Healing Ancestral Wounds

Marlee welcomes back Lizzy McDonald, Holistic Psychotherapist, Spiritual Teacher and Healer, and Folk Herbalist, for a conversation around healing the ancestral wounds that we all have within us, with a focus on healing the mother wound. Lizzy and Marlee get to the root of the mother wound and talk about how it affects us and shows up in our lives today and about the soul loss that occurs as a result of this wound. Lizzy also shares practices and tools to help us bring awareness to these wounds and begin to heal! Lizzy also discusses how to develop a deeper relationship with the Earth and our ancestors!

Transcript

Welcome to the Shifting with Marlee podcast.

I'm Marlee.

Thank you for joining me wherever you are.

All that I ask of you,

The listener,

Is to have an open mind and an open heart.

And in return,

I offer you myself.

Today,

We're going to unpack some of the core ancestral wounds hiding beneath the surface for many of us.

We're going to shed light on how internal safety,

Codependency,

And other attachment patterns and many generational patterns are all connected to these ancestral wounds.

We're going to find out how to begin to heal these wounds.

We're also going to discover ancestral soul retrieval and rediscover our connection to the land and the earth in the process.

We're going deep today,

And we're really going to peel back the layers and get to the root.

Here to guide us on this journey of discovery today is Lizzie McDonald.

Lizzie is a holistic psychotherapist,

Spiritual teacher and healer,

And folk herbalist.

You may remember Lizzie from back in episode 21,

Embodying Your Power,

From back in 2021,

Where we talked about embodying sovereignty,

Setting boundaries,

And calling back our power from all the places we give it away.

Welcome back,

Lizzie.

Thank you so much.

I'm really happy to be here with you again.

Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast and gracing us with your presence again.

I'm very,

Very grateful.

You're so welcome.

Lizzie,

If you can believe it,

It's been almost three years since our last discussion,

And to me,

It feels like those three years have felt like many,

Many lifetimes.

So I'm excited to reconnect today from our current vantage points.

It certainly has felt like many lifetimes since 2021.

And I love that we're together again,

Digging into new themes and revisiting old ones that we remain in devotion and practice to.

Yes,

Absolutely.

And Lizzie,

We have so much to unpack today,

So let's dive right in.

To start off,

Can you please share with us a bit about some of the most common ancestral wounds that many of us have and the origins of these wounds,

Where they come from,

And how they are passed down?

Yes.

Very simply,

We all carry wounds from our ancestors.

Anything that someone who came before us in the family was unable to process or heal actually becomes available to us in our genes and DNA,

The same way you inherit somebody's nose or eyes.

You could inherit grandma's abusive relationship trauma.

You can inherit that loss of connection to the motherland,

And we'll definitely talk a lot about that today.

You can inherit that pain from being cheated on by a spouse or a house fire,

Losing a job,

Family secrets.

These are all examples of wounds that can be passed down from our ancestors.

Thank you so much,

Lizzie.

These ancestral wounds are in our bones,

Right?

In our DNA,

Like you said.

They're in our physical bodies and in our energetic bodies,

Right?

They are deep,

And that's why it's so important to bring awareness to this.

Yes,

Absolutely.

These things are stored in the pain body of the family system,

And they are like sinewy entanglements.

We don't even see or know are there until we're facing certain patterns we can't find our way out of.

A lot of those patterns show up in relationships,

In family relationships,

And relationships to work.

Most of the time,

They are those things that keep happening in your life,

The situations you keep finding yourself in,

Banging your head against the wall with.

I'd say nine times out of ten,

They relate to ancestral wounds and patterns from your family system.

Wow,

Nine times out of ten,

That's big.

I may be exaggerating on that,

But that's what comes through today.

I'm especially interested in diving deeper with this ancestral motherland wound you mentioned,

And I want to talk more about it.

But I also just want to briefly bring up,

Because I think it's important to mention,

The witch wound.

That's a big one I think many of us have heard of.

It's another common ancestral wound and also past life wound.

It's kind of all of the above.

Many of us have this,

And that is also rooted in the past where people were brutally killed for speaking up,

For being healers,

For being different,

For being themselves,

For being intuitive,

For being connected to the earth,

Right?

