I’m pretty sure Julie is your second cousin once removed.
In my family, godparents were always called Aunt and Uncle, even by the siblings of the godchild. So I had an Auntie Tressa, who was no blood relation and just a nice lady who lived across the street who happened to by my sister’s godmother. This might be an Italian-American thing.
I decided long ago that there’s Family and there’s Relatives, and while all Relatives are Family, not all Family are Relatives. My husband’s brother has a daughter who is of course my niece. My husband’s brother’s wife had a brother who left a widow. Although there is no relationship between us, she and I are Family because we are both aunts to Christy.
My favorite “What’s the relationship?” story is a shirt-tail relative of my husband’s named Dixie. (She’s a shirt-tail relative because she was related to my DH’s stepgrandmother.) Anyway, Dixie married a man and had a child with him. Then she divorced him and married his widowed father, and had 3 children with him. The youngest of these was rumored to not have been fathered by her current husband, but by his son – but not the son to who she had previously been married.
When I have trouble sleeping I try to figure out how Dixie’s children were related to each other.
For me, a fairly small-time oddity in this area, but a slightly tantalising one – brought into focus by recent dealings with family members who are quite keenly into family history and genealogy; I’m less interested, but this involves a thing which I remember from childhood, and which said fam-hist mavens don’t.
My mother’s side of our family tends to be long-lived. A great-grandmother of mine – mother of my maternal grandmother – was one of five sisters, all born in or just-bracketing the 1850s. One of the five (my great-grandmother), definitely died before my birthdate of 1948; per family records such as they are, it appears likely that two more of them died either before my birth, or in my extreme infancy: so I have no recollection of them.
Another – Selina (Lina for short) – almost reached her century (she remained mentally sharp and on-the-ball, to the end): she lived in a small village in the depth of England’s East Midlands countryside, and I recall a couple of trips made in the mid-1950s by our family, to visit her – and another, I think slightly younger, old lady with whom she shared her cottage. Lina (my great-great-aunt, if I reckon rightly) was called by our family, “Auntie Lina”; her companion / roomie / whatever, was called by the family “Auntie something” – but I don’t remember what that name was – and there is no longer anyone in the family still alive, who might know and could be asked.
The mystery lady could, I suppose, have been one of those two sisters who are surmised, but without total certainty, to have died before I could make their acquaintance. Or, might have been the youngest of the five, born 1861: but that sister went, it is gathered, by her two – slightly unusual – given names: Etheldra Ruth; and racking memory to the max – whatever “Auntie *** ” designation my parents gave the lady, I don’t think it was that. Perhaps “Ms. ???” was a more distant relative; or even someone not related – given for kids’ benefit, a courtesy “Auntie” title. I don’t exactly lie awake at night fretting over this issue; but it’s a bit frustrating that I don’t know, and that there’s no way now that I can.
When I was a kid, there was this old lady we all called Aunt Muriel who attended various holiday dinners and other family functions. I knew she was from my mother’s side of the family, but beyond that, it never occurred to me to wonder whose aunt she actually was, nor how I might have been related to her.
This caused some embarrassment once when I was a teenager and she took me to a concert at her church. When it was over and everyone was milling around, she went to use the bathroom or something, and some random guy came up and started talking to me and asked if I was there with anyone. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know how to identify to him whom I was with, since I didn’t even know her last name. I only knew her as Aunt Muriel.
Years later, I asked my mother how Aunt Muriel was related to us, but unfortunately the explanation didn’t stick with me. I think she said she was the widow of my maternal grandfather’s late brother (whom I never met, since he died before I was born) but I’m not sure.
If the calculator I found knows what it’s talking about, you’re approximately second cousins once removed. She and your mom share great-grandparents (they’re granddaughters of sisters).
http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/cousincalculator.html