A Visitation, A Journey, A Book
How I Came Into Deep Relationship with my Ancestors
I have a ritual and healing arts business that I co-created and collaborate in with my ancestors of blood and bone– a (different kind of) family business. A lot of folks in my life can’t see any other path for me, and I’m endlessly grateful for that reflection. And, it’s not the whole story. Of course it’s not the whole story. More than once, in sessions, someone has shared the sentiment “you can tell you’ve been doing this your whole life.” In unseen ways, yes– yes I have. I have been this particular face of these particular lineages for 30+ years. In terms of linear space-time, my relationship to this work is fresh: this summer I’ll come to the two year mark of direct, attuned contact with my ancestors. This life and business partnership is even younger: less than a year.
I wasn’t raised with the ancestors in focus. I grew up in the Midwestern United States, a place I have previously, erroneously and flippantly described as having “no culture.” The pervasive culture is whiteness, settler-colonialist, and materialist. Like most from the region, I suffered from a deficiency in relationship to the land, other-than-human kin, and nourishing food. Exactly zero of the education provided to me included exposure to different states of consciousness or rites of passage that aren’t rooted in capitalism. I was also raised Catholic and in that way, the ancestors and ancestral reverence have always been there, but in much less obvious-to-me ways. I’ve sat in ritual for 1000s of hours, taking part in ritual technologies that have been around for millennia: Catholic mass. My earliest memories are of renunciation– of the faith, not the Devil. Proudly a self-proclaimed atheist, I thought spirituality was bullshit and was relegated to sell more shit on Goop. And yet. Here I am. Here you are, reading these words, on this screen. What a life.
In August 2018, I was in Italy for the first time. I knew some of my ancestors had lived in Lucca, a city in Tuscany. My partner and I were touring the country for a week, and planned to spend about 12 hours there. Far too few hours for an ancestral pilgrimage, I now know. With the way things unfold when you take buses and trains to get where you’re going, we ended up only having about 90 minutes in Lucca. This urgency and shot of adrenaline sharpened every second. Near sensory overload in a quiet, idyllic, peaceful, ancient city on a searing hot summer afternoon. I had no context to draw on to integrate or even explain what was happening. My entire body was buzzing. I felt alive. Quite possibly for the first time in my entire life.
On the train ride to the next town, dripping with sweat and breathless with overwhelm, I exploded at my partner. Very loudly and very publicly berating him that we should never have had such a short stop there in the first place. The out-of-our control delays were an insult to injury. In a painfully classic example of projection, I told him he did not understand the importance of family or belonging because he had experienced tremendous difficulty at the hands of his family of origin. Never ever, not once, had I felt like I belonged anywhere and my body had remembered as it was literally re-membered on ancestral lands. I had been updating my family with photos from the trip and that day my brother would reply: “You look like you belong there.”
January 2021, Brooklyn, New York. The city was still mostly halted, a shell of its former self. With all of the time I found myself still struggling to fill, I attended a three day online Buddhist contemplation retreat. This particular modality was called “Breakthrough to Zen” and I cannot emphasize enough that this is not mediation, it’s contemplation. Meaning I was talking and processing a lot. On the third day, about an hour or so before the closing ceremony, she came in.
My grandma. She had been dead for over 5 years.
A very particular image of her, late in her life was appearing, and I kept hearing “You’re okay. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.” It was the most peaceful, nourishing energy I had ever come into contact with. Like a cosmic hug. This wasn’t a visual apparition, but it was several clair senses being activated at once. Again, something that would take many more moons until I found language for.
I was present, I was embodied. It was the clearest I’d ever been, having just spent the entire prior three days deep in personal process. All distractions were gone and I could perceive what had been trying to get my attention for a very, very long time. After the retreat, the Zen Master asked me how it was, since he knew it was my first time. I shyly told him of the encounter, being sure to be clear I knew that wasn’t the intent of the retreat but it was my direct experience. Without missing a beat, he said “Yeah, sometimes that’ll happen.”
Six months later her husband, my grandpa, died. I was headed home for a pre planned visit, and the night before I was set to fly, my mom called to tell me he was dying. I landed and drove straight to the hospital. Because of pandemic restrictions, only one visitor was allowed in the room at a time. But it wasn’t just me and my grandpa that June afternoon, death was there too. My grandpa’s consciousness was at the threshold, most folks having witnessed the scene would have said he “wasn’t there.”
He said two things: “Hurry.” and “I’m going home.” It was the most potent, painful, powerful, devastatingly beautiful experience. I held his hand and thanked him for our family. Even though it was clear this was the end, I couldn’t bring myself to say the word goodbye. As I left the room, I said “I’ll see you soon.” I didn’t know how true those words were.
He died a few hours later.
With all four of my grandparents gone, at 31, I had accessed a deeper level of adulthood and felt the weight of unprocessed and not-even-looked-at childhood wounding become overwhelming, it needed to be tended to. It feels tender to share because it’s extreme– it’s painful and there was a lot of grief around being so severed from myself that it took this next step to unlock my own house so to speak. I felt deeply called to do medicine work. I was in a community of folks in New York City who were using psychedelics medicinally, which was fairly new news to me. Between the time of the Zen retreat, and the death of my grandpa, I had found a mentor who would facilitate a guided journey for me.