All of it.

And that trauma is also still with us and passed down in our line and deeply affects us to this day as well.

Absolutely.

I think every woman in her ancestry between seven and 14 generations back,

Which is what the field of epigenetics shows we're influenced by in present,

Has an ancestor who was persecuted for being a healer,

A midwife,

A witch.

Witches were the healers and the midwives,

The medicine women who knew how to work with the earth and the earth's energies to heal.

And that's why I'm very proud to call myself a witch.

I say I'm a full-time witch and a part-time everything else,

Including all of those titles you introduced me as.

And that's part of my journey in healing the mother wound and the witch wound inside myself.

That reclaiming of that title for yourself.

Yes,

Absolutely.

I'm a witch as well.

Of course you are.

Lizzie,

Can you please share with us,

You started to touch on it,

But talk a little bit more about how these ancestral wounds and this motherland wound or this mother wound that we'll call it,

How do they affect us?

What are the symptoms?

How do they express themselves in us?

And what are some of the common patterns and behaviors that we see as a result of these ancestral wounds?

Yes.

If I'm going to talk about the mother wound,

First I need to address the disconnection from the earth.

Before we even talk about the ancestors,

Before we talk about the pain people have experienced from leaving their land,

Leaving the soul of their land,

The food,

The culture,

The collectivism that just,

Let's face it,

Doesn't exist here in this very individualistic society where everything is commodified and monetized.

We'll get to that.

First,

We need to address this mother wound that is common to all of us,

Which is disconnection from mother earth.

And I'm taking a long pause here because in my mind I'm seeing and I'm feeling all the ways people are disconnected from the earth.

Very simply not feeling the deep truth of this statement that we are alive because of earth's benevolence.

Every single thing that gives us life is because of earth.

And it is not common to see people,

Systems,

Institutions,

In service and acknowledgement of that very basic truth.

How can we experience the soul of food,

The soul of air,

Of fire,

Of water,

When we're not acknowledging deeply and profoundly every day that these are the things that give us life.

The earth supports us.

It gives us life.

I can't say that enough.

I can't say it enough to myself,

Even as a practitioner that works with the earth and gives to the earth and worships the earth and works with the elements every day in service to myself and others.

I never cease to be in awe of this truth that the earth gives us life.

And it's not said enough.

I've repeated myself probably five times now.

And I hope in repeating myself that as people listen,

They can drop even more deeply into that truth.

So there's this mother wound we all share,

Which is disconnection from mother earth.

And no matter who you are,

What level of practitioner in earth medicine you are,

It is a lifelong practice to be healing this mother wound.

Because we were born,

Those of us who were born,

Especially in this country,

Into a world where we can have anything we want at any time without zero sense of where it's come from.

We depend upon all of these things that are so far removed from the earth,

We would never even know that they came from it.

You know,

I'm looking around my room right now and I can't tell you where most of these things came from,

But they all did come from the earth.

There's that missing connection and that missing connection yields this soullessness and things that's really significant.

I know in my family,

Especially my mother's family,

I grew up in a culturally Italian American household.

My grandmother was born in Italy.

My grandfather's siblings came back and forth.

The culture was rich.

My childhood was steeped in it.

And I'm so grateful for that because I got to have this experience of collectivism.

I got to have this experience of touching the spirit of the olive oil,

The spirit of the wine,

Experiencing these things differently as this celebration of the fruits of the earth,

As this celebration of family,

As these things that had so much soul,

They were connected to the mother.

I'm so glad I got to have that experience.

When people left their homeland,

They left this primal connection to the earth.

And they came to a country that fundamentally was not founded on that.

And as the generations went on,

These connections to the soul of the land were lost even more.

And the consequence of that is not considered enough.

What happens as we enter with each generation deeper and deeper into this experience of soullessness and disconnection?

And what do I mean by soullessness?

It goes back to the olive oil,

The olive oil that comes from hundred-year-old olive plants that your fathers,

Fathers,

Fathers,

Fathers,

Fathers tended and growed to make this rich,

Delicious,

Golden oil for cooking,

For drizzling on top of tomatoes and mozzarella,

For sharing with friends and neighbors.

