Dear ones -

I don't think I've shared much about how I became so focused on ancestral connection work. Perhaps you're interested to hear? Especially since it's the opposite of how I felt initially...

In a weird paradox, alongside some pretty big patterns of people-pleasing, I’ve also always had a pretty strong resistance to authority and any hint of “because I’m older and know better” condescension. Any sense that I have to do something and my feet want to plant, my arms want to cross, my lower lip wants to come out, and my eyes want to narrow. A big ol’ NOPE.

Growing up, that’s what I associated with “elders” (and ancestors) - the “listen to your elders. we know better” thing. (which is sometimes true and sometimes not. I suspect we need the fresh eyes and ideas of youth *and* the longevity of wisdom and experience).

I’m also someone who sees to the heart of the matter, beyond the masks other people wear, pretty quickly. I sense emotion and intent. I frequently hear what people aren’t saying alongside what they are. In spite of periods of my life where I’ve tried seeing the world the way others tell me it is in order to fit in (and plenty of moments where I've gotten tangled up in my own misinterpretations of others, too), I’ve never been able to numb or ignore my intuition for long.

So for many years I resisted the idea that elders might have anything to teach us because I saw the wounds, the hurtful patterns that filled a lot of my lineage. I would see oppressive dynamics being passed off as love and wonder why I should listen to this person as an expert on life.

And the earlier stages of my healing journey only deepened this desire to distance myself from these ancestral patterns. It’s easy (and, initially, can be helpful and even important) to seek and find answers/ blame/ responsibility for how we are the way we are from familial patterns.

But shamanic and animist frameworks are also full of encouragement for ancestral connection, worship, etc. Those connect us to Spirit and the land.

The longer I stayed in those fields, the harder it was to reconcile my resistance with what the approached seemed to be asking for from me.

So how did I get from this desire to distance myself from my lineage, the sense that there was nothing of value in the past and we, in modern times, were the most evolved expression of humanity; to my deeply ancestrally devoted work (including hugging standing stones, asking for their help writing these emails, etc)?

I still remember the picture of the indigenous women of the Amazon, dressed in their colors and feathers, wailing and crying and beating their breasts in protest of another round of deforestation of their jungle. I remember being struck in that moment by how deep their expression of grief ran. As if each of those individual plants and trees, plus all the displaced animals and denuded land and contaminated waters, were unique and intimate family members, being murdered in front of them.

I had already begun the phase of my own deep healing and spiritual re-connection work which unfolded in a shamanic and more indigenous praxis. I’d already begun reconnecting to animism and the idea that all of life is conscious, with its own wisdom to share. That we are one species in a wide web of kin.

And yet it was all still more a concept than an embodied experience for me.

Looking at those indigenous women, it struck me deeply that while I felt existential grief and dread about the state of the world, I wasn’t mourning as if it were my kin. Would I ever be capable of their depth?

In spite of years of feeling overwhelmed by my own sensitivity and huge emotions, years of trying to numb them out and tame them down; I found myself with the vague sense that I was missing out on something by not experiencing that level of love and connection. Even when it hurt.

Around a similar time, the wellness and spirituality world was exploding anew with conversations around cultural appropriation and ethical connection to ancient wisdom traditions in the face of settler colonialism, diaspora, and the resulting economic and power disparities. As much as I was open to those conversations, as a yoga teacher and energy healer/ shamanic practitioner living in the currently called “United States” and descended from European settlers, there was a part of me that experienced a visceral response which felt a lot like resistance and entitlement.

Knowing that it’s hurt people who hurt people, I followed those sensations/ emotions down and in and saw an image of ruptured roots. A gap between one part of the timeline (the one I was more conscious of) and an earlier one which existed outside of my conscious awareness.

And in that gap, there was an immense surge of grief. I knew somehow that it wasn’t just mine. It was my ancestors’, it was the land’s. I heard the words clearly: “Before we were “American,” before we were “white,” before the shame and the trauma and wounds, we were something else. We belonged to a place.”

What followed was a deep knowing that there was a time in my own lineages where the world was kin. And there were probably rituals, songs, stories, clothing, ways of making things and moving through the world - belief systems - which had connected my longer-ago ancestors to their beyond-human kin.