In the ritual space, one of the first things I said was “Someone is trying to talk to me. Someone is here. Wait. A lot of people are here. Whoa!” I was formally introduced to my well and bright ancestors. My grandmothers, whom I had known while they were Earthside, were waiting at a massive gate which they opened: “Ta-da! Here we all are!“
During the integration process, my mentor mentioned that it could be supportive to read the book Ancestral Medicine by Dr. Daniel Foor. And also to consider signing up for his email list. Days after the journey, I traveled to Portland, OR to begin a two week backpacking/road trip. I stopped at Powell’s bookstore on the way out of town, and located a copy of the book – in the Metaphysical/Healing section, tucked between astrology and channeling books. I laughed at how ridiculous it was that I was in that aisle. I took the book with me on a three day excursion to so-called Mount Hood. Yes, I’m a person who brings (meta)physical books backpacking.
As I was reading, I kept having to put the book down. It was like I was on the journey again. So much of what I had experienced was clearly laid out, and given cross cultural context. Once I got back to cell service, the book devoured and highlighted into oblivion, I found my way to the website and saw that, of course, the doors had just closed for the semi-annual ancestral lineage healing online course. I also saw that the network offered practitioner training– I could train to guide this work for other people.
In the book, Foor quotes Carl Jung: “The individual’s life is elevated into a type, indeed it becomes the archetype of the woman’s fate in general. This leads to restoration or apocatastasis of the lives of her ancestors, who now, through the bridge of the momentary individual, pass down into the generations of the future. An experience of this kind gives the individual a place and a meaning in the life of the generations, so that all unnecessary obstacles are cleared out of the way of the life stream that is to flow through her. At the same time, the individual is rescued from her isolation and restored to wholeness.”
This was it. It was this.
My favorite metaphor here is that of a professional house painter. Anyone can paint their living room. Look at inspiration. Choose a color. Buy paint & supplies. Prepare the room for paint, perhaps moving furniture or taping the borders. Actually paint the room. Put everything back together and sit down, delighted by the power of paint. Every time one walks into that space for a few days or weeks, they’re delighted anew because the brain takes a few beats to rewire and keeps forgetting about the new paint. One day, they won’t notice anymore. They probably won’t think about it anymore until they see a photo of the way it used to look, or someone comes over and says “I love what you’ve done with the place.” And then there are folks that decide they want to walk folks through painting their living rooms, and maybe even every other room in their home. Anyone and everyone who thought they might want to paint their rooms, they’d be there. Sure, anyone can successfully work through Ancestral Lineage Healing on their own, but I felt it deep in my bones that I was going to support others with this work.
This is notable because I had quit my job earlier that summer. Quit an entire career, actually. I had spent 15 years in the fashion industry. I had an absolute dream job that was now a living nightmare. I had gathered enough courage and resources to make the leap, quit, and begin what I thought was going to be a six month sabbatical. (Yes, it was a rather eventful summer: death, psychedelics, ancestors, sabbatical.) I was so thankful this work had come into my life during my sabbatical. I had time and space and in this book, and with this network, was an entire curriculum. In the medicine journey, I felt the heavy thud of clarity of what I wanted to do in the world: I wanted to help “make people happy.” This wording was scented with codependency, a more refined way of saying it is: I’d like to steward folks as they find their way back home, to themselves. The practitioner training was only offered once a year, so it would not be until summer 2022 that I could even apply– which seemed a bit daunting. Plus, one simply didn’t sign up– one applied, implying one could be turned down.
I started attending all of the free offerings that were put out by Ancestral Medicine and going through the archives of past teachings. I went deep into practice. Setting up an ancestral altar in my apartment. Recording the practices from the book on my phone to play back to myself as I sat in ritual. I began working with an incredible practitioner. One of the first rituals I did was for the recently deceased–my grandpa. After I completed the ritual, which included some offerings on my altar, and prayerful requests that he may be received well, I decided to go for a walk, and went around my apartment shutting off all of the lights before leaving. Just as I was walking out the door, one of the lights turned back on. Oh. Hi. In that moment it felt like a nod, an acknowledgement. I was learning how to communicate in this way. Something was working. Everything was shifting.
In February 2022, I finally got to take the online Ancestral Lineage Healing course. The opening ceremony felt like I was in a stadium, the energy was intense. At this point, I had been engaged in the lineage healing process for about six months. (With no end in sight of my sabbatical.) I had immersed myself in ancestral books, podcasts, lectures, and lots and lots of ritual time and felt at home in the thriving online community. I would scroll through the practitioner directory wondering if I would ever be among these folks who did this work professionally.
