My Personal Culture

My Personal CultureIntroductionThe typical spelunk disco genuinely says us how muckle lived thousands of years ago. Likewise a familys own(prenominal) history tells the story of the family and it as advantageously as indirectly records society and how it touch them as man-to-mans, as a family, and as a community. M wholly families let in great cargon to safeguard their family stories and pass them dispirited to future generations through recorded documents and oral history. This ensures that all future generations are aware of the struggles and hardships endured by their ancestors that shaped the early generations. Family history was most a lot recorded by those who had inherited their wealth or social status and several(predicate)s, who had inherited nonhing, would often suppress their family history as a matter of shame. The Webb family boasts no family historian, genealogist, or biographer. Those that are aware of the facts cave in want passed and the few that remain lav scarcely reveal bits and pieces of fading memories. This paper is an attempt to piece unitedly the memories, stories, and historical data of the beat to tell the story of my family. Life in a company townWith the construction of railroad spots in the set-back decades of the new century coal mining operations and coal towns began springing up almost overnight. To accommodate the influx of workers mine owners had to offer ho utilize and some other luxuries to the families migrating to the newly established communities (Buckley, 2004). The majority of Southwest Virginias mountain residents lived precipitated sparsely in hollows (hollers) amidst the hills, a persistent creek beds, and on hillsides so galore(postnominal) companies had to entice workers from outside the percentage to move their families into areas that egressed unlivable. This was easier for companies mining in the Appalachian fields since the area accounted for over 90% of the total amount of co al mined in the United States during the 1920s (Buckley, 2004). The early success of extracting contraband diamonds would be short lived as the onset of such tragic events as World War I and the Great Depression subdued tycoon coal. The early age of coal town living was neer discussed amongst my family. My grand drive was born fair mavin year by and by the fighting in World War I ceased and he lived to survive legion(predicate) other tragic events in Ameri sewer history exclusively neer recounted any tales outside living in a coal camp with his family. It is ill-defined where he was originally from as he n incessantly communicati peerlessd most his twenty-four hourss growing up or his parents except to tell his fathers name in brief stories of glory days g hotshot by. An interview with his youngest daughter did non shed any light on his mysterious past. She recalls growing up in the analogous small town in Southwest Virginia barely she struggled to recount her pro jects growing up in a mining community. My return was non able to provide much more than detail and scarce confirmed the information I had al a very(prenominal) attained. Historical fact paints a respectable picture of their experience and may help explicate why family history was non more of a priority. It is unclear whether the family purposefully chose to obliterate this time in history or non. The premise may gravel been to protect future generations from the dark days of struggle the family endured. Only those who experience left this living know that answer and those of us who remain mustiness speculate. The coal mining towns were typical of industrial towns in other part of North America and Western Europe. The ho intentions were usually identical, functional and of simple design. The mining towns were representative of frontier communities. Initially at that place were few amenities but as the towns grew conditions improved. Schools were opened in the mining towns soon after families arrived in the district. Hotels, a post office, retail businesses, banks, newspapers and churches and sometimes and opera house or theatre were features of all the major communities. Lodges were classic in many a(prenominal) communities and the parts performed a variety of social and cultural functions in the towns (Buckley, 2004). The company line was not estimable the local grocery store. It was often the center of life in a coal mining town. Every town had one, and everyone shopped there. The company store was usually located near the railroad tracks in the town. Everything that a family dexterity want or need could be bought in the store, from food to clothing, from hardware supplies and the miners tools to furniture and appliances. My grandfather often compared the company store to our modern day mall and would describe his days of shopping after having received upright over dickens dollars for a only days work. I never regain strikeing my family tell stories closely hardship or struggle. In fact, I do not recall ever hearing my grandparents or parents talk about tragedy and triumph, good conquering evil, or good vs. bad. It is as though my entire ancestry had taken a h free of silence. There were no discussions around the d privileged table, no meaningful discourses about future goals, and no retelling of early family experiences. Even my earliest memories capture unless a glimpse of the events that shaped our familys values. Since the days of my great-grandfather all that seems to clear been know was working(a) and living in a coal town. This was considered such exhausting work but it seemed to appeal to my ancestors. The code of silence not all encompassed family values but permeated every aspect of family life and living. There were never discussions about diversity of religion, gender, race, or nationality. Even the major events of the time did appear to strike the heart of our family. It is as though t hey had shut off the dry land around them and relished in one anothers presence. My father was a stern man. He did not speak much but he had an aura about him that did not require him to. Working around the habitation was expected and longsighted hours were customary. D familiar had to be prepared and ready to serve as he arrived home from work and the menu always consisted of the family staple pinto beans and corn bread. Although never spoken we chthonicstood that we did not question our father. His rule was not a democracy and at times he ruled with an iron fist. As boys we were expected to do the manly work around the home and our sis was expected to take care of the house and learn to cook. I suppose education intimidated my father. He dropped out of school at 13 years of age and never returned. He struggled to read and write and may have compensated by entrenching himself in his trade. There was only one high school grade in three generations of manfuls in our family. teenaged men were expected to drop out of school, if necessary, and go to work in a coal mines. In the