Calling Our Ancestors: Healing Our Family Trees - A Talk

In 2019 I was asked to write an article for Spiritual Director's International Journal about how I used Spiritual Direction to work with the wounds of my Ancestral family tree. The wounds were the abuse my mom and aunt suffered from their father, my grandfather. I share the article I wrote here. In it are the spiritual steps I have taken over the last 20 years to help clear these ancestral wounds.

** Trigger: I speak just briefly about the original abuse suffered by my family members.

Transcript

Hi,

Thank you so much for joining me for our talk today.

In 2019,

I was asked by Spiritual Directors International to write an article for their journal called Presence.

The article addressed how I used the practice of spiritual direction to work on the ancestral wounds of my family tree.

I'm going to share the article with you here,

But first I want to share a little of my own family history.

I also want to give you a heads up that this could be triggering for some people,

So if you feel called not to listen to the rest of the session,

I respect your journey.

When I was in my 20s,

I learned from family members that abuse had occurred on my mom's side of the family.

My mom was physically and mentally abused,

And my aunt was sexually abused by their father,

My grandfather.

Up until this point,

I had not known any of this family history.

Into my 30s,

I realized that the abuse suffered by both my mom and my aunt were inadvertently affecting me as well.

Because I am highly empathic,

I discovered that I was carrying their wounds with me as well.

And for the past 25 years,

I have been on a long journey of healing the cycle of these wounds.

The article I wrote for Spiritual Directors International is called,

Calling Our Ancestors,

Healing Our Family Trees.

In this article,

I talk about the different spiritual practices that I connected with on my journey to help me,

And hopefully,

Make some peace for our ancestral lineage.

My hope is that by sharing my story,

It can also help you as well.

Thank you so much for listening,

And I'll share the article with you now.

Calling Our Ancestors,

Healing Our Family Trees.

The Family Tree.

We all carry inside of us,

People who came before us,

Says Liam Kellinan in his book,

The Cloud Atlas.

Our ancestral lineage lies rooted in our trees,

Our family trees.

So what happens to us as individuals if the roots of our family trees are wounded or damaged?

Does a piece of us also die if a part of the tree is wounded or damaged?

I cannot say for sure,

But I decided to bring this question into my own spiritual direction journey.

I knew that spiritual direction would provide a safe and loving place in which sacred listening would allow for the possibility for my ancestors to communicate with me.

We are composed of our past and our present.

The walk I have taken with my ancestral family may assist others through their journey as well.

If our ancestors live within us and they call,

Will we choose to answer back,

To answer the call?

As I began my journey,

I first sat in silence and waited.

As I waited,

The first image that bubbled to the surface of my mind was a photograph of myself,

My mom,

My aunt,

And my grandma.

In the photograph we stood together inside a life-size sculpture of a family holding hands.

This sculpture stands in front of a line of pine trees in a park located in Victoria,

British Columbia.

In that moment of remembering the photograph,

I understood that if I am born the daughter of my mother and father,

Who in turn were birthed by their mothers and fathers and their generations before them,

Then I too would carry the wounds that they carried with them.

I may not be conscious of it unless I take time to reflect on the stories and lives of those who bore me.

I can become whole again,

The whole tree within myself,

And touch the grove of trees that make up my family,

Each touching each other's lives.

Spiritual direction provided the perfect place for me to bring these wounds,

These past stories that colored our lives,

To be heard,

To be tended,

To be listened to and sung.

As I tended these roots,

Cared for the tree that is my family,

A profound love surrounded all of us.

Over a period of 20 years I have tended the layers and layers of soil in which my family's tree grew.

At first the story haunted me but now it bears beautiful fruit.

I share the journey I took,

The process that helped me honor who I am and who my family is.

This process includes naming the wound,

Calling in my ancestor,

Tending the wound,

Grieving and finding forgiveness,

Singing a new song,

Healing through art,

And re-imagining a healed tree using guided meditation.

In this way I consciously tended the family tree that I inherited.

First,

Naming the wound.

Uncovering family wounds can be tricky business.

When I brought my own family story into spiritual direction to explore,

I had already been sitting with the knowledge for years wondering what to do with it,

Wondering how it might affect me emotionally,

Spiritually.

I wanted to look at myself and my family to repair what I saw as dark places inside my own heart.

In companioning the soul,

We promise to not only listen,

But to bear witness to the places that are not so beautiful.

