New Dimensions Radio Interview – Part 2: Ancestral Healing

Today, I will be sharing with you the second part of the four-part series of my interview on New Dimensions Radio. Justine and I explore the topic of healing our ancestral wounds and how doing this important work in our lives can be a catalyst to help us grow, shift, and evolve. I hope you enjoy the second part of our interview.

Thank you for joining me! (Thank you to Justine from New Dimensions Radio and Thank you to Chris Collins for his music).

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Shannon,

And grateful you're joining me for part 2 of my interview by New Dimensions Radio with host Justine Willis-Toms.

Today we explore the deep dive into the importance of healing our ancestral roots,

Why it's important,

And my own journey into this spiritual work.

I hope you enjoy the second part of our interview together.

My guest today is Interfaith Spiritual Teacher Shannon Sullivan,

And we're talking about healing our ancestral roots.

First of all,

Why is it important,

Shannon,

To go back into our ancestral roots?

I'll approach it from my own personal story,

Because it helps me explain it more.

As a child growing up,

I was highly sensitive and empathic.

However,

Our family didn't have definitions about what that meant.

And it wasn't until I left the house in my 20s to go to college that I discovered that a lot of the things I was feeling in my nervous system,

Anxiety,

Panic attacks,

Feelings of fear,

Weren't necessarily mine.

And as more was uncovered in our family that I was told more,

That I wasn't told when I was growing up,

Was about the abuse that my mom and her sister faced with their alcoholic father,

Who my grandfather,

I'd grown up with him,

But didn't spend a lot of time with him.

I just knew I was uncomfortable being around him.

And he passed away when I was 15.

And as I discovered that that trauma was affecting my own life,

I really needed to go in and uncover how to work with it and heal all those wounded places because I realized that my mom and my aunt had not done any work around it,

No counseling,

And had just moved through life and survived.

But I knew I needed to approach it if I was going to live a life where it wasn't full of fear and anxiety and panic all the time.

So it took me into discovering that because my own childhood was not fearful.

And so why would I feel scared if my own childhood was not scary?

And it was because of that history that I carried within me from my mom who carried it from her father.

And so discovering that helped me to become where I enjoy being alive and part of this world and wanting to give back.

And in that discovery and going back there,

You discovered quite a few things about not only your grandfather,

But his father before him.

Is that right?

Yes.

So this,

It doesn't happen overnight.

And this whole exploration has been occurring for about 20 years now.

And I'm always amazed at the information or the aha moments that come when they do.

And after my grandmother died 13 years ago,

My mom and I had access to my grandfather's military records.

And through reading them,

We between that and the pictures of their family growing up,

Put together that he probably suffered from mental illness,

But it wasn't diagnosed.

And he had a lot of paranoia.

So a lot of foil on the windows and the block walls around the house went up and it's like,

Oh,

Okay.

So understanding that he suffered deeply.

And,

And then because of that suffering,

My mom went to research his ancestry.

And through that,

We discovered that when he was two years old,

His family had come over from Italy over to New York to work and,

And find freedom.

However,

His mom died in a fire and the family had six children.

And him and his younger sister were put in an orphanage because the father couldn't care for them and work at the same time.

So he literally grew up with no family.

And I'm quite sure that abandonment affected him greatly.

So when I could look at my grandfather as a wounded child,

And somebody that suffered,

Then I could find forgiveness around all that played out in our families over that time.

And I imagine that that was helpful to your mother.

You said that she really hadn't looked into any of this before.

But what did it open up for her?

It allowed her to see her father differently to sort of find closure between the life she had lived with him as a child versus understanding him as a person,

The complexity,

Which creates each of us.

And because I was willing to go deeply in and because she always follows where I go,

She won't go there on her own,

But she will with me,

Then it allows us both to discover this healing within our roots so that our family can find peace,

Instead of carrying places of extreme pain because of what happened back then.

And oftentimes,

It's just like unconscious pain,

I mean,

That we don't even know it's there.

Shannon,

What are the questions that one would begin to ask to start this journey of healing the wounds of our ancestors?

Well,

The first one I asked of myself,

Because in spiritual direction,

As a spiritual director,

When I work with other people on their path,

You ask questions,

But you don't have answers.

And so you bring people more deeply into their own understanding through questions.

And,

You know,

One of the questions is,

Am I feeling,

What feelings am I experiencing in my body?

So is there sadness or grief or anger?

