
Sometimes healing and ancestor work is just plain hard. It’s great when we can light a candle and call on a beloved we remember fondly or someone we love and admire. Even in the pain of loud and grief, we can touch the powerful love that evokes such pain. I’m so grateful for the amplification we get when we can tap into the positive energy they offer us from beyond the veil.
But. Not. All. Ancestors. Are. Like. That.
I have been working towards peace with my ancestors on generational wounds for several years now. It’s intense. It spans centuries and continents, some information is impossible to find; most things are just about following my feelings and intuition about where the work goes next.
Some of our ancestors are beloved and wonderful or strong and bold leaders. That’s great. But what is also true is that all of us have ancestors that weren’t very good people, others who were wrecked with their own traumas, and many of us come from legacies of violence and the weight of oppression bearing down on the necks of our ancestors for generations. It’s a lot.
I’m currently working through my new relationship with my recently-deceased, estranged father… i.e. nobody I want close, and yet, here I am with the ashes and my ancestors telling me *in my body* about getting into the right relationship and my duties to ancestors.
I feel annoyed and frustrated: Why do I have to do this difficult, painful work of healing? I complain about it. A lot. And every time I do I get back the same answer, from my healer friends, from my partner, from my best friend, from the spirit world… They say, “Why you? Because you can, that’s why!”
Because I have been blessed with community and resources and personal fortitude. And because I have done my work to get this far, I find that there is always more, harder work to do.
“It isn’t fair that I have to do the work because he didn’t!” I complained to my healthcare clinician recently. She responded with a shoulder shrug and an Italian saying from her father in the old country, “Those who are born with broad shoulders help carry other people’s loads. This is how the village survives.” Worse than that she reminded me what we all know is true: if we don’t do the work to heal the wounds, the pain will fall to the next generation to solve.
This is how I think about the work of sabotaging white Christian Supremacy. Not all of us have the fortitude or safety to be out. Not all of us can take on white Christian Supremacy head on in public, but those of who can, should.
So many of our people still don’t know that the violence and spiritual terrorism waged against us and our ancestors are rooted, not in the Divine, but in the false gods of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and domination. These idols who steal the language, Scripture, and culture of Christianity and twist them into weapons of violence and death.
All of us who know the Truth can do the hard but incredibly important work of healing our own hearts and communities from religion-based spiritual violence by disbelieving the lies of white Christian Supremacy and rewiring our hearts and actions to represent life abundant for all Creation, leaving shame and fear behind.
In this time of year, when the veil is thin and we remember those who have gone ahead into the cloud of witnesses, may we remember that just like trauma, healing also works across generations. This is my time to heal; it’s my work because I have been given what I need to be able to do it. And, I do not walk alone. We are never alone.