I recently did some thematic harmonizing work with my female lineages. I came to the work feeling at a bit of a discord between myself and other women in my life. There has been a common theme throughout my life around not feeling in harmony with other women and I have been curious about the ancestral roots of this phenomenon. So I took it to my ancestors and they recommended that we do a harmonization process between my mother’s mothers, my mother’s father’s mothers, my father’s mothers and my father’s father’s mothers. All 4 of these lineages are in good health, each bringing a unique strength. In my process I started with my mother’s people and then worked with my father’s people and then with all 4 together.
From the stories passed down from my mom, I had a sense that her two lineages did not get along. When I brought them together there was a great sense of each needing to be seen in its strength by the other. When that recognition took place, there was a feeling of great mutual respect that flowed from them into me. It was a sense of an ability to be with the greatness of the other without giving up any of your greatness. This hit home with some of my feelings with other women. I have felt like I have to become smaller to make them feel comfortable or have felt small in relationship to their greatness. To experience the greatness of my lineages stand in their fullness and recognize each other in that fullness gave me an imprint for how this can look and feel in an embodied way. I feel their coming together as a salve for a deep wound I have been playing out with other women. My father’s lineages were a bit more in harmony from the start. It feels like the women in the two lineages are kindred spirits, each with their own strengths and insights, but with a common heart for the earth and the cosmos. When I brought all 4 lineages together there was a sense of the feminine really coming home. Each lineage holds a piece of the larger tapestry of the feminine in a way that, when combined, they form a powerful expression of the larger feminine mythos that I can see play out in tangible ways in my life, but also in a larger cosmic scale. Some of the traits of this combined energy are deep earth relationship in ways that can predict and manage resources, as well as relationship with the celestial cycles, and additionally a tending of the feminine wounding by the patriarchy in a way that brings profound wisdom and healing to broken places. I am a small part of a much larger work happening on this planet and in the larger universe (and multiverse). By coming into alignment with the wisdom of my ancestors, I can step into my part to play in a fuller way. One of the gifts of my lineages is a wisdom around timing. We are part of a much larger cycle of learning and growing happening on the planet and part of what we are learning is how we create connection and work in harmony with each other. I don’t expect my lineage work to immediately alter all of the female relationships I have, but I do see how it adds a positive perspective and energy to those relationships, which moves all of us towards a larger direction of healing. I look forward to witnessing the patient unfolding this work is a part of. If you are interested in exploring the wisdom of your ancestors and assisting in the healing of your lineages and the larger collective, you can learn more here!
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I recently wrote about the importance of the mythic mind as a place where we lay claim to a larger sense of who we are as human beings. I’d like to take a moment to expand upon how ancestral work supports our connection to the mythic mind and vice versa.
The ancestral work I do is based on lineages. I can connect with individual ancestors on the lineage, but the main focus of the work is on the energy of the lineage. When I connect to my lineage is it like a flow of ancient wisdom, fed by the streams of energy of each incarnation along the line, but coming from a much more ancient source. The healing work I do helps to clarify the energy and tend to the streams, so that the waters of the ancient source run clean and true. That source energy is different from more modern and everyday consciousness. It is more mythic in nature. When I tune into my mother’s mother line the lineage holds the wisdom of the land and the waters. It is the consciousness of the mountains, the valleys, the streams, rivers, ocean. It is a sense of relationship with these aspects of earth that is deeply intimate and profound. My repair of this line came long before I actually started doing formal ancestral lineage work. It started as I began to reclaim my mythic mind through Akashic work, weaving my personal myth of my past lives. It deepened as I developed my own animist relationship with the land and the nature spirits. And then it emerged as I connected with my lineage and found that they too held a profound energy of land and water connection. Each layer of healing relied on my connection to the mythic mind and each layer brought me deeper not only into myself, but into the energy of my ancient lineage. We are meant to weave these personal myths in ways that expand the possibilities for our soul path. This often requires us to be with and tend to difficult histories, but when done without clinging to labels of victim, perpetrator or rescuer, we can harvest a great wisdom of experience that informs new creation in our current moment. And the beautiful thing about the mythic mind is that it is not logical. We do not have to make sense of anything, but rather allow it to unfold mysteriously as we sit with the fullness of our being. From that place of open awareness and curiosity, so much beauty can unfold. This is true ancestral healing. To recognize what has been and what is right now in a way so raw and bloody in its clarity that to still stand in the face of everything can only be called love. My journey with ancestral healing actually started through plants. I was introduced to the idea that lineage was important by my shamanic aromatherapy teachers, Cathy Skipper and Florian Birkmayer. An insight they offered is that people who are called to ancestral work are often brought to this work by plants who hold the energy of lineage strongly in their beings. After their class I went on a mad ancestry.com research binge and tracked nine of my direct lines (mother's mothers, father's mothers, etc) back to being in the US before the revolutionary war. What I found was a pattern of Puritanism, colonization and enslavement... the founding wounds of the country where I reside. My ancestral work comes with this lens of tending the wounds that these lineages hold as well as inflicted. My ancestors were also burned at the stake and fled homelands for religious freedom. They were some of the original hunter gatherers in Europe and saw the change of their land and lives through farming, imperialism and capitalism. I hold the complexity of these histories with great compassion. I also believe that white people need to do some deep level reckoning, grieving, figuring out what their contribution to reconciliation is.
In 2020 I was gifted with the opportunity to participate in writing an essay for the book "Whiteness is Not An Ancestor: Essays on Life and Lineage by white Women". The final draft of this book was released to the 13 co-authors the day that Mr. George Floyd was murdered. This enraging event underlined the work that is needed to be done not only individually for white folks, but on the systems of oppression that we often unconsciously uphold. To learn more about the book and get an idea of the kind of conversations that are needed in the white community, you can view a talk I participated in on the book: Youtube video can be found here. |
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