This olive oil that not only was connected to the soul of the land,

But was representative of the soul of the family.

Yeah,

You can go to the store now and you can get this Bertolli olive oil,

But it was manufactured somewhere in a factory,

And it's using the olives that were the dregs of the olives from some country that get sent to the United States.

Literally olives and grapes that get sent here to make olive oil and wine are like the lowest class olives and grapes that can be sent here.

And I feel like even that is just so representative of the fact that,

Oh,

We'll send to the Americans this crap grape and this crap olive,

Because they don't care.

They just want 500 million bottles of olive oil to sell so these corporations can make money.

They don't care about good food that contains life and contains soul.

They just want to sell,

Sell,

Sell and make money.

And maybe somebody,

Some wellness company might say,

Oh,

We're selling this because it contains the spirit,

But even that is a marketing ploy to make more money.

I was recently in Italy on this ancestral pilgrimage,

And what struck me the most was how amazing I felt eating foods that would just make me so sick in this country.

I mean,

I woke up every morning and I had espresso with cornetto,

Which is like a cream-filled croissant,

And once my mind got past the idea that I was loading up on caffeine and sugar every morning,

I felt great.

That croissant filled me up.

It sustained my energy until lunch,

Where we would sit down for four and a half hours and have like a five-course meal that included wine and meats and breads and cheese and pasta and dessert,

And I was shocked how much I was eating.

My mind is so influenced by wellness culture and this idea of what foods to eat,

Which when you think about it is also rooted in somebody trying to make money,

That I struggled to enjoy those first couple of days in Italy,

This experience,

This experience,

This slow life experience of lunch,

Of stopping in the middle of the day to be together with friends and family and savor food together,

To savor time together,

To be grounded,

To be still,

To have the mind off of and away from work and this idea of productivity.

So I got here in talking about the mother wound,

And now I'm going to remember that so I can weave together a bit more what I'm saying and trying to say and illuminate through my storytelling with my family and this recent trip,

Is that there's a loss of soul that happens,

There's a loss,

And it leaves a hole,

And that hole is something on some level all of us are trying to fill,

And the loss is the nourishment of the mother,

Whether the mother is the home country or the earth,

The disconnection there that's embedded in our experience of reality in this country,

We're all on some level seeking to fill that,

We're all searching for the mother,

Longing for the mother,

Yearning for the mother.

On this recent ancestral pilgrimage I went on,

A lot of that yearning for me was finally met as I sunk my feet into my native land,

As I felt my ancestors in the wind saying welcome home,

We're so happy you're here,

As I touched the native plants growing in the land where they're from,

That my ancestors made medicine with,

I come from a long lineage of herbalists,

I didn't know that until recently when we had our family ancestry done,

That for thousands of years our family have been herbalists,

And that when I picked up plants in this country,

It's just like some people are good at math,

Like they just have a knack for it.

When I started working with plants,

It was just so second nature to me,

And that working with plants,

Of course here in the northeast of the United States where I reside,

There are a lot of European plants that European people brought here because they were foods and medicines,

And many of those plants I've chosen to work with over the years as a way to satisfy this yearning,

Like if I can just work with these plants of my homeland,

You know I'm so desperate for this connection,

Working with those plants was part of my yearning.

Getting to be in my own motherland,

Connecting with and working with these plants in their own native soil,

Really satisfied and filled some of these mother wounds that were lingering inside of me.

Now I've come home,

I was away about a month ago,

And I've been doing my best to stay with that,

To stay with this feeling of satiation that I experienced drinking from the teat of the wine vat and the olive oil vat and all the delicious,

Fresh buffalo mozzarella.

I've tried to stay with that as long as I can,

And I'm just so present with the soul-sucking presence that this place we live can be.

This energy of wanting to pull me out of that incredible experience of wholeness and nourishment from the mother into this mindset and energy of needing and wanting more.

That's another piece here is that our economy is fueled by soul loss.

Like everything that's being sold to us and marketed to us is preying on this fact that on some level we are yearning and we do feel empty,

And that's another interesting thing to think about.

Yeah,

Lizzie,

I'm over here getting emotional.