And if so,

Are those my own?

And because I don't think that people know sometimes that the anger or the sadness or the pain that they're experiencing,

When they feel it,

Believe that it is all their own.

And so really getting them to go in and say,

Is this mine?

And if the question I ask,

When is this mine,

If those feelings temporarily lift,

Then we know from that beginning place that no,

Not all those feelings are theirs.

And then by exploring those,

How can I move deeply into those feelings and release them so that I can live a better life and allowing ourselves to really move into places of difficulty in order to come out the other side of,

To find joy even in that path.

When you begin to see a relative as a real person with their own history and their own cosmology and whatever affected them,

Does this make it possible for forgiveness more easily than when we start to see them in a,

In a broader way?

Yes,

It's one of the bigger teachings that I try and share with others.

Forgiveness is tricky for some people.

In that sometimes we think,

Like if I said,

Well,

I forgive my grandfather for abusing my mom and my aunt.

I'm not forgiving the action that happened when he was an adult.

However,

If I look at him as a person and find out all his history about where that came from,

Then I can forgive what he experienced that created the environment for that.

And in that forgiveness,

What it does is,

It's not about releasing him from that.

It's about releasing ourselves from that pain.

Because when we carry those wounds in our own heart,

The bitterness only diseases us or poisons us.

So the forgiveness is,

When we look at it from that broader perspective,

It allows us to let go of that pain and always carry that as sort of a victim story,

And instead,

An empowering story of,

Well,

This is where I came from,

But how can I release it and move into the world in a better place?

And I know that there's a place that you work that you could both grieve for our family,

But there's an honoring also there at the same time.

Can you speak to that?

We talked about how I sort of pull different faiths and traditions into my own practice.

And part of this one comes from the Catholic practice.

Because I grew up in Yuma,

Arizona,

We're right on the border.

And so there's a large Hispanic population.

And growing up around that,

You see in the Catholic tradition,

Like the all souls procession,

And the offering to the family,

Which is called la ofrenda.

And it's the offering.

So it's the offering to our ancestors.

And part of what I did for our family to bring my grandfather back in,

Spiritually,

To our circle,

Because I wouldn't be here without him,

Was to create an altar and create an offering to him with his picture and flowers and food and really like honor who he was.

Because I want him to be uplifted so that we are as well.

And so that's part of one of the practices I use to honor my ancestors.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

And,

You know,

Any of us who have been,

Had the privilege of checking into this Hispanic culture,

Especially that when they go into the end of October,

The first of November,

The Day of the Dead,

And it's a big,

Huge thing for them.

Yeah,

I mean,

I've been to San Francisco,

To the different places where they've,

People have set up these altars,

Little rooms,

Just have incredibly elaborate altars that are so beauty filled,

And all their ancestors are there in this honoring.

Well,

This is true in the Shinto tradition in Japan.

So we'll talk more about this and talk more about the ways that you,

You use the different art that you use for healing.

I'm here with Shannon Sullivan,

And she is a interfaith spiritual teacher,

And I'm Justine Willis-Thompson,

You're listening to New Dimensions.

Thank you so much for spending time with me in the second part of our interview today.

Healing our ancestral wounds is an important spiritual practice.

If you'd like to know more about the steps I created in this healing practice,

I have an audio recording of my insight timer track called Calling Our Ancestors,

Healing Our Family Trees.

I wrote this particular article for Spiritual Directors International about this healing art and my own personal steps.

The track on insight timer is the audio I recorded reading this article to share with you from the journal.

If you're interested in checking that out,

You can find it under my tracks.

I look forward to continuing our journey in part three of my interview with Justine,

Where we explore the spiritual medicine of trees.

May your day be full of light and blessings.

Have a beautiful day.

Namaste.

Reviews

I really appreciate your vulnerability in sharing your story.🙏💖

Let bed the part 3. Thank you so much Shannon for sharing your story 💜

I have found theae interviews fascinating. I am so looking forward to the next two. It's helping me understand a lot of what has come to light in my own spiritual growth. Thank you, Namaste 🙏🏻❤️

Really enjoyed this second part of your interview Shannon. I found it fascinating and particularly liked the idea of seeing others in a fuller light which can lead to greater understanding of their behaviors. Am looking forward to the next part to do with trees as I have great affection for them 🌳 Thank you for sharing!

Thank you Shannon. That was very insightful. Looking forward to hearing about lessons from trees. 💜