No Coincidence
If you bring forth that which is within you,
Then that which is within you
Will be your salvation.
If you do not bring forth that which is within you,
Then that which is within you
Will destroy you.
- The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
(Quoted by Peter Levine in Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma)
* * *
A gentle wind shifts the pink blossom-covered cherry tree branches outside my window as they move, bob and wave. Spring gives me hope. Earth continues to provide a semblance of the change of seasons. Maybe this hope keeps me alive, helps me begin again. On this impossible journey. On this group of tales to tell.
* * *
1992, Age 44.
Winter Island Campground near Salem, Massachusetts.
While R and our four-year-old twin girls set up the tent I walk down to the beach. Unexpectedly, I see industrial smokestacks and a sewage treatment plant looming across the water. The sky is dark. Winds pick up. "There are gale warnings posted for the night," other campers tell me.
R dismisses my concerns. "No problem - remember I'm an Eagle Scout!" Perhaps we should go to a motel? Although I don't like being dismissed, I don't argue. This trip to the 300th Anniversary of the Salem Witchcraft trials, my idea, is sufficiently stressful. I am drawn to learn more about the trials, as my distant cousin, Chief Judge William Stoughton, presided over them, sentencing 19 people to the gallows.
When we crawl into our sleeping bags in the dark and put out the lantern, the winds are whipping around the thin tent. FLAP/FLAP/FLAP/FLAP/FLAP/FLAP. I can't relax. Will the winds pick us up and carry us away? R and the girls fall asleep immediately. Wide awake, I feel vulnerable in this fragile environment. My entire little family could so easily be destroyed.
Suddenly I hear voices outside and see lights flashing around our tent walls and the campground. R awakens and we peek through the tent door. Police are roaming the area with huge flashlights. A runaway boy has escaped from a nearby home for juvenile delinquents. Barely sleeping the rest of the night, I worry about being held hostage or violently attacked. Is the 300-year-old history of violence in Salem being reenacted tonight on Winter Island?
Afraid my family will be harmed I am determined to protect them. Could the fear that drove William Stoughton to eradicate witchcraft be the same fear plaguing me all night?
The next day, at the 300th anniversary ceremony, the keynote speaker is concentration camp survivor, author Elie Wiesel. He compares Salem to the Holocaust. Attendees who acknowledge a personal connection to the event are related to the persecuted. No one mentions any tie to the judges. Yet I am there seeking to understand my ancestry, despite and perhaps because of the shame I feel.
* * *
Age 10.
"Mommy, I read in a history book today at school about a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials named William Stoughton. That's your maiden name! Are we related to him?"
"Oh, no, darling, I doubt it. But if you really want to know, ask your Aunt Edith. I'm bored to death by family history!" She sips her martini and lights another Chesterfield cigarette.
* * *
How could you know? (How did you know) that you were cracking open a Pandora's Box of Questions and potential answers to other questions that would perennially haunt you...
Why am I here? I feel unseen in this family.
What is my life purpose? There must be more than this.
Who am I? Do I feel unloved because I'm not lovable?
What connection might exist between me and this ancestor from 300+ years ago?
* * *
It was wise to tuck this away while you matured, even with the yellowed, thick, shiny Stoughton Pedigree family tree that Aunt Edith sent, showing William Stoughton had never married or had children. All Stoughtons are related, said my aunt. Questions continued to smolder over the years, with a magnetic pull to know and a simultaneous revulsion.
When eventually I research our family genealogy online, I learn that this (in)famous judge is my first cousin, 10 times removed.
* * *
Age 30.
In graduate theatre school we are given an assignment: tell a story with a grain of truth from your family history. I know which story I must tell, the research I must do.
Musty smells waft over me as I pore through the tomes at a blond wooden table in New York University's library. Born in England 30 September 1631, William Stoughton was an ordained minister, a graduate of Harvard and Oxford Universities. Preferring public office to church ministry, he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, Acting Governor, and Deputy Governor. Named Chief Justice in 1686, he presided over the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692.
Shivers crawl from the base of my spine to the back of my neck as I read that this man, bearing Mom's maiden name and Dad's first name, died on the exact day of my birth, the 7th of July, in 1701. Are these simply three "coincidences"? Stoughton's contemporaries admired him as an eminent citizen and colonial leader, respecting the constancy in his decisions. Later journalists criticized him for never marrying, presupposing his harsh verdicts were related to this fact, and condemning him for being the only Salem witchcraft trial judge who never recanted or repented.
* * *
Connections.
Is it possible my life story is entwined with his? That there is no coincidence? Might there be some form of "atonement" among various members of my family for this past? I expand my family history research. Could I or my relatives be making amends or reparations through "good works"?