last 100 years there have only been two college graduates in our family and those experiences were not celebrated. Education was never criticized openly but neither was it lauded in the eyes and ears of the children. I never toy with relationships being very important in our family. Affection was not shown openly and never discussed in the presence of children. Those who were married seemed to love one another but did not use words to express their fondness. It was precisely understood that their devotion coexisted. This lack of communication carried over in all the relationships deep down the family. Sitting down to have a meaningful conversation was not something anyone considered doing. Somehow, as children, separately of us knew that significant communication was not valued by our parents or grandparents. Parents only had a way of flavor at a child that leadd it was ti me to stop and toe the line or suffer the consequences. The consequences were most often administered by the males in the family and each of them had a difficult time maintaining control and would often discipline in ways that would be considered child abuse today. For example, I can remember my grandfather laughing while he was telling the story of throwing astronomical rocks at his boys after they had gotten into trouble. He was laughing as he remembered hitting them with the rocks. Spillover from company town experienceMy grandfather survived the Great Depression but I do not rely he was unscathed. He was a teenager at the time and forced to give up his childhood and enter the workforce at a very early age. He would tell stories of being 13 and working in coal using picks and donkeys pulling small cars in water up to his chest just to distinguish enough money to help feed his family for the day. For as long as I can remember my grandfather was an alcoholic. He drank from the time he woke up in the morning until he fell unconscious at night. I believe he wanted to avoid the scars from so many years of hard living. Unfortunately, each generation that followed mirrored his vacillation to talk about the issues that made life difficult. He had become smug living in a coal town and his children had become content because it was the only life they knew. In a grit he served the family as he had been served by the company. Each of his children lived in homes that were similar and each of his boys worked long hours in the coal mines starting around the age of 13. The girls stayed at home to help keep the house, tend the garden, and prepare meals for their brothers. I never remember our family talking about religion but it must have been important to our community because there are six churches in an area that is only 0.2 square miles (Bureu, 2000). Each hollow has its own small church with many of them still functioning today despite having a population of just over a thousand residents. Religion was a taboo subject matter although no one in the family ever forbade it. There was a sense that no subject was worthy of discussing openly as a family. This would overhaul in line with the ideology of our earliest remembered ancestor Andrew Webb. Church and the mind of God were not promoted nor denied amongst our family. The attitude resembled the same attitude of the character jakes Walton from the tv series The Waltons. The men in our family were very good-natured and wise, but similarly fearless, ready to stand up to a challenge and tell it like it is. This personality sometimes causes him to ride very brash, even towards his children and married woman on occasion, and he can also get into the mindset of a workaholic when heavily stressed. They were somewhat non-religious although there were brief moments when God was ac companionshipd as Creator. The code of silence established by my ancestors runs mysterious in our family. The modern generation does not communicate any differently than those onwards us. nigh often the family can be found unitedly in the thick of tragedy and then the visits are short lived. Family reunions have never been a priority. Although most of the family lives in the county communication is almost nonexistent. Even while hookup information for this paper I found it difficult to talk to relatives about our family history. We had never discussed such things and the idea of having to ask for information about our ancestral past was daunting. There are times I am very aware that my attitude and communication style, or lack thereof, closely mimics that of my ancestors. It is a daily struggle to do things differently and one that sees moments of victory and defeat. I work each day to better communicate with my children. It seemed much easier when they were younger children. As they get older it becomes more of a task for me to communicate because I do not have any experiences to comp are it to. My father never talked to me and never allowed his children to see him cry. My children have seen their father show a range of emotions. This has not always been an easy task and one that takes notion on my part. I am careful to explain to them that emotions are a natural and healthy way to promote self care and are every part of being a man. I also explain that there are times when emotions are not appropriate and should be subdued until a more appropriate time to show them. This is something I can never remember my grandfather or father ever discussing. Their lack of doing has made raising children more difficult and stressful. The major rest in our home as compared to what I am aware of in my parents home and grandparents home is a willingness by my wife and I to talk to our children when they have questions. When they are not asking questions we are. This keeps the lines of communication open and hopefully will instill in them a greater sense of family and emergenc e their world view. Becoming a sensitive multicultural counselorAt the age of 18 I enlisted in the United States Army. There was a passion in my heart to move beyond what I knew growing up. I knew there was more to the world around me than coal. My only experience with other market-gardenings came from brief encounters in school and television. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to enlist and move outside the box that had been built by my great grandfather and propagated by those who would follow in his footsteps. A whole new world was opening up before me and my life has been enriched by the adventure. As I look back I am dumbfounded. My parents had never spoken of other cultures or about how we should interact with people of a different race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. I often hear people use the term culture shock when being thrust into a different culture for the first time. This is something I did not experience after enlisting. I had never been around people of co lor, Mexicans, Latinos, or Puerto Ricans but I did not experience uneasiness in my new environment. There was something deep inside of me that made this new experience right. I cannot explain where it came from or who had instilled this inner effectualness in me but I believe it was this inner strength that made this major life transition successful. This is a strength I take with me into the counseling field. Through counseling I am able to once again experience a journey into a variety of different cultures. I believe I am also able to listen to others as they tell their story. I spent a lifetime listening but believe that through my experiences in the war machine my listening skills have been honed so that I can truly hear what people are saying. My experiences strengthen my belief that I am not judgmental towards those I counsel. I avoid reading client histories before a meeting because I do not want to stumble rash judgments about who the individual is. I have found that the individual is nothing I expected and only vaguely resembles what I read in documentation after our initial meeting. I do believe that another strength I bring to the counseling field is my willingness to learn from others. I do not see myself as being chieftain of anything but a student of all things. One skill I took from my ancestors that increases my success in the counseling field is my work ethic. My work ethic may very well be the greatest tool passed down by my family but it also lends itself to great struggles and stress. I sometimes allow myself to be taken advantage of by others in order to shade a task. My basic belief is that we should cull our brother in matters of life and success. This is not necessarily our biological brother but more a reference to the people around us. There are times when I am silent and should not be. The silence creates a wall between the client as well as co-workers. Accompanying the silence is an inner critical voice that is often harsh a nd unrelenting. This causes me to question interventions I use with clients and to doubt the skills I have gained through experience and education. I am also not readily accepting of my own heritage. I emotional state like I fight daily to prove to myself and the world that I am not following in the footsteps of those before me because I do not like where they have been. This could create a problem when working with families that have children rebelling against family norms. I might see myself being more eleemosynary to a young person trying to come out from under a bleak ancestral tree. I might also be more tempted to be satisfied with surface problems and avoid digging deeper with clients and their families to get to the underlying issues. This would be placing a Band-Aid on their mental health problems and not facilitating solutions. Having brothers that followed in the footsteps of our ancestors made choosing a different path more difficult. To my knowledge I am the only male in our family to ever graduate from high school. Everyone else dropped out to work in the coal industry by the time they entered their freshman year and most before leaving elementary. This would make me the first male to enroll in college and the first member of our family, male or female, to graduate with a Masters Degree and the only member of our family working in a profession that requires licensure. Breaking away from the generational pattern has not been an easy task. I chose to stay in the same community that I grew up in and our family name is not grownup or known for contributions to better the community. An advantage is that I am very familiar with the culture of our area but I have also been privileged to experience a variety of different cultures and learn from them. I owe this success to my decision to enlist in the military just after finishing high school. This did not allow me time to settle for what was acceptable in the community and it challenged me to move outs ide my comfort zone. The issue has been an expanded world view.I have experienced other cultures that many in my community will only know from books and movies. As I write this paper I am reminded of the character Peter Petrelli from the television series Heroes. He is a dreamer that always believed he was meant for something more than the existence he knew. I too have believed that I was destine for something more than coal towns and mining. Innately, whether we voice it or not, as human beings we have a desire to make our lives matter, to count for something. And yet, while the desire is there, it can be very challenging to determine how to make a discrimination and feel content with our offering to humanity. Recruiting providers to the area is difficult and time consuming. Those who do decide to work in the area often choose to put up after only a short stay or they simply do not interpret the culture. I am able to be my experiences in other cultures with a complete understa nding of the indigenous culture. With an increase knowledge base I am able to work at passing on to my children an increased understanding of other cultures while respecting the culture of their ancestors. This ensures a lasting legacy for future generations of our family that choose to live in this community. ConclusionAt the age of 40 I am much like my father. I am a stern man and would prefer to be a man of few words. My wife of 17 years, my opposite, compliments me very well and is the main reason I do not rule my house with an iron fist like my father. We fit together like gears in a wheel. She does however prefer the more traditionalistic roles for women and would much rather stay home to cook, clean, and take care of our two children than work. Next to my wife my two sons have had the greatest impact on my life. Seeing them born really reinforced my belief that we have to be responsible, hard working caretakers of a very precious treasure. I wanted them to see that educatio n was important so I returned to college when I was well into my 30s. My wife and I want them to know that family is important so we do a lot of things together as a family. We talk to one another and to each of them daily because we want them to value communication within the family. Mather, Black, and Sanders (2007) wanted to dispel the mistaken belief that people from the Appalachian region had boxed themselves off from mainstream American culture. They point to stereotypes and fictional Appalachian tales invented by local color writers (Black, et.al.) as the source of confusion about the people living in the area. We work each day to ensure our children understand their culture but we also encourage them to be open to different cultural experiences so their lives will be richly rewarding. BIBLIOGRAPHYBlack, D., Mather, M., Sanders, S. (2007). Standards of Living in Appalachia, 1960 to 2000. Washington Populaton Reference Bureu.Buckley, G. (2004). History of Coal Mining in Appal achia. encyclopedia of Energy , 1, 1-12.Bureu, U. C. (2000). U.S. Census Bureu American FactFinder. Retrieved July 30, 2009, from American FactFinder factfinder.census.gov