Spiritual companionship allows us to struggle,

Wrestle with these wounded places,

While knowing that another is holding space for us,

And that ultimately,

Spirit is tending this sacred space as well.

In spiritual direction,

This question was first asked.

What is the first step that appears before you on this path?

I listened with my heart.

As I listened,

I heard these words.

Name the wound.

I was then asked,

What wound would like to be named?

The wound that came forward was that of my family.

My grandpa abused my mom and my aunt when they were children.

I did not know this until my early twenties.

It stayed hidden because my mom and aunt could not bear to speak of the trauma that they had suffered growing up.

When I look back,

I remember visiting my grandfather.

He always smelled of stale cigarette smoke and warm beer.

When I was a child,

He would hug me,

And when we went to visit my grandmother,

I always hoped that we would leave quickly.

As I shared this in my spiritual direction,

The next question arose.

How does naming the wound of your family feel important to you,

To your spirit?

What I uncovered through the exploration of this question was that spirit wanted me to explore this wound so that I could discover why I was experiencing so much anxiety inside my body.

My nervous system was constantly on high alert,

Ready to run.

It had been too difficult for my mom or my aunt to look directly at these original wounds.

Because I was separated from it by a generation,

I could safely look and go into these dark places in our family roots and hold it in the light.

Here I could breathe into myself and my family by bringing light to dark places.

Naming the wound of my family tree brought light into a place that in the past wanted to remain hidden.

But when stories are held in the dark,

Thoughts can grow bigger than they first start from,

And shame can follow.

To name the wound is not to pass blame onto someone else,

It's simply to speak and give voice in the silence so that it can begin to heal.

Sharing my family story has also allowed me the ability to open up and speak more with my mom.

It allowed me to hear how she suffered and the hurt places that existed within her that I never knew were there when I was growing up.

When I began to discuss these events with my mom,

My grandpa had already passed.

I was 15 years old when he passed away.

It would take me 15 more years before I sat in holy space to name this wound of our family tree.

Next,

Calling our ancestors.

I practice an interfaith style of spirituality.

I draw wisdom from many traditions,

Christian,

Buddhist,

Celtic,

Pagan,

Indigenous,

And Hindu.

I call on spirit to move through me and bring forth these teachings that serve as an instrument for my healing at each step on my journey.

Through my spiritual companionship,

The next question that arose was this.

Now that your wound has been named,

In what way can you honor these wounds?

I took this question again into my heart.

It was many months later before I heard the answer.

I sometimes see answers like images projected on a screen in front of me.

I grew up in Yuma,

Arizona,

On the border of Mexico.

San Luis sits just 20 minutes south of where I grew up.

Our town has a large cultural heritage of Hispanic families,

And I spent much time with different families hearing,

Practicing,

And honoring their traditions.

One of the ways I learned to honor families through this culture is what's called lo ofrenda,

The offering table.

It is a form of prayer altar.

The names and pictures of ancestors are placed on the altar,

Heavily decorated with flowers,

Colors,

Food,

As a way to honor those who have departed.

I was able to discern through my spiritual practice the power held within a name.

If the wound has a name,

Do I then not need to also name the person who did the wounding?

I took this understanding that arose inside of me and went home.

I found a photograph of my grandfather.

I wrote his name,

Ralph,

On the back and placed his photo on my prayer altar.

I lit a candle for his remembrance and called his name.

I called him back into our circle,

Our family tree.

I understood that if he remained outside of us,

Apart,

None of our family would truly heal from our past hurts.

He didn't have to be physically present for me to do this.

He is already a part of me,

My biology,

My roots,

My family.

I called him back into our circle,

Naming him once again.

Third,

Tending the Wound.

When there is a wound for an injury,

Tending a spiritual wound can be very similar of that of a physical one.

To let a physical wound cover over before it is healed can lead to illness or infection.

This can be a mirror for spiritual wounds as well.

In order to tend a spiritual wound it is important to address compassionately what lies beneath the surface,

Not hurried or pushed,

But with tender care.

The interesting thing that occurred through the process of writing this article is the appearance these steps happened quickly.

As a spiritual director myself,

I know that the divine has her own timing in matters.

So,

The time between calling my grandfather in and tending the wound,

A period of four years passed.

There was a quietness that sat between those years.

Much was happening beneath the surface,

Stirring our roots.

The next big step on this journey would take place after my grandmother passed away in August of 2006.

My grandma Paula was the wife of grandpa Ralph.

