Morgan Monks
Bonnie Moore
English 2010-027
April 22nd 2014

Figuring out My Family

Throughout this semester I have learned quite a bit about my family and it has helped me understand my past and find more meaning in my family encounters. I thoroughly enjoyed digging into my families past and finding things about it that I never knew about before. Also I discovered even more about my family in situations I already knew about. Overall I feel these cultural artifacts have helped me come to know my family and past in a different light.
I think that my family fits the general descriptions of a family pretty well.For one thing,  the majority of my family is all biologically related and we all used to live together. That in its self qualifies for one definition of a 'family'. I think also that my personal family has an even deeper meaning. One thing that really creates a family mentality is support for one another. If my family, everyone is very supportive of people's life decisions and we are there for each other in hard times. No matter what we have going on in our lives, when someone needs help we all stop what we are doing and do everything we can to be there for each other. A strong support group of a group of persons is another definition of a family and my family fits that description.
        By finding these cultural artifacts I have not only learned things I never knew, but I really was able to dig in and find out the stories behind the things of my families past. To cultural objects that I learned the general facts behind were the old family bible and my four generation genealogy chart. Through these projects I have learned a lot about my ancestors and heritage. I really enjoyed reading about things that my ancestors have done and thinking about how their actions have impacted my life. Another thing I learned about my family was more of how I interact with them. For example in my 'family song' I really looked into why You are My Sunshine means so much to me and it really was an enlightening experience. Overall researching traditions and things of my family have not only taught me much about my past, but have also given me insight into my current family. I now have a different view of my family and our interactions with one another.
Over the years my family has had their own trials and hardships like all families do. We have had our fair share of arguments over trivial things and somehow continually make them a bigger deal than they are. One of the biggest trying experiences I would say my family has overcome is the adoption of my younger siblings. The past five years have been difficult with the adjustment and trying to keep up with all the new things happening, from graduations to baseball games it seems we never really have time to just sit around and socialize like we used to. However, welcoming four new people into our family and not letting the difficult things affect our love of one another has made us closer than ever before; I am truly grateful for that.
Looking into the traditions and attributes I really want to carry a lot of that over into my own future family. I hope to have a loving husband and adorable children in the future whom I will all love so very much. I want to be able to do fun and active things together and be very close-- similarly to how my current family is. I also want to carry over my families traditions such as our Christmas Tree tradition and how we spend special days together. Another cultural artifact I plan to carry onto my future family is the lullaby my mother used to sing to me. I hope that song means just as much to them as it has to me. All in all I don't want my future family to be an exact copy of my family, but I do want to share many things. However, the most important thing to me for my future family is that we support each other in the good times and the bad and are a strong support system for each other.