Layouts of Good Things that Bring up Bad Feelings

LeeAndra

LeeAndra

Sweet Shoppe SugarBabe
We took our first family vacation with my extended family last summer & while nothing bad happened, per se, there was lots of passive-aggressive behind-the-scenes drama & emotional 'yuck' that has kept me from scrapping the trip.

We did some fun things & my daughter had a blast so I'm still going to make an album but I'm having a hard time separating the not-great feelings that come up when I'm looking at these great photos.

On one hand, it feels fake to scrap this vacation without mentioning or scrapping the part of the vacation that ruined it for me (most of the drama & tension was my dad not being able to handle being around my loud talkative husband and children) but on the other hand, my husband and children did not experience it the way I did and were really not aware of most/any of it while it was happening so their memories of the trip are completely different & happy ones.

I have decided to scrap it without including the 'yuck' but I am wondering if anyone else has had this kind of experience and scrapped it and felt okay afterwards?

Were you able to enjoy the album once you had it printed and appreciate the good aspects or were you never able to look at or through the album without the bad stuff being brought to mind?
 
Maybe make a single page for you for therapeutic reasons and then make the album of the trip without all the yucky stuff? I separate the yucky stuff from the pics because I make the books for my kids and I know they don't view what happened the same way I do. Hope you're able to find some middle ground for yourself :wub:
 
That's a tough question.
I have never experienced anything like that with a vacation album.
But I scrapped some photos/events in the past that now give me the same yucky feeling. Eventhough it was a good memory at the time I scrapped/printed it, I can't look at these pages any longer.

Maybe try to scrap the photos and stories as simple and quick as possible. Don't overthink everything. Just scrap them as fast as you can so your kids have an album to look at without you having to spend tons of time scrapping it.

Like Adi said, hope you find a solution which makes you feel comfortable scrapping the photos and memories.
 
OMG Leeandra! I feel you! I so so feel you! I can't post it here, they might find this site but ugh. We went on a vacation in PH last month and the whole time we were there I was stressed out I cry every night and I kept on asking my husband "why?" I might be able to scrap the trip after a couple of months but I will surely scrap them because it's a trip and I have the photos...
 
My whole 2017 was a year like your vacation. I just powered through and got it all scrapped. The worst weeks I would wait with until I needed to finish to print my book. So even though the bad feelings are there, you should still just scrap your way through and be done with it. Who knows, you'll probably forget the negative vibes down the road and look back while focusing on the good memories.
 
Yes, this happens to me, too, and I really struggle with it because being authentic is really, really important to me. But in the end, I just tell the good parts of the story, because do I really want to remember (or for other people to know) I had a miserable time because I can't stand {this person} and she annoyed me the whole trip? No, I don't. It feels a little fake, but it would feel worse to have everyone know the things I keep inside.
 
My general rule on mentioning negatives in our scrapbook is that I address them if they affected the person I'm scrapping about or were shared by others in the situation. So given the situation, I'd scrap it exactly like you're planning to, LeeAndra. It sounds like your husband and kids have mostly positive memories of the vacation, and I wouldn't want to ruin those memories by making them aware that someone had been annoyed with them. If I felt like I had to address it, I'd do it just a little by saying something like, "In spite of some family tension among the adults, we had a great time blah, blah, blah" or "Although it was sometimes hard to have so many people with different personalities sharing tight quarters, we loved spending our vacation in [wherever]."

I've put off scrapping our family vacation from last year for the same positive/negative reasons. My extended family spends a week together every summer, and last year my sister in law got her cancer diagnosis in the middle of the trip. I usually scrap a photobook and gift copies to the extended family, but I know that some members of the family can't bear to look back at the trip yet. Thankfully her prognosis is good and she just finished chemo; we're waiting for the test results to tell us if she's cancer-free. Right now my plan is to wait a few more months then see how people are feeling. I think they'll be able to think about the positive parts of the trip better once they know she's okay. But I don't know how to handle the cancer diagnosis. For myself and my immediate family, I'd mention it. But I think this time I'm going to have to ask the extended family what they think. Maybe they won't be able to look back fondly on the positive parts of the trip if they have that reminder along with it.
 
Thanks for your feedback, guys.

Our vacation with my husband's extended family last summer also did not go so well. Something terrible happened but I just finished up that album and didn't mention it at all as the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn't my story to tell. The 'terrible something' did not affect me or my immediate family directly, and I guess it's the same with this vacation I'm scrapping now.

