Dear Reader,
almost a year ago, an indian woman I’d never met facebook messaged me that her mother was looking for relatives with whom she had lost touch. this person then posed the question, “is your mom, kanaka and your dad purushotham?” my body tingled.
in an instant a stranger became a relative and a hidden door to an unknown past cracked open.
after i confirmed my parentage, my new found relative revealed that her mother, irene, and my mother, kanaka, were second cousins through her maternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather who were first cousins.
again my body tingled.
in the months leading up to this facebook message, i worked with mikki baloy, an ancestral lineage healer and teacher trained through ancestral medicine, “an organization that encourages the embodiment of animist values and practices in ways that are culturally healing, non-dogmatic, and accessible to people of diverse means, ancestries, and geographies.”
using ancestral medicine’s intuitive and systematic approach, mikki supported me in connecting with a part of my lineage that felt most well and vibrant. this may seem counterintuitive for someone seeking healing in their lineages. the wisdom here is that you begin where there is a high level of wellness and vibrancy and allow this to resource you and the healing process for your main four lineages (the grandmothers in your mother’s lineage, the grandfathers in your mother’s lineage, the grandmothers in your father’s lineage, the grandfathers in your father’s lineage*).
As mikki accompanied me through an intuitive assessment of my four lineages, there was a felt sense of ease when i turned north in the direction of the grandfathers in my mother’s line. my mind’s eye also filled with a soft glow of yellow light and my ajna (third eye) chakra pulsed.
the aliveness of my maternal grandfathers shocked me. i have always associated tragedy and even cursed fate with my mother’s lineages because of numerous calamities that have befallen the last three generations, including the premature and sudden deaths of my mother, her younger brother and two of my first cousins.
and yet the felt sense of wellness and vibrancy of my mother’s lineage was undeniable.
over the course of four guided sessions, i connected with an elder guide within the lineage of grandfathers on my mother’s side who greeted me with tenderness, joy and playfulness. this ancestor shared with me that he lived on earth during a time that pre-dates colonization. in one encounter, i asked him to share the blessings of this line. my elder guide smiled broadly and said “unbridled joy.”
i was awestruck and a bit unnerved. what sparked awe was imagining what would be possible if i opened myself to this blessing! what was unnerving was knowing that to claim unbridled joy as an ancestral blessing meant giving up the narrative that i am predestined to fail, suffer, and lose what i love given the fate of so many of the “recent dead” in my lineage.
after this revealing encounter with my elder guide, i paused my sessions with mikki and didn’t make contact with my elder guide on my own. this wasn’t a conscious decision but rather an unconscious, protective one. i wasn’t ready to release the narrative of hardship and persevering no matter what. i wasn’t ready to believe that unbridled joy didn’t have to be earned but was a gift the grandfathers of my mother’s line wanted to give me, no strings attached.
it was in this period of pause that my mother’s second cousin reached out to me. within a week of receiving the facebook message from her daughter, irene and i spoke on the phone. soon after greeting one another and without prompting, irene launched into an explanation of our family tree beginning with my maternal great grandfather and her maternal grandmother who were siblings. until that moment, i had not known my great grandfather’s name.
irene did her best to name relatives across four generations and highlight their connection to my maternal grandfather. i tried to keep up, frantically taking notes in a google doc. while there were many gaps, a picture of this side of the family was slowly coming into view, much like a print developing in a dark room.
when irene came to my grandfather joshi and my grandmother sushila, she slowed down and after sharing some of her impressions of my mother, kanaka, she told a story.
“your mother, kanaka and your uncle cyril came to kailash colony to visit me in the hospital where i stayed for 7 days after delivering my twin girls. i was surprised to see them given how far a distance it was from where they lived.”
“after seeing my twin babies, your mother came to my room and said, ‘irene, it is not raining blessings, it is pouring blessings!’”
i teared up. it was as though my mother was speaking these words to me.
i met with mikki soon after this and sheepishly expressed that it felt like my mother and her father’s people were reaching out to me from the ancestral realm.
“oh yeah. it’s like, tap tap wink wink.” mikki responded matter of factly.
my own doubt softened and the part of me resisting the flow of joy and blessings softened as well.
i am now enrolled in ancestral medicine’s 12-week foundational course on ancestral lineage healing. i’ve resumed connecting with my elder guide and recently felt the presence of the well and vibrant grandfathers before him. i’ve also witnessed my elder guide channeling the collective wellness of these grandfathers to create a container of healing for the more recent dead in our lineage who are not well. in some cases, this is due to personal trauma and tragedy. in most cases, this is due to the collective trauma of colonization which severed our people from indigenous ways of knowing, particularly in relation to reverence for the earth and more than human kin.
my experience in the ancestral lineage healing course has shifted my relationship to time and my understanding of my place within it. by connecting in the present with an elder guide who lived at least seven generations before my birth, i see my life’s expressions and offerings in a multigenerational time span. having a felt sense of the wellness and vibrancy of the grandfathers in my mother’s line and bearing witness to the healing of the unwell dead in this line, supports me in imagining our well and vibrant descendants seven generations from now. with these descendants in my mind’s eye, i’ve become clearer on what is mine to receive, to be and to do to usher in a post settler colonial era characterized by a deep reverence for life and mutual flourishing. i am so grateful to be on this journey with you.
Footnote:
*on the gender binary in ancestral medicine's methodology: there is a thoughtful way in which the ancestral medicine teachers acknowledge and regularly weave in a gender expansive worldview into the teachings. the teachings center on two lines of grandmothers (mother’s and father’s side) and two lines of grandfathers (mother’s and father’s side) to bring focus and depth to the lineage healing work while acknowledging that some of these ancestors were likely transgendered, non-binary, and gender expansive.
