflicts. In order to truly analyze individual communication styles, I first went to the basic of what communication means to individuals. Communication is an interactive process, using symbols like words, and gestures to send and receive messages(Seccombe). In communication, each person brings to the process his/her own life history, assumptions, and interpretations(Seccombe). Once I understood this important information, because of the majority of my mother’s family being from the Caribbean, there is a cultural difference in communication style with my father’s American side of the family causing the two families to not interact as heavily. Family issues, such as my mother not speaking to my father’s side of the family are rarely addressed and avoided. The Passive- Aggressive communication style, or the style in which people seem to be passive but are actually acting out of their anger in indirect behind the scenes, is most common among the older generations. There are presences of family secrets that the family has one in which my granduncle Tony Hackshaw committed suicide but based on lack of communication, other family members believe that Great-Uncle Tony was murdered because he disagreed with the views of other family members. In efforts of trying to reveal the truth, I questioned but my Tanty Norma’s lips were seal as tight as an oyster shell protecting its pearl. Both families on my mother’s side and fathers side don’t share much, because what happens is they believe that sharing your weakness or vulnerabilities with your family is a sign of overall weakness as an individual. There are a couple of patterns of conflict and negative communication pattern, I observed that my mother had a very distant hostile relationship with her biological

father, instead of trying to resolve the conflict and talk it out, the conversation as a whole was avoided. In my personal opinion through observation, the reason why my family is constantly in conflict is because there is a lot of talking and not enough listening. Ego conflict, is the conflict in which individuals believe they must win at all costs to save face and value conflict and Value conflict, is differing opinions on subjects that relate to personal values or issues of right or wrong. One current value conflict can be traced to my mother and her sister Natalie Michelle, they are currently in conflict because Natalie Michelle believes that my mother, Lisa , doesn’t support her decisions to stay with a man that abuses her, but Natalie has personal beliefs that she should give this guy a chance to change. They currently don’t speak and ignore each other on Facebook as a result of this conflict. I found that the communication style of being passive, is reflective of many emotional relationships within the family. It has become easier for us to fall underneath the category of “avoiding” for the majority of the personal conflict styles. In one interview with my Uncle Randy he stated “if the issue doesn’t center around me, then there’s no need for me to get involved”. And this was thought-provoking because I always believe that family was supposed to step in when other family members where at conflict. His quote allowed me to look at each individual’s emotional relationship with the generation beforehand and the generation they are currently in and it all made sense. If an individual had more of passive aggressive communication style, there emotional relationship with another counterpart was either distant/hostile, cutoff, or were in situations of abuse. Truly, during my observation I was able to correlate and identify communication styles and why these styles had a direct impact on family secrets, family emotional relationships, and how each individual in my family deals with conflict.
Furthermore, there were two noticeable patterns emerging from my genogram. The presence of depression, diabetes, hypertension, or deteriorating health conditions and cohabitation. My grandmother cohabitated with most of her mates and her children three out of the six did get married. The cohabitation/marriage trait seemed as if it staggered. But most of my family members are cohabitating. I asked my cousin, “Do you still value marriage, even though not many of your family members are getting married?”, she simply responded “I value marriage, but it’s just not for me right now”. With her comment in mind, I believe that the trend/pattern of marriage and cohabitation will continue to stagger because the individual will base their decisions off of past experiences, and future motives. Another predominant trend was depression within both families’ depression was common among both male and females. I looked deeper into the genogram and I believe that depression was common in individuals that had parents that had hostile emotional relationships.
All in all, I would like to pass down the rich Trinidadian/ African cultural that I was exposed to, the strong family values, and also the responsibility of the caring for your family and the world my mother taught me and my siblings. I do not want to pass down a family system that doesn’t allow a child to express how they feel. I don’t want to pass down a system of depression or diabetes so I plan on keeping my kids active and raising vegetarians. I’ve discovered that my family has a hard time dealing with situations that make them unconformable and that’s something I hope to alter in future generations, not just for my kids. The quote presented in the beginning describes what I want my kids to be aware of, “link to our past , and bridge to our future” (Haley), I want them to know that there was conflict, there was negative communication styles, but in order to build a bridge that is stable we must learn how to fix the broken links that our family in the past didn’t know how to fix.