I'm so happy,

So,

So happy and grateful that we're bringing awareness to this today.

I think it is so important and so needed.

Thank you so much for being so raw and vulnerable and open and sharing everything.

So just so I have this right,

Tell me if I have this right.

These ancestral wounds such as this mother wound leaves a hole in us that is passed down among the generations,

Passed between the generations,

And we have been trying to fill this hole in unhealthy ways.

Is that right?

Can you maybe talk to how we've been trying to fill this hole in this country?

Absolutely.

So there are so many types of ancestral wounds.

I think it's good to focus on this one.

It's very relevant for me right now.

And again,

Here,

I just want to acknowledge that I'm speaking from the perspective of a white woman of European descent.

So these things I'm saying may not be true and resonant for everyone.

I want to acknowledge that.

I do believe something we all have in common,

Though,

Is this mother wound of disconnection from the earth.

And whoever you are,

These traditions and nourishments that came from the land and your ancestors have been short-circuited in some way.

So hopefully whoever you are listening to this,

You can find a scrap of resonance.

You can apply it to your life,

To your story,

And just understand that this is my story.

Yes,

So there's this mother wound,

And there's this yearning.

And hopefully now there's some conscious awareness in everybody listening that a lot of this yearning for wholeness and oneness can be traced to this mother wound.

And so many sufferings come from this longing to be whole,

To be reunited with the mother.

And Marley,

You were asking me for some examples of that.

I mean,

The first thing that comes to mind is just this endless consuming,

Right?

Consuming.

If you think of consume,

Consume,

It's taking things in.

Just this vacuousness,

This vacuousness to consume stimulus,

Whether it's binging on Netflix,

Whether it's indulging in food,

Drinking,

Drug use,

Sex,

Relationships,

Desperation and neediness for validation,

Attention.

These are all examples of things that people do in this desperation to fill themselves because of some perceived sense of emptiness and unmet needs.

So when a need is unmet,

A function of that is this constant striving to figure out how to have it met or filling it with a substitute if we don't know how.

And you were just asking about attachment styles and codependency.

I think one of the ways this mother wound can show up in relationships is somebody never feeling like they can digest the nourishment and love of their partner or that they can digest the positive feedback and nourishment and love they may be receiving from their friends and community.

And this is super interesting.

I feel like it's really fundamental to this American way of life that all of this hard work and progress and striving and striving and striving is to be better or good enough to be quote unquote successful or acknowledged or worthy.

And I even see the underpinnings of that as this chronic mother wound,

This disease of desiring and needing to be satiated and nourished by something that no matter what you do is not being achieved.

So I want to summarize.

Tell me if I have this right.

This separation,

This hyper individualization,

Codependency,

This externalization that we do with everything,

This fear of not having enough,

This overconsumption,

All of that can be traced back to this ancestral wounding,

This mother wound.

And I also want to add in,

And I'd love your thoughts on this,

Bringing back the witch wound.

That hole from the witch wound I know presents itself in us in a lot of fear-based behaviors,

Fear of being seen,

Fear of speaking up,

Keeping ourselves small,

Fear of stepping into our full power.

All of that can also be traced back to this ancestral wounding.

So there's a lot here.

Yeah,

There's a lot.

When you take the witch wound into consideration,

It makes me think about all of the people who are waking up to this mother wound and seeking ways to engage it and heal it and nourish themselves and increase their capacity to receive nourishment.

And how that journey usually has to do with consciousness and plans and alternative healing that luckily is becoming more and more accepted,

But also can be looked down on and judged.

I think about how in the closet I was for so many years about being a witch and a healer.

I mean,

I couldn't even say it out loud.

Made me feel shameful.

It made me feel scared what people would think about me.

And you know what?

My family did reject me in the beginning.

God bless my mother.

She is my number one supporter now.

But when I told her that I was going to be a shamanic practitioner,

She was like,

No daughter of mine is going to be a witch.

So it's really scary to reclaim these things.

It's like we have this yearning to be connected to the earth and to our ancestors and some of the roots and methods that we might take to do it.

Our family could condemn.

Our community could condemn and judge.

And this brings me to one of my favorite parables,

Which has to do with crabs in a bucket.