In restorative justice praxis, and in many indigenous reparative practices, there’s the understanding that when someone causes harm it’s because they’ve lost touch with their humanity, with their heart and soul. So punishment isn’t helpful.

Instead there’s an accountability which starts with reminding someone of their humanity, of their innate goodness and heart. If we are overly identified with the harm we’ve caused, if we don’t remember that we’re more than our mistakes and missteps, it’s hard to receive any sort of feedback or accountability without feeling attacked.

(I explore this in my podcast conversation with Kakisimow Iskwew and Tad Hargrave. Episode 54, if you're interested).

We have to be rooted into a deeper sense of who we are in order to see and then repair the pattern. Our higher self has to be able to step forward and hold the vulnerability of those sharing how we’ve hurt them as well as the hurt in us which caused us to act as we did.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as I wrote the above I used both the verb “to root” and the noun “higher self” to describe what was necessary. We need the spiritual perspective. But we also have bodies and those bodies carry lineages. Both are necessary parts of a robust-enough sense of self to navigate the conflicts and challenges of being human.

For many of us, this means looking back in our lineages beyond settler colonialism and diaspora. For many of us, this might even mean looking back beyond industrialization since that’s when society began to disconnect itself from the land and from a sense of humanity which was richer than human bodies as resources and tools of production.

Being a 1/3 Profile line in the Human Design framework, describes my patterns well: I have a yearning to go deep and explore all facets of something before I feel knowledgeable enough to share. And I can’t just read books or learn from someone else - I have to try it myself so I speak from embodied experience.

So for the last eight years or so, that’s what I’ve been doing when it comes to this ancestral piece. I’ve dabbled in language, song, story, actual pilgrimage to ancient sites, craft, and more. I’ve benefited from courses and teachers, I’ve also found much deep wisdom through listening to my beyond-human guides and teachers, the land itself, and my own body and inner voice.

I've come to see that being old and being elder may not be the same thing... and in the absence of true elders and elder culture within many of our communities, animism reminds us we can look to these ancient wisdom traditions, to the land and our long-ago ancestral cultural practices, as elders themselves.

These paradigms are coming through more and more in my offerings to support you in remembering a sense of your own humanity which is far more vibrant, alive, and connected than what you might be conscious of inheriting from our modern society and your more recent ancestors.

It comes up in 1:1 sessions when a pattern or emotion feels like it has more “charge” than makes logical sense based on your awareness of your own life experiences. We honor whichever ancestor, from whatever time, is coming forward - we don't need to know their names to offer them the witnessing and compassion they're usually longing for.

And it will be at the heart of the Seasonal Round House offerings where we’re connecting with the embers of a more rooted ancestral culture. Because having a more unshakeable sense of self and belonging is key to staying human, to staying more powerfully alive, even when a lot of forces in the world seem to be conspiring against that. And putting ourselves in similar types of situations, going through some of the same motions, connecting with the seasons and stories they might've honored, can serve to awaken those almost-forgotten memories from where they live in our bodies. (I forgot to mention this in my last email, but folks who are who are currently enrolled in ongoing 1:1 support with me get access to all seasonal round house gatherings that occur while we work together - included, for free - as a supplement to their 1:1 work. If you're a current ongoing 1:1 client, look for an email with more info on that soon)

Does any of this resonate? How do you feel about your ancestors? I’d be curious to hear.

with Love,

Kate

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P.S. The beauty of energetic healing work is that at the level of energy, time and space aren't linear. This means as we unwind patterns in our physical and subtle bodies, it offers healing seven generations back and forward. So even in a 30-min fully remote session, it may be ancestral patterns we're softening, releasing, transmuting, re-integrating.

Don't forget that until the end of the month, I'm offering 20% off 30-min fully remote sessions.

Fully remote sessions happen off of Zoom. You plan to lay down and receive (you can even be asleep while it happens) at your scheduled time. I'll connect with your energy, work what I sense coming up, and then leave you either a voice note in WhatsApp, Signal, or email sharing what I sensed unfolding.

Book yours here and use discount code ECLIPSE20.