Cultures around the world recognize this time of year as an opportunity to honor and connect with our Ancestors. We say that the veils between our waking reality and the Ancestral world becomes thin, enabling us to more easily sense and communicate with our Ancestors.
It is because of our Ancestors that we are alive today. That’s a very real and obvious fact and yet we often do not recognize the significance of it.
My Ancestors are a daily presence in my life. I lean on them for guidance and support, I have since I was a child. Their belongings add beauty to my life as I tend to be the collector of family heirlooms. I also plant Plants and create gardens in their honor; as I walk the Land, I am greeted by them and watch my Love for them blossom and grow.
Our Ancestral lines are complicated, made more so by divorce, adoption, remarriage, and the separation of our families as well as separation from our Ancestral lands (by force or choice). As the lines become more complicated and time continues on, often our Ancestral wisdom and stories get lost or become diluted. There is a tendency to highlight the stories that we enjoy or that fit our preferred narrative and to forget or ignore the stories that provoke pain.
None of our Ancestors were perfect individuals, they were human after all. As the field of epigenetics grows, we are becoming more aware of how the traumas and beliefs that our Ancestors experienced continue to affect us, even when we have no conscious knowledge of them. Simply by turning on the news, we can see how unhealed Ancestral wounds continue to wreak havoc on our world. As the cycle of the oppressed becoming oppressors continues.
If we want to live better lives, create a healthier future for all, or simply embrace who we are meant to be, it is imperative that we engage in Ancestral healing for our human Ancestors as well as the Ancestors of the Land in which we live.
Healing our Ancestors is a life-long pursuit which can occur in many different ways. As we focus on our Ancestors, we need to embrace our unwanted Ancestors, those who we are ashamed of, who caused us heartache, or who caused harm in their lifetime. Ignoring them creates a weakness and allows the wounds to fester. Perhaps we need to forgive them, understanding that they did the best they could with the resources and information that they had at the time. Or perhaps we need to make amends for their actions and choices. (Or both.)
Below I share six steps for honoring and healing our Ancestors. Before we engage in Ancestral healing, it is important to remember that the Plants are here to help us, support us, and guide us. For many of us, our Ancestral paths have gaps; our family stories, traditions, and wisdom have been lost. The Plants tell us that wisdom can never be lost only forgotten, which means that it can also be remembered. Plants often step-in to help us remember the wisdom and to fulfill the roles that our human Ancestors were meant to, such as initiating us or passing on knowledge and ceremonies. Plants are our Ancestors as well and have much to share.
In Communicating with Plants: Heart-Based Practices for Connecting with Plant Spirits, I discuss several Plants that help with Ancestral Healing including: Corn, Eastern Hemlock, and Rosemary. In my classes we often work with Cedar (Thuja occidentalis) to help us connect with and heal our Ancestral lineages. In my personal life, I have also been working with Rose, Ginkgo, Dahlia, Marigold, Blueberry, Strawberry, Mugwort, and Grass. As always, when there is a need, Nature provides many options. Ask who wants to help support your Ancestral healing or who wants to help you remember or connect with your Ancestral wisdom. Who wants to help transform the burdens and relish in the gifts?
Sometimes there is a tendency to gloss over our past or ignore our history to focus on the future. This is akin to trying to run a marathon with a broken leg. It only allows our wounds to continue and grow often out of sight, but they will emerge with a vengeance. Healing the past is what propels us towards a better future for all.
Six steps for honoring and healing our Ancestors:
As you engage in these, remember to also honor the Ancestors of the Land in which you live.
1) Have an altar
Have a place in your house where you celebrate your Ancestors. Display their pictures or items that were meaningful to them. You can light candles here or give them other offerings. Ideally this is in an area where you can interact with them through your daily life. Our Ancestor altar is on the mantel in our living room (and overflows throughout the room). You can go to them when you need support, want advice, or simply miss them (or even when you are angry with them).