My grandma's passing opened the door into the discovery my mom and I made.

As we went through my grandma's belongings,

We uncovered a folder with my grandfather's military records.

As we read through them,

We discovered that through his service,

My grandfather had increasingly become belligerent and troubled.

The report spoke of paranoid behavior,

Feelings of being watched,

And anti-authority behavior.

As we sat with this new information,

I also began looking at old photographs of my mom's family growing up.

I could see how the house that she grew up in changed over time.

The block wall in the backyard grew taller and taller as my grandfather added more layers.

He also covered all the windows to block out all the light with aluminum.

It is likely that there was mental illness present in my grandfather that went undiagnosed.

This may have contributed for part of the reason that he turned to alcohol to quiet this mental noise.

Seeing the pain that he had been in sparked my mom to begin her own search on the side of his ancestry.

She wanted more clues into his life growing up.

We began to both view my grandfather not just as a father and grandfather but also as an individual.

I brought this information into my spiritual direction practice.

Could I begin to hold my grandma,

My grandpa,

My mom in this sacred space with the divine,

Knowing that I would not be able to fix them or change them but just sit with all of this information in my heart?

Through discernment,

I heard these words,

As above,

So below.

What I uncovered was that if spirit could hold my family and all of its wounds and not turn away from us,

Then I could do the same.

There are no guarantees how healing takes place or what the outcome will be.

It was enough to be in that difficult space,

Knowing that we were not alone.

When a tree is injured or sick,

Oftentimes we may prune it in the right places and add nutrients to assist its health.

If we do not do this,

The tree might not survive or even thrive.

Spiritual direction allowed the space to tend these wounds.

In his book,

True Love,

Thich Nhat Hanh says these words,

We should open our door so that our suffering can come out.

We are afraid of doing that,

But Buddhism teaches us that we should not be afraid,

Because we have available to us an energy that should help us to care for our pain,

The energy of mindfulness.

If we practice cultivating this energy of mindfulness,

We will have enough of it to take care of our pain.

Step 4.

Grieving and finding forgiveness.

Over the next two years,

My mom took the information about her father and began to research his lineage.

She uncovered Ralph's story and revealed more of understanding of our family tree.

My grandfather was Italian.

His mother and father immigrated to the United States from Italy.

They ended up in New York and his father and mother worked and had a large family.

Then,

Tragically,

There was a fire.

The fire took the life of my great-grandmother,

Ralph's mom.

My grandpa was only two years old at the time.

His father had no way to care for younger children.

He had to place my grandfather Ralph and his sister into an orphanage.

This is where they grew up,

Without either parent to care for them.

With this new information about my grandfather as a child,

As an individual,

As someone who had suffered greatly,

We began to see through his hurting eyes beyond the pain that he passed on to his family.

Historically,

During his adulthood,

There would have been no social programs to help him communicate through these hurts.

And because he was undiagnosed with mental illness,

There was no way to get help that he needed.

These things,

Back then,

Were not spoken of.

Silence was kept.

My mom and I could both see that Ralph had suffered and because of this had created suffering in his family.

Forgiveness does not ask that you forgive the person who inflicted these wounds upon you.

Forgiveness only asks for understanding and to remove these heavy stones from our hearts that we carry from the past.

This was one gigantic stone that my mom,

That my aunt,

That I could remove from the roots of our family tree if we worked together.

Uncovering these parts of our roots to understand our family's wounds helped me to bring this listening compassion into spiritual direction.

My question to spirit was never why.

My question was always this,

What spirit can I do to honor my grandfather,

My mother,

My aunt,

Myself,

Our family?

Through sacred listening,

I heard in what way I could both grieve for our family and also honor at the same time.

In Tucson,

Arizona,

We have a beautiful opportunity each year to honor the ancestors who have passed in what is called the All Souls Procession.

In this procession,

Hundreds and thousands of people gather to watch or to walk in the parade honoring those who have passed.

We imagine getting to walk side by side with our ancestors,

So this is what I did.

I called my grandfather Ralph into the parade,

Bringing his photograph,

His name,

His history,

Once again to walk with us,

To be part of our family tree.

As I walked,

I knew that without him,

I would not be here either.

Step 5.

Singing a new song.

In his song,

Yerwala,

American Roots singer Trevor Hall sings these lyrics,

Know your song and the sands it sang from,

Know your song and pass it down,

If you cut that tree,

We're never going to be free.