There is zero chance that we will ever go on a vacation with my side of the family again so I am just going to scrap the pictures, keep the journaling light, and move on.
 
Our last Disney trip was a nightmare. Everyone was fighting. In the middle of our vacation, my son came down with an allergic reaction that made him sick the rest of the vacation. The day before we were supposed to go home, back east it had blizzard and our flight was cancelled leaving me with limited internet to deal with getting new tickets. It was miserable.

But, when I'm scrapping our vacation, I'm focusing on the positives. I've scrapped about 30-pages already and already my memories of the vacation has changed. From being in the moment where I wanted to disown my entire family and being angry with them all, I am now to the point of remembering the good that came out of our vacation and it's spinning a different attitude on that vacation.
 
I do scrap the unfavorable things, like when my mom's dog died while we were on our anniversary trip... I did put in there that the moment was sadden by finding out that Lillie passed away and I felt hopeless that I couldn't be there. Or the time my husband had to go to the ER on our Disney Trip for an ear infection and we spend 5 hours waiting for someone to see him... I tried to make it funny...

On the flip side - our Italy trip was difficult... seven of us, different personalities... I probably won't comment on the things that really happened. I don't want my son read it and remember the harder parts... but I know I won't forget.
 
On a trip I had, a friend of a friend tagged along for parts of the trip. At first it was fine, but then she started getting really bossy and wrecked parts of it for me. I will not scrap those parts, but it's a story for me to tell people when they ask about the trip. Mostly I try to make it funny like how I got super hangry after walking for like 6 miles with no food because she wasn't hungry until I freaked out and demanded a quick stop for food. Ended up eating at a KFC as a vegetarian, but I didn't care, just wanted some darn food.
 
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I have a vacation like that. I haven't touched those photos. It's just something that makes me sad, like... how great it could've been. But I also know it could have been A LOT better. I don't know if I will ever scrap it, honestly. It just brings up too many bad feelings for me.

Ok, after a few seconds of letting that thought settle... I think I will scrap them. I just will mention the truth of it matter-of-fact style, and focus on the GOOD. <3
 
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Lol, I’m glad to learn I’m not the only one who struggles with big family vacations! It’s so hard making a million different personalities mesh and managing everyone’s expectations. I’ve have MANY trips like this, and usually I scrap a bit overview page, and then I take the events and fun things that I enjoyed and scrap them. I leave out the bad feelings bits and focus on what did go well. Sometimes I only have a few pages, and that’s ok
 
When I was just a tad younger and visiting my family, my youngest sister was still at home with my parents and she was annoying. I created this awesome scrapbook of my trip and on one page in one sentence mentioned how she was annoying. My step-mother read it about a year after that trip and I could tell the look on her face she was hurt. I have the best step-mother any girl could ever ask for and I would never want to hurt her. My youngest sister has grown out of the annoying phase and my parents have gotten older (all 3 of them and they have changed.). If your family didn't notice it, don't even put it in the book. I don't want my kid to worry about my drama of teenagers anyways. Wish I hadn't written that one line. My younger sister has turned out to be a beautiful woman who loves my kid and is about to be a mother herself.
 
We've never taken an extended family vacation. Funny, neither side of our family ever even suggested it :p
But, I have not scrapped our daughter's wedding from 3 years ago because every time I look at the photos, I have bad/sad feelings. Nothing my daughter did, but drama with her MIL just really wrecked the experience of my only daughter's wedding :( I have scrapped some photos just because they're beautiful, but as a whole, that subject will wait until I can get past the negative emotions.
 
So I'm powering through the album now & it's actually starting to be fun as I'm using large designs & photos and just playing around since I don't have to worry about lots of journaling or feeling intimidated by being really attached to the photos I'm scrapping.

With the kids being gone next weekend, I'm going to get this wrapped up by then & send it off to Shutterfly to be printed. I think I will feel a lot more at peace with the situation once the album is sitting on the shelf and I don't have to look at it or the pictures again unless I want to (but I won't feel the pressure of getting it scrapped, either).

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My daughter's baptism was an awful day! I think I deleted EVERY SINGLE PHOTO. If my sister gave me the photos she took I wouldn't scrap them. I don't want any memories of that event.
 
LeeAndra said:
So I'm powering through the album now & it's actually starting to be fun as I'm using large designs & photos and just playing around since I don't have to worry about lots of journaling or feeling intimidated by being really attached to the photos I'm scrapping.
Click to expand...

I'm glad it's working out that way. I love your pages, especially the snake one!. So fun.
 
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