2) Eat foods that celebrate them
There may be a dish that you associate with an Ancestor or perhaps you have family recipes that have been passed down. Or maybe you want to learn how to make a dish from your Ancestral homeland. Eating these foods helps to keep the memory alive and helps us to connect with these Ancestors. Remember when you eat these foods to give an offering of them to your Ancestors. We have a special Rock/Altar where we place a beautiful plate of our offering. The plate that I use is from my great-grandparents’ wedding china. Of course, you can use whatever dish you have as well. It is helpful if you place these offerings in the same place. If any food remains when you collect the dish, give it to the compost or the Land, do not eat this.
3) Sharing stories and learning new or missing ones
Keeping the memory of our Ancestors alive is one of the best ways to honor them. Share your family stories and songs or ask the Elders to tell them. As you remember these, notice the stories that are missing. Be curious about the perspective of the story, would others tell it very differently? What isn’t being talked about? You may want to research the events during your Ancestors lives. Or you can engage in a metaphysical journey to discover missing information. Stories change with each telling and our biases and perspectives can greatly influence the story. For a more truthful path forward, it is helpful to try to shift through the biases, prejudices, and desire to make our families heros.
4) Every day choices
One of the best ways in which we can honor and heal our Ancestors is through the choices and actions we make every day. Do our actions positively reflect on our Ancestors? Another way to say this is, are we acting honorably? Keep in mind that Ancestors can include future generations. Are we making choices that will benefit our future generations? Even more than this, are we making amends for the wrongs that our Ancestors did or benefitted from? We can’t change the events that occurred in the past nor the actions our Ancestors took, but we can work to fix the wrongs and dismantle the systems of oppression. We can also choose to shift Ancestral patterns and beliefs. As we do our own personal healing work, the benefits ripple out to our Ancestors and future generations.
5) Utilize the gifts and privileges that we inherited for the benefit of all
Whether we want to admit it or not, most of us have inherited gifts and privileges from our Ancestors. For example, almost all of us in the US are living on stolen land. Our Ancestors may have been involved in taking the Land or they may have simply benefited from it. Of course, those of us identified as White have also inherited white privilege, which does not mean that we don’t struggle or face injustice, but the color of our skin does not automatically make our lives more challenging and dangerous. We may have received other known or unacknowledged benefits from our Ancestors’ positions of power. We can bring real healing into our communities and Ancestral lines by helping to balance the ledgers and shift these power dynamics to benefit all, helping to heal the oppressions and harm that our Ancestors contributed to. For those Ancestors who were oppressed, we can bring healing by engaging with compassion, forgiveness, and embracing our own power again helping to shift the ledgers towards equity and justice rather than feeding into the cycle of revenge and oppression.
6) Work with Plant allies
As I wrote earlier, the Plants are able to help us heal the Ancestral wounds as well as to honor and celebrate our Ancestors and the Ancestral joys. My experience with the Plants is that they offer us more guidance and support than we can even begin to imagine. Still after all this time of working so closely with them, their generosity continues to amaze me. Plus, Plants offer us the unconditional Love that we crave and rarely get to experience in our families. In addition to asking for a Guide to help you with the Ancestral healing, there may be a Plant (or several) who is connected to your Ancestral homeland(s). Working with them can help bring back the “lost” wisdom. When we get to tap into the energy of our Ancestral homelands, often, aspects of ourselves or our families begin to make sense. Our Ancestors, including their physical bodies, stories, and beliefs, were formed in connection with the Lands they inhabited. These connections are passed through our DNA even if it has been many generations since our Ancestors’ feet walked upon these Lands.
These steps are only the beginning. There are so many other ways to honor and heal our Ancestors. Any step you take towards healing these Ancestral wounds and balancing the ledges of power is an incredible gift to all. When we are in the midst, especially when we are uncovering the stories of our “unwanted” kin, we can feel overwhelmed and heavy with burden and despair. We may want to toss it all aside, forget it, and put on the fake, happy mask. But it is only by being truthful and honest and pushing through the shame and guilt that we find relief. Usually at the end, we realize that the journey was not as bad as we imagined and we are now freer to truly experience the gifts and joys of life.
As always, I wish you many blessings on your journey.