EPTso i have had a whirlwind of things happening to me in the past while. so i should say the whole story
my father and his family are not close. he was a very independent child and made a lot of money doing animal smuggling while in his teens. his parents took a lot of the money he made while doing that, but he moved out to basically rebel. he did this for a number of years till he was finally tired of it and decided to settle in Australia. when he moved he left his father his house, and gave him the deed while he was gone. his father decided to sell the house (the house is still standing to this day, but is not owned by my father or his) and keep the money made from this house.
my father returned and found out that everything he owned had been either sold or given away by his parents or his ex-girlfriend. This caused a rift between them and they didn't speak for years.
i was about 8 when i finally met my grandmother, she wanted to see my brother and i and also because she was ashamed about what happened and wanted to make amends. needless to say her and my father patched things up. but there was still no communication between my father and his brother, sister and father.
after about 3-4 years of the odd visit with her (my grandmother). she fell and broke her hip. she was put into the hospital. things got heated again and my father and his father were finally talking. though not civil. his father finally realized though that my father finally wanted to make amends and get back on track. so when my grandmother was in the nursing home healing, we all met for lunch.
though this wasn't to last as my grandmother slipped into alzheimer's. things went back to before and they never spoke for many years until last march, when his sister (whom I've still never met) called my father to notify him that my grandmother had passed.
that was all he got was a simple phone call. my father was pissed and went on a rampage on his family. finally revealing a ton of stuff that had never been discussed between the family. my father simply wanted to be able to say goodbye, and didn't get that. over the next few months there would be a lot of disputes over my grandmother's stuff, but i guess that's normal.
anyways on to the main portion and the reason i write this blog post. recently i have done some snooping around the Internet and have discovered relatives whom i have never met before. when my grandmother died she inspired me to start looking for that big family whom I've never experience. how did i find these people. find this family. well i knew my grandmothers maiden name (mawhinney) and new that they had lived near the bay of Fundy. that's all i needed. i found a website on a town called chance harbour. i saw some mawhinney's in the old photos. and i quickly e-mailed the owner of the website to ask if they had anymore information on them. well a person sent me an e-mail back offering to help me find my family. we sent e-mails back and forth and finally we reached where my family was from.
they were from a small town in new Brunswick (Canada) called maces bay, right on the bay of Fundy. i was thrilled to find that there are people still alive who are part of my family, not only 5 or 6, but hundreds of people who were related to me through marriages 4 generations ago, or by my great great great great grandfather, and they know each other. so after all this news I'm a little overwhelmed and frankly i want to jump into this bug group and feel at home. but i don't know how to approach them at all. the person whom i had contact with is actually related to me, but never gave me much info on who else i can contact to learn of this family and get to know them. this was a little while ago and i feel nervous to contact him again because what i want from him is basically to send me information on my family and how i can become part of it.
i do know the information on this on member though, whose 94 and would know who i would Be able to contact. but how the hell do i even ask him. how do you still a person whom you've never met that you are family and you want to be a part of this family. i don't know what to do.
sorry if i seem vague, but the most recent events have been stressful
tl;dr- basically I'm stressed out because i don't know how to approach long lost family member whom I've never met. i want to talk to them but i don't know how or even how to say "hi, I'm related to you,"