Great-grandmother Lucinda Walton Mooney (1834-1910) volunteered at Blackwell's Island near Manhattan with unwed mothers, the insane, and criminals. She taught and sang hymns with them, serving on boards of charitable organizations for indigent women. Journalist Nellie Bly went undercover on Blackwell's Island in 1887 to write an exposé about the inhumane conditions there (Ten Days in a Madhouse). She witnessed rampant psychological and physical abuse. Women were forced to sit still for hours on hard wooden benches, fed little food and unclean water. Bly discovered many were not insane, but recent immigrants or unwed mothers, unable to communicate, without family or a social safety net to support them.
"Your great-grandmother was an emancipated woman for her day," said Aunt Edith. "I inherited the ivory gavel she received to honor her charitable activity. One day each week she spent in bed to conserve her energy. She would read, do correspondence, even receive visitors from bed so she could face the rest of the week.
"Also, Great Aunt Lucy married Charlie Proffitt, an Episcopalian minister who served as chaplain on Blackwell's Island, living nearby. As a child I went to their house for holidays, and I never knew who would be in the kitchen or tending the grounds. The toothless people working there frightened me."
Edith's mother, my grandmother, wanted to be a nurse but could not because her bedridden mother needed care. The youngest of eight, she nursed her mother at home. She, like my mother, sacrificed her dreams for her family.
My mother, her youngest, dreamed of being a painter like Georgia O'Keeffe, but upon high school graduation in 1933 the Depression intervened. Instead of studying art she learned to type and worked as a secretary, as her father lost his finance job. She took art classes throughout her life while raising her three children. In her 50's she converted the attic into an art studio, replete with skylight, and studied abstract painting at a museum art school. Her magnificent work adorns family walls.
Growing up in the '60's, I was an activist, tutoring children in the Washington, DC ghetto, making art with kids in the projects, teaching English in West Africa, demonstrating against the Vietnam War, and marching in Mississippi for Civil Rights. I've organized welfare mothers, counseled disturbed children, taught in Head Start, and led an after-school art program. Co-founder of a nonprofit for abused women, I led support groups and obtained a master's degree that afforded me a decent living facilitating positive organizational change.
* * *
Imaginary meeting with my cousin, William Stoughton...
"Hello, Cousin, I daresay you would condemn me to death if I were living in your time. A pagan who loves the earth, I fear man is destroying our planet. A supporter of neither Christianity nor the patriarchy, I am a pacifist and a lifelong believer in women's liberation and empowerment. I now live openly as a Lesbian, loving other women after years of conforming to heterosexuality. These days I sing soothing songs in trios at the bedside of the dying, I garden, and play with my young granddaughter."
* * *
Inheritance?
Alcoholism and mental illness are prevalent in my family. My parents were "functional alcoholics", cocktails and cigarettes the mainstays of everyday life. In retirement, without the structure of working, my father began drinking heavily. A former tax attorney, he concocted a "scheme to screw the Internal Revenue Service", calling friends and former colleagues late at night to enlighten them. He drove 90 miles per hour in 25 mph zones. Once arrested, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He'd had a psychotic break.
His father, my grandfather, may also have had bipolar disorder. He died in St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane in DC, but details are unknown. My mother visited him there, yet stories she told about his history seem to contain only "a grain of truth".
My father's mother from North Carolina had many slave-owning relatives. They did not have large plantations, yet the trauma of owning and selling other human beings, the unknown aftereffects of slavery, the legacy of cruelty and dehumanization, the need for reparations, and the possible epigenetic impact, all haunt me.
Would an understanding of Epigenetics add clarity? "Epigenetics is the study of how behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change the DNA sequence, but they can change how one's body reads a DNA sequence." (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What is Epigenetics?)
A new field of study, Epigenetics posits that inherited trauma can have a genetic impact on subsequent generations, transmitted by one or both parents. Evidence that epigenetic differences can be associated with mental illness has been found for bipolar disorder and depression. A bit more clarity emerges, yet the nonlinearity is obfuscating* * *
The I Ching or Book of Changes
While developing the story of William Stoughton for my graduate acting class, I consulted the ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching. My question was, "What wisdom can you give me regarding William Stoughton?" The hexagram I received, based on tossing three Chinese coins six times, was Number 47 - Oppression (Exhaustion).
"THE IMAGE
There is no water in the lake:
The image of EXHAUSTION.
Thus, the superior man stakes his life
On following his will.
When the water has flowed out below, the lake must dry up and become exhausted. That is fate. This symbolizes an adverse fate in human life. In such times there is nothing a man can do but acquiesce in his fate and remain true to himself. This concerns the deepest stratum of his being, for this alone is superior to all external fate."
The I Ching provided a way to make sense of this chapter of my family history: Stoughton was acquiescing to fate by being true to himself. It was not popular, but it was honest.
I, too, am learning to honor my deeper self, to trust my intuition, even if unconventional. Seeking truth, beauty, and love is the path of this lifetime.
Suzanne Noll is a writer, singer, actor, retired organizational change agent, gardener, mother and grandmother. She now lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, among herds of deer, butterflies, hummingbirds and people.