So if you have a bucket of crabs and one crab somehow is about to climb its way out of the bucket,

All the other crabs in the bucket will pull it down.

And this story is often told in family healing,

Ancestral healing circles,

Because when one person begins to heal and reclaim their ancestry,

Reconnect to the mother,

Even though the family system is suffering from these same wounds,

They might persecute this person or try to drag them down or exile them.

And that's a super interesting phenomenon,

Because you would think that everybody wants to heal the mother wound.

But it is so deeply painful to face the grief and the loss and the legacies of that grief and loss,

Which manifest in secrets,

Addictions,

Abuse,

All of these behaviors that people use to cope with this loss.

To face all of that,

It's too much.

It's too much.

So when folks do try to pull themselves out of the bucket of this cesspool of crabs in the bottom of the bucket that are symbolic of the dysfunctional family system,

All these entanglements,

This being trapped more or less in this bucket,

Representative of so many things,

When somebody tries to get out of that,

The system wants to pull them back in because nobody wants to face the pain.

And there's a lack of capacity to face that pain.

I know in the beginning of this conversation,

You asked about how these ancestral wounds correlate to the nervous system.

And our nervous systems only have a certain amount of capacity.

And the capacity of the nervous system correlates to how much we can or can't be with pain and discomfort.

Actually,

I'm going to say it again.

Every nervous system has a certain capacity,

And that capacity correlates to what degree someone can or cannot be with discomfort.

So all those crabs in the bucket are like,

Hell no,

We don't have the capacity to face that stuff.

That's why we didn't and passed it down to you.

That's why grandma didn't and passed it down to me.

But it's important to acknowledge here that grandma didn't because she was moving from another country.

She was in the midst of that loss.

She came here and,

You know,

Maybe grandpa had to build a lot of stone walls or lay the bricks of New York City,

Which was,

You know,

The case in my family,

To just put food on the table.

They didn't have time to deal with things.

So we're seeing now this uptick in ancestral healing,

Interest in ancestral healing and healing of these wounds,

Because now we have the space.

These themes are becoming more mainstream.

Everybody knows the word trauma.

And there's just way more privilege now,

Because our ancestors did the dirty work to give it to us,

For us to look at our problems,

Our addictions,

The current state of affairs,

Which are a hot mess,

And say,

Oh,

Shit,

We got to do something with this.

And a great place to start is looking at this mother wound,

That it didn't start with you.

And there are things that you can do about it.

I feel this deeply.

We're ready,

Lizzie.

And I want to touch on this loss for a minute.

We've mentioned it a few times,

All these different things that we've lost.

So we've had soul loss as a result of these wounds,

Right?

We have lost our connection to the land,

To the motherland,

To the earth.

We've lost this collectivism that you mentioned,

Right?

So here's a big question,

Lizzie.

Now that we are ready,

Now that we know what we've lost,

How do we repair and get what we've lost back?

It's a great question.

And I don't expect that everybody can travel to their motherland and touch the soil.

But if you can,

I highly recommend it.

Let's get into some other ways.

The first one is acknowledging this loss and this yearning.

And if you're not resonating with this idea of soul loss due to the mother wound,

I just want to share that soul loss is something that happens when anything unwanted happens to you.

A little piece of your soul can fracture or fragment and it leaves a hole.

And that hole becomes an entry point for disease,

Dis-ease.

Not just disease like sickness,

Dis-ease like depression,

Rage,

Suffering,

Just various types of difficulties.

Coming back to this question,

What do we do about this?

The first step is bearing witness to it.

I've got this soul.

It's missing some pieces due to the various shocks and losses and hardships I've had in my life.

It is what it is.

No one's exempt to that.

And I've learned how to scrap by and survive by perhaps plugging myself into different conveniences that this world affords.

By forming relationships that might plug into that hole and,

You know,

Temporarily make it feel better.

So like I was saying,

The first step is acknowledging this soul loss and the second step is becoming curious about it.

Where have some of these holes come from?

And today we're focusing on this mother wound,

This disconnection from the earth,

Whether that's the earth you're standing on right now or it's the earth that your ancestors came from.

