Care of Ancestors and Kin
A personal experience of relationship with my ancestors.
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When I was small, I loved visiting my grandparents. In the summer, sometimes my mother’s parents would get out the plastic milk jugs and we would ride out to the spring to collect water. Sometimes we would fill them at the tap and bring them to the cemetery to water flowers. There were so many flowers to water. I loved hearing stories about the people in the ground there, whether they were “my people” or someone else’s. When I was 15 I started collecting up threads... my peoples’ stories, names, places, pictures... trying to see what image might emerge. Almost thirty years later I’m still trying to see. While researching my genealogy as the Western mind does, those beloved dead often felt so close, but achingly far.
Stephen Jenkinson talks about how those of us who are settlers here in the Americas (and as their children’s, children’s.... children we are still settlers) are orphans, and for me I think this aching longing for my people is really a longing for connection to my own ancestral places and the world views and life ways that were very much connected to the sacred, living, inspirited lands and waters with whom my people dwelt. Ancestor veneration, beyond remembering the beloved dead, is something that my lineage hasn’t actively practiced for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Since early 2019 I’ve been approaching my ancestors from an additional direction, exploring Daniel Foor's approach to ancestral healing using his book, Ancestral Medicine, and enrolling in his online course to deepen my understanding of the practice and learn from other participants' experiences.
Though there are still times that I feel like I’m grasping at them, like someone drowning, there is such sweetness and deep affection. I’m glad that they’ve kept tugging at me all these years. Deep bows to their persistence, perseverance, fierce love, and the other living humans who are supporting the reemergence of this way of relating.
Stephen Jenkinson talks about how those of us who are settlers here in the Americas (and as their children’s, children’s.... children we are still settlers) are orphans, and for me I think this aching longing for my people is really a longing for connection to my own ancestral places and the world views and life ways that were very much connected to the sacred, living, inspirited lands and waters with whom my people dwelt. Ancestor veneration, beyond remembering the beloved dead, is something that my lineage hasn’t actively practiced for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Since early 2019 I’ve been approaching my ancestors from an additional direction, exploring Daniel Foor's approach to ancestral healing using his book, Ancestral Medicine, and enrolling in his online course to deepen my understanding of the practice and learn from other participants' experiences.
Though there are still times that I feel like I’m grasping at them, like someone drowning, there is such sweetness and deep affection. I’m glad that they’ve kept tugging at me all these years. Deep bows to their persistence, perseverance, fierce love, and the other living humans who are supporting the reemergence of this way of relating.