It was right around this time that I got an incredibly clear intuitive hit that I knew who the father of my children would be: a friend of a friend I had never met, never even seen a photo of, just heard mentioned by name a few times. I didn’t do anything about this information, nor did I bother to tell my friend because it was so preposterous. That I was even considering having children was a complete about face from my previous decades of “never having children” being a pillar of my personality, and was directly related to being in relationship with my ancestors, but that is indeed a story for another time as we’re already 3k+ words into this one.
A few weeks later, I got connected to him. He needed support with a project and my friend thought I’d be a great fit. Meeting this person was exactly as you’d imagine meeting the future father of your children, unbeknownst to him, would be– very, very intense and very, very exciting. Quickly, he came to this realization – that we should create a family– himself and shared it with me, and poof. Life changed. We leaned into the relationship. This! This was deep ancestral work, I thought. The lineages extending.
Life got so busy with the work project that we were full steam ahead on – “our first child together” he had called it– I stopped going to the online lineage healing class about 5 weeks into the 12 week commitment. I moved out of my Brooklyn apartment, and began a nomadic spree that took me to Long Island, Upstate NY, and Santa Fe, NM over the course of about 6 weeks. I didn’t set up my altar in a single one of those places. All attention got turned to this new relationship, and to the all-consuming work project that had quickly turned into co-founding a company. I was building a rocket ship and learning how to fly it at the same time.
I belong to a monthly membership and in the weekly guided meditation that would be sent out in the midst of all of this moving, expansion, and well, distraction: “...We can start to connect with ancestors. And I get this sense of “hey, wait, what about us?” as I sense into the back. It's almost like separation anxiety. Like, if we expand in all directions, will the ancestors feel left behind? Someone feels left behind? So I'm just checking into that. Yeah, I'm just hearing “we don't want to be left behind” I didn’t even have time to listen to it. I wouldn’t listen to it until months later, devastated at how urgently the message was trying to come through.
Everything fell apart.
Every.
Last.
Thing.
The relationship with this person I thought – I knew– I was going to have children with came to as an abrupt ending as it had begun. Hours later, our business would also crumble. (Again, another story for another time.) I called my mentor in tears. “Well, you already figured out your work, your mission.” Oh my god. Oh my GOD. I had gotten so distracted, I had forgotten that I’d committed to my ancestors. The shame clouds rolled in. I had abandoned them. I hadn’t had direct, ritual contact in months, having assumed I was doing a different but related kind of ancestral work. I went to the storage unit and got all my sacred supplies and set up my altar. Dramatically, in the same room as the ancestral altar of my now former-partner, as I was still in his house. These two altars sharing a physical space– perhaps this moment was the moment everyone had been feeling all along…
The next morning, when I walked downstairs, it was the first thing I saw. How quickly I’d forgotten what it’s like to paint the walls in your house. I burst into tears with relief that they were there, and grief of my disrespect.
A few days later, when everything was over, like really over– websites and emails shut down, contracts dissolved, him, now a few states away– I got an email: the practitioner training was open. I happened to be with my mentor at the time. She was in the other room. “Did you see?” she called. “Yes!” I joyfully replied, knowing exactly what she was referring to. A few days later, I joined an information session on Zoom, and took diligent notes about the application process and the structure of the program, the blueprint for the next season of my life. They kept mentioning how intense the application process was. That was by design, this wasn’t just another online course, it was a spirit-led vocational training program.
Filling out the application happened rather quickly, I got it all typed out one evening, remarking at the ease. And then I sat with it for a few weeks. Yes, weeks. Feeling battered by the recent series of events, doubt– an emotion I hadn’t spent much time with– had cornered me. The massive rupture I had created with my people was deep in the repair process, but all of the small-self stories about unworthiness, imposter syndrome, and fear were loud. I did my own divination, and set up divination sessions with friends and practitioners. The echo back was lacking the clarity I desired. Basically: I could apply to the training and it would be wonderful, or I could not, and it would also be wonderful. I believe that we’re here, on Earth, partly to learn to make choices, not to have higher powers make them for us. I submitted the application. Spoiler alert: I was accepted.
The training has been so beautiful, and it’s been so easeful. Part of this ease is absolutely on behalf of Daniel, Shannon, Michael, and Ari, those on staff at Ancestral Medicine that make it all work so smoothly. And part of it is because this is indeed part of my mission: to much less dramatically bring people back into a deep relationship with their ancestors. If I can do it– anyone can. You don’t need anything– death, psychedelics, loads of genealogy – only an open heart and dash of tenacity to work with your intuitive senses to come into deep relationship with your own ancestors of blood and bone.
Last week, I was in ritual space with one of my lineages when a disturbance came in. The energy of someone kicking in a door and screaming: “Ahhhhhh!” My ancestors “closed the door” back up. When I inquired about what the hell that was, though I had a clear sense it was an unwell dead person– rather than some other form of energy– they told me: “That’s not dirt, that’s clutter.” Meaning lots of time and energy didn’t need to be dedicated to it, just some simple reorganization. This level of nuance and specificity is a sweet little postcard from the middle of a lifelong deepening with my people, and a little preview of what it might be like if you choose to do the same.
❤️🔥