So I do want to invite people as you're listening to pause,

Feel yourself as a human being standing on this earth,

Acknowledging that literally every aspect of your existence depends on the earth.

This is a practice.

This is a practice to start mending those holes.

They don't go away in a flash.

Healing is a practice that we're engaged in for a lifetime.

There's no destination.

It's this practice of acknowledging,

Sure,

There's holes,

There's loss,

And acknowledging that there is also this divine mother who's here to help fill you up.

Acknowledging there is an army of ancestors who stand behind you,

Who have your back and also can fill you up.

This is the fundamental practice,

Is connecting to that and having grace with yourself for all your addictions,

Your phone addiction,

Your food addiction,

I don't know,

Maybe your drug addiction,

Your drinking,

Your smoking,

Your binge watching of TV,

You know,

Your toxic relationships maybe,

Your witnessing of yourself not being the best person,

Parent,

Partner that you know you could be,

Especially because those of you listening are going to be very heavily influenced by all of this consciousness-expanding information that's at our fingertips on the internet about how to be the best.

It's not about being the best.

Some of these holes might never be filled in this lifetime,

And they don't need to be because like I said before,

Many of us are going first.

We're the first ones in a long line of ancestors to be able to face and see that this is going on at all,

And we need to have a lot of grace with ourselves.

In this very simple practice of saying,

Oh my God,

I literally exist,

Everything in this room exists because of the benevolence and fundamental abundance of the earth and my ancestors,

That's it.

They're behind you right now.

You could even look over your shoulder and say,

Hello,

I see you,

I acknowledge you.

And entering into that dialogue with the earth,

With your ancestors,

That's the practice.

It's really simple.

Where does ancestral soul retrieval come into play in this practice?

As we connect to the earth more intentionally,

And as we connect to our ancestors more intentionally,

We do begin to reclaim some of the soul that's been lost.

As we consider what foods did our ancestors eat,

What were their traditions,

And we research it and we start to practice,

We also begin to retrieve and bring back into our lives the life,

The soul.

Maybe this is a tricky concept for some people to work with,

This idea about the soul fragments and splits.

So I'm going to make it even more simple and accessible.

There's life in the olive oil from the grandfathers in Italy,

And there's no life in the Bertolli.

With that said,

How do you bring life into the Bertolli olive oil?

I know my grandparents,

When they lived here,

They were buying whatever olive oil was on sale at ShopRite,

And it still had life in it.

It was still the sacred olive oil.

But then maybe that was lost a little bit in my household,

And by the time I was pouring olive oil on things in my kitchen,

There was a disconnect.

So I'm bringing life back into food.

I'm bringing life back into traditions.

All of these practices are ways to begin satisfying that deep yearning we try to fill in so many other ways.

All these practices that you're sharing with us today can help us integrate,

Call back these parts of ourselves that we've lost as a result of this ancestral wounding,

And can also help us begin to free ourselves from these patterns that we've learned and established as a result of this hole from these pieces we've lost.

Yes.

And I would say this piece that you mentioned about the patterns,

That these very simple practices are healing and restorative,

Period.

And I do think that if you start to do them,

Other entanglements and patterns that come from your ancestors and your parents,

These wounds that are entangled in your soul,

Will probably start to come forth.

And that healing journey is certainly related,

But distinct in other ways.

You can't necessarily disentangle yourself from a toxic relationship pattern that's been repeating in your family for seven generations just by eating a cannoli,

But it's a start.

It's a start,

And it's also a very significant practice and part of the puzzle of healing the mother wound.

I love it.

And Lizzie,

How else can we begin to heal these wounds and free ourselves from these patterns?

Are there any other tools you recommend?

And I want to highlight perhaps some of your plant wisdom.

So again,

The first step to healing is always consciousness.

Hey,

Here's this thing that I'm doing and I keep repeating.

Step one.

Step two is meet that with compassion and understanding.

Okay,

Well,

It makes sense I've been doing this.

I learned this.

I've adapted this strategy into my life as a form of survival or to meet unmet needs for myself.

So that's step two is this compassion and understanding and curiosity,

Really becoming literate about what this pattern is.