It took another year before the next step on my journey that would reveal itself to me.

I sat in discernment and spiritual direction.

I heard that through song,

Through the power of voice and singing,

Through using my voice in joy,

That my family can continue to heal on its journey.

I sang with a local global chant community that I am part of.

I sang mantras from all traditions to uplift prayers for all those who are around us.

I sang while I drove in my car.

I sang mantras while I took showers.

I sang while I waited in line.

I sang the Heart Sutra mantra,

Gate gate paragate parasomgate borisfaha,

A Buddhist mantra of compassion.

I sang the Christian song,

Bind us together,

Bind us together with cords that cannot be broken.

I sang the Hawaiian prayer song of forgiveness,

Ho'oponopono,

I love you,

I'm sorry,

Please forgive me,

Thank you.

I sang the Hindu mantra of peace,

Loka samastah sukhino bhavantu,

And with each song and each time I asked those around me,

Living and past,

To receive the light from these songs.

So,

When I next met in spiritual direction,

I had had this dream to share.

In the dream,

I sat at a kitchen table that I had grown up with,

With my family.

As I sat,

I looked out the front window,

And in the dream I saw my grandfather Ralph walking down the sidewalk.

He turned up the walkway coming towards the house.

Then,

In the dream,

There came a knock at the door.

My mom closest to the door opened it.

My grandfather walked directly to me and stood in front of me.

In the dream,

He was wearing the very same clothes I used to see when he was alive.

A white v-neck t-shirt,

Brown pants,

Black shoes,

And a plain brown baseball cap.

There was one distinct difference.

In the dream,

He was now clean shaven,

His clothes were bright and clean,

And his once olive green eyes were now a brilliant bright blue.

His eyes shone so bright,

Sparkling and clear,

And this is what he said to me in the dream.

The singing is good.

Keep up the good work,

Kid.

Then he smiled and walked out the door,

And that's when I woke up.

I held this dream in prayer and thanked spirit for allowing my grandfather and myself to connect in this new way.

Singing had brought a new song into my life for my family tree,

And through a deeper relationship with spirit,

My family tree,

And our awareness of the past,

I could start to feel a deeper love and gratitude for being connected to this family.

The sixth step,

Healing through art.

My mom and I continued to sit with all of this new knowledge,

Understanding her father,

My grandfather,

His history,

Our history together.

It did not lessen the pain,

However it invited acceptance into ourselves.

I wanted to continue to create an honoring environment for myself and my family.

The next question that arose for me was this,

In what way can you continue to heal your family tree?

The answer that arose was creating art.

I decided to create a family collage to honor all of us.

Doing a collage was not only an opportunity to create a piece of art with my hands,

But also a chance to create using images.

It was an opportunity to bring family photographs together,

Along with iconic elements that represented our family.

I could see that our tree was very much alive and still growing despite its wounded limbs.

As I worked with my hands,

I brought together these elements of my grandmother,

My grandfather,

Images of the Statue of Liberty that they both had grown up through,

This gateway into our family,

And it included images of the hummingbird representing freedom,

Butterfly that signified regeneration and new directions.

This collage represented the ability to take the broken pieces of the tree and begin to build them in a new way.

The Japanese have a spiritual practice known as Kintsugi.

In Kintsugi,

If a piece of pottery breaks,

It is mended with gold to bind the pieces back together so that when light shines through the cracks,

The beauty can shine through even in the darkest places,

Making a history of its light more beautiful.

Upon finishing my family collage,

My art piece,

I brought the finished piece into my spiritual direction.

I wanted to honor the work,

The beauty,

The grace of our family tree.

The question that arose as I brought the finished collage into my spiritual direction was this,

How do you feel and in what is spirit present in this moment?

My response was this,

I feel as if I can breathe more deeply.

And the final step,

Number 7,

Guided meditation.

The year after I created my collage,

I began to reimagine the relationship that I had with my grandfather.

I wanted to take what it had been while he was alive and shift it to what it could be in my heart since he had passed.

Through discernment and deep listening,

I saw an image appear before me.

I saw that the wounds that were rooted in the ground and in the soil in which my family tree grew needed to be tended.

As I meditated,

The tree that appeared to represent my family was the oak tree.

The oak is a symbol of strength,

Wisdom,

Nobility,

Family,

Loyalty,

And honor.

These were all the qualities I was looking for to restore our family and to restore our tree.

I sat in meditation and imagined sitting with my back against this oak tree.

