#SheToo

If you are a regular reader, you know that #MeToo has been a thing for me. So, I got to thinking about things that happened years and years ago. It made me wonder just how far we've come with handling sexual assault.

When my mom was born, her older siblings were 14, 13, and 12 years older. She was like an only child. She doesn't really remember her siblings living at home. Her relationship with my grandmother was strained. I'm not sure what my uncles' and aunt's relationships were like, but given how close they were in age, I can't help but think things were different with them. I think my mom being like an only child led to less distraction for my grandma. She had time to look out the window when my mom was coming home from dates. She could scold my mom on how terrible it was to spend time with a boy in a car and what it would look like to the neighbors.

My grandma was one of the oldest and the only girl of a large brood of boys. They were a Catholic family on the outskirts of a little town in Canada. My mom can remember taking trips up to visit her grandparents and uncles. She says that she remembers her youngest uncle as seeming to be different. The way she explains it, it seems that he didn't really fit quite right with the family. She remembers hearing something about him being taken in by her grandparents. She also remembers that my grandmother seemed to do anything possible to avoid interacting with him. She thought it was so odd. My mom also found something else to be odd about my grandma and her family.

My grandmother was born in 1905. She moved to Cleveland in 1921, when she was 16. She came to work for an aunt (I think it was an aunt. It was for certain a family member). My mom was always curious about why this came about.

In 1995, just after her 90th birthday, my grandma died. Then, several years later, my mom got answers to some of her questions. We found out a secret that was hidden by the family. It helped make pieces come together.

The reason for my grandmother's move to Cleveland when she was 16 was that she had gotten pregnant. This is around 1921, so yeah, a teenage pregnancy was scandalous. What made the whole thing more complicated were the circumstances around the pregnancy. She had all those brothers and those brothers, of course, had friends. One of those friends raped my grandma. The rape resulted in pregnancy. The baby my grandmother had was a boy, that boy was my mom's youngest "uncle". My great-grandparents took the baby and raised him. All of this explains why my mom felt things weren't quite right with her "uncle" and why my grandmother was so strange toward him. It can also explain some things about my grandma's strictness and some of her personality traits.

This has been a family secret for decades. It's still being kept from my one uncle (the oldest of the children my grandma had with my grandpa), as far as I know. He's in his late 80s. I don't really understand why he shouldn't find out. I'm certain he doesn't read this blog, but if others do and decide to tell him, that's on them.

It's close to 100 years since my grandmother was raped and got pregnant and gave the baby to her parents to raise and then moved away. Through those years, #SheToo was made to feel shame and to keep secret the cause of that shame. How is it we haven't come very far in all that time?