Anyways, I started a search a year ago for my family tree. A few short months later, I contacted as much living family as I could via facebook to share with them what I had found. This should have been my first clue that very little damn was to be given about living relatives, why the blue hell should they care about the long-dead ones? Regardless, I opened the invitation to share the tree with them. NO response to it whatsoever after accepting the initial invitations. That's fine and dandy. Well, without getting into the whole drama of it, I've since rescinded those invitations and set all the family tree work I've done to private, and it won't even show up in searches. My work was initially for myself in the first place, and turned into something I wanted for my kids, and only after that did it turn into something I wanted to leave for the entire family, both sides. It's clearly just not in the plan now. I have stronger family ties to people I'm not even related to by blood, than I have to those who share the same blood (outside my home obviously). It's pathetic, but I don't need to torment myself with it anymore, and I don't need to "fix" it. It's not my place to fix everyone or remind them of what a family should be.
So... the next course of action, I need to return to the reason this all started in the first place. I wanted to know where my Mamaw learned what she knew. Part of me thinks I should contact living relatives on dad's side of the family, starting with his brother, my uncle, who would know more about who knew what, who learned what from whom, and who's still alive that could tell me more. On the other hand, and this is huge... there's a very loud voice in my head saying that I should follow my instincts, that what I need to know or learn, can be learned if I just do that.
This past year has been about being more open with who I am. It's been about appreciating the abundance in life, not in material things, but in things that make life worth living. I've found that in many parts of my life, I've allowed quantity rather than quality, I've allowed too much passivity, making excuses and calling it unconditional love, rather than closing off ties with people who do no good for anyone around them. I've been TOO open about who I am, and it's had it's good points and bad which I'll not get into here, but suffice it to say, that's going to change too. I can't quite explain it, but I feel as though I'm on the edge of some major kinda breakthrough, like something great is waiting just around the next corner, all I have to do is get TO it. ;)