Trigger Warning: Family Violence, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, Mental Abuse, Incest, Childhood Abuse, Sexual Assault, Substance Use and Abuse. Please do not continue if any of the above topics trigger you.
Genograms and Genealogy
A tool I learned about from a counselor years ago while I was a juvenile probation officer that fits well within the genealogical sphere but is not commonly utilized is the Genogram.
As a genealogist, genograms will allow you to depict significant persons and events in your family's history. Genograms can also include annotations about the medical history and major personality traits of each member of your family. Genograms will help you uncover intergenerational patterns of behavior, marriage choices, family alliances and conflicts, the existence of family secrets, and other information that will shed light on your family's present situation [1].
If you have read my blogs or listened to the podcasts, you know that I rely on genograms to tell complex stories through relationships and symbols. As I have been trekking through generations of trauma in my family history, I have found this tool to be exceedingly helpful. While there are several free genogram tools, I did ultimately purchase Genopro 2020 due to its inclusivity of multiple aspects of life from Drug and Alcohol Abuse, to notating good versus bad relationships to allowing one to map out a family’s medical and criminal history if so desired.
Genopro 2020
Throughout the Trauma Begets Trauma Series, I have used the visual representation of abuses and relationships via Genopro 2020 to quickly illustrate how trauma seeped from one generation to the next. The software does take some finessing and there is a learning curve, but the outcome is worth persevering. The vast amount of information that can be included is incredible.
The software enables users to import already existing family tree data in a .ged file format, streamlining the process. However, if you have a large number of individuals in your tree, it may require some effort to get your genogram to look the way you want it. Image A below displays what my tree looks like before using the "Autoarrange Genomap" feature. Image B shows it after the tool is used. Given the size of my tree, I needed to further break it down for it to be useful.
Genopro 2020 does allow you to bring in families from a .ged file without having to bring in your entire tree, which is great if you want to highlight specific ancestors, their descendants, and their forbearers. The Trauma Begets Trauma Series focused the research to include different abuses and familial relationships. See Image C below.
One of the great features of this program is that it enables you to rearrange items with ease. All you need to do is drag and drop them to create a tree that looks exactly as you want it to. The tree shown above required some finessing, but it ultimately presented the information I wanted to convey in a visually pleasing way that may be lost with a traditional paragraph of text. Additionally, the program allows you to create a Key, which helps users understand the information they are looking at quickly.
People are complex. Families are even more complex and society more so. Using a genogram to visualize relationships is a valuable tool for genealogists. Since no individual operates in isolation, it is crucial to understand the factors that shape their behavior.
Dissecting a Genogram
I used the Genogram above to illustrate familial relationships within the maternal side of my family.
A. Title for the Genogram - I used specific years to define the timeline of the relationships within the boxed area.
B. Males are represented by squares and females by circles in a Genogram. An "x" in a box or circle indicates that the person has passed away and their age is mentioned in the appropriate box. Adoption is represented by a dotted line while traditional marriages are denoted by solid lines.
C. Family Relationships are generally shown as lines with marriage being the standard line and slashes on said lines stand for separation or divorce.
D. Since my goal was to see how trauma reared its head, this section focused on Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Mental Health. The seriousness of the problem, say drug use for instance, is colored in more than a milder case.
E. Emotional relationships played an important role in the context of trauma, as emotional abuse and violence were sometimes passed down through generations. Being able to see this visually represented allows one to easily and quickly see trends from one generation to the next.
F. I left some of the older generational information in for context if anyone wanted to see how the previous generation looked compared to the current family.
G. What do we learn about Percy from the information above?
The square shaped box indicates male. The "x" on the box with the number "39"in the middle, tells us he died at 39 years old. The dates on the outside showcase the years he lived. The Blue, 2/3 part colored box shows he suffered from alcoholism and serious mental problems with alcohol or drug abuse. In his case, we know it was both. The genogram also reveals that he had a poor relationship with most of his family members, while there was some harmony between others. He shared a distant/poor relationship with Roger, Anthony, and Rick. He had a fused-hostile relationship with Lisa. He had an abusive volatile relationship with his wife, Helen. If we examine the previous generation, we observe disharmony in emotional relationships as well.
Conclusions
Genograms provide genealogists with an additional tool to explore the underlying reasons behind a family member's behavior. This particular software offers the flexibility to create custom categories to better fit individual needs. I appreciate the ease of adding relationships by dragging and dropping or creating unique categories to properly represent the family I am researching. This software has also proven useful for recording health information and criminal records to determine if there are any correlations between those with criminal records and those without. I would recommend taking a look at incorporating genograms into your genealogical research.
Link to GenoPro's website : https://genopro.com/
Sources
[1] GenoPro 2020, (https://genopro.com/genogram/symbols/ : accessed 23 April 2024), “What is a Genogram?”
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