One by one,

My relatives joined me,

Being grateful to be part of this history together.

What had once been a wounded,

Shameful,

Anxiety-filled ancestry of family wounds could now shift into a beautiful oak tree,

Strong and courageous.

Now it could bear the new seeds of future change.

I began to imagine that spirit had entered our midst through the tree present.

Planting Roots This is a quote from Where I'd Like to Be,

A book by Francis O'Rourke Dowell.

"'You know why trees smell the way they do?

' Murphy asked.

"'Sap?

' Logan guessed.

"'Chlorophyll?

' "'Stars.

' Trees breathe in starlight year after year,

And it goes deep into their bones,

So when you cut a tree open,

You smell a hundred years' worth of light.

Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth.

That's why trees smell so beautiful and old.

'" Starting Where We Are If starlight,

Where our ancient ancestors dwell,

Touches the earth,

Then it also touches our trees.

As it touches our trees,

We,

Ourselves,

Breathe it in.

Then one day we become an ancestor in this cycle.

If this is true,

Then maybe,

Just maybe,

By doing the work around the wounds of our family trees,

It can assist the evolution of other families.

Starlight can create a glow,

Even in the darkest places.

One final question came up for me in spiritual direction.

This question was,

Does your family tree feel healthier?

I took this question into my heart,

And the answer came forward.

Yes,

We no longer need to be afraid of the dark or what is buried in the roots of the family tree.

The next question,

Is the process completed?

No,

It is a process of ever-evolving spiritual growth.

Then I read this quote by Thich Nhat Hanh,

From his book How to Love.

Resilient trees can weather a violent storm because their roots are deep and firm.

The roots of a lasting relationship are mindfulness,

Deep listening and loving speech,

And a strong community to support you.

My family tree has weathered a storm of violence and yet remained in communication,

Community.

We are present for each other through love and compassion.

We have been able to grow resilient.

Calling in our ancestors has taken courage,

Faith,

And trust that no matter the wound,

Starlight could find its way into our family tree and help us to heal.

Thank you so much for listening to my family story and this article calling our ancestors.

It's my hope that by sharing my own spiritual journey and practice that it may give you inspiration and ideas of how to find forgiveness in your own family.

The journey is not easy,

But it is definitely worth it.

May starlight reach you wherever you are,

Shining into those dark spaces and bringing healing on your journey.

Have a beautiful day.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you so much for these insights. I’ve been on a similar journey (and we have similar stories too). It was great to hear how you approached your healing and how it also helped your mother’s journey too. Many blessings to you all ✨

Thank you, for the courage to look into the shadows of the past and present.

Thank you so much Shannon. I was so moved by your story. I had to pause a couple of times, to process it all, especially when you talked about working with your mom, helping her, i was almost in tears! I am a bit of an old soul myself. I fully understood you. It was easy listening to you.
I will be listening to more of your work.
You must be a very beautiful soul. 😘💕

I totally LOVE this story. Im hesitant to post my story here and although its different from yours its impacted three generations si far. Very important work you have such amazing insight into. Thank you for sharing this.

Wow. That was incredible, so helpful, so inspiring. Absolutely fantastic loving and practical steps on healing the family tree. I’m blown away! Thank you for this gift.

The one thing that got me was the background music. It seemed out of place, too energetic, distracting, and unnecessary for this talk. Would love to hear a version of this talk without the background music crescendo-ing all the time ❤️

TRIGGER WARNING: about 13-14 minutes into this talk, there is a HP reference. This is just a loving heads-up to those in the lgbtq community who, like me, are extremely derailed by the mention of J.K. Rowling due to her ongoing verbal violence perpetrated against the transgender community. I lovingly ask that if you are triggered by HP references, please try your best to stick with this meditation and finish it. It is so beautiful and so helpful, you will be glad you did!

Thank you for hearing me 🙏❤️✨

Beautiful insight. Thank you for sharing your story. Ancestral healing is a journey few take the time to walk. I believe that healing from this walk will be fully revealed as we reunite with our ancestors in the next phase of our soul journey.

Thank you for sharing . Very deep and painful , but something many of us have in common with each other . Thank for giving me the strength and courage to face my own family trauma and the ways to do it ❤️❤️❤️💓💓💓

Thank you for sharing this beautiful story to forgiveness ❤

Thank you Shannon for sharing your beautiful story.💚🙏💜

Beautiful thank you Shannon. 💕💫💕