And then the third step is being willing to heal,

Surrendering,

Turning it over,

Turning it over to the ancestors like,

Hey,

This did not start with me,

And I am not loving that I keep getting into relationships with this type of person or repeating this pattern at work or living with money scarcity or muting my feelings with food.

I mean,

Gosh,

There are so many examples.

I'm not loving this,

This thing that I'm doing,

And I'm willing to have a different experience.

And then there are different practices and modalities that one might engage at this point to help bring that shift into place.

One,

Of course,

Is turning it over to the ancestors,

Humbly asking for help from the spiritual world.

And then another piece of it is finding a skilled practitioner who can help,

Who can help you disentangle from some of these patterns,

Because even though they come from the ancestors,

They are also wired in your mental body,

Your emotional body,

Your spiritual body,

And you're going to need to do work to forge new pathways of relationship to life to come out of those entanglements.

As a practitioner,

I support people with this work in many ways,

And I'm willing to help in many ways,

Starting with step one,

Which is just bringing consciousness online about a repeating pattern.

Because not everybody is going to notice that themselves.

Sometimes you really need a therapist to hold the mirror back to you and say,

Hey,

You know,

I've noticed dot dot dot that you're repeating the same pattern in every new job you get.

And repeatedly finding yourself as the victim of outside circumstances and dot dot dot.

You know,

Again,

Not going into specifics because I want people to really think as they're listening about what are some of these repeating patterns in my life.

And supporting people as a practitioner to bring that gentleness and compassion online and explore where these patterns came from.

And that's a huge part of the healing is looking at that.

Here's this issue,

This pattern,

This dysfunctional relationship dynamic.

Okay,

What's it look like in your life?

And following the thread of that back,

Back,

Back through time to maybe the origin story of where you absorbed that pattern in your life or your family system and working to resource yourself in that moment.

A lot of this ancestral healing work is a bit like time travel.

It's going back to that point in time where you took on this pattern or this pattern activated in your soul.

And what did you need in that moment?

How do we give it to you now?

How do we communicate to your system that you have this?

So that your soul and your body can stop perpetuating this loop of trying to resolve this pattern and meet this need,

Right?

Fill this hole.

How can we help you?

You know,

I would say put a put a stick in that never-ending loop and see the possibility for something else.

Another really beautiful practice for ancestral healing is something called family constellations.

And I was really lucky to participate in so many constellations with my dearest mentor,

Gail Gorlick,

Who passed away in October.

She was like,

My gosh,

Just a family constellations legend.

She facilitated these incredible ceremonies where family patterns were almost acted out on a stage.

It would take a whole other episode for me to explain what they are.

But the result was the disentanglement of these energetic patterns in the family system that gave people freedom.

I facilitate constellations different than how Gail did,

But with the same energetics.

And that practice really disentangles the energy in the spiritual field,

Which then trickles down into the mental and the body.

You know,

As a practitioner,

I really fuse that spiritual healing work with the clinical.

It's why I'm also a holistic psychotherapist and that I practice somatic experiencing as well with my clients to bring the work to the body.

I think that you need to hit the mind-body-spirit with this stuff.

It's one thing to disentangle in the spiritual field.

But then how do you integrate that?

How do you work with your neural networks to establish new pathways of thinking and relating to life?

How do you go into the body and allow the body to complete the loop it's so desperately trying to fill with these patterns?

The mind-body-spirit healing,

The connection.

I love it.

Yeah.

The trifecta.

Trifecta.

And Lizzie,

I know you work with a lot of plants and I know you work with a lot of flower essences.

Do these come into play as well with this healing?

And I'm especially interested in flower essence because I just started working with them myself recently.

Yes.

Oh,

My gosh.

There's just so many things I could talk about is what I realized when I do these interviews.

Thanks for bringing it back to plants.

When I was in Italy this year,

I made a beautiful Hawthorne flower essence.

And a flower essence is a vibrational medicine.

Every plant,

Every flower has a specific resonance.

It has a specific energy.

And a flower essence brings into water,

As sunlight filters through the plant into the water,

It attunes the water to the frequency of the plant.

And everybody has a different frequency.

So the right flower essence for somebody is something that's going to bring their system into greater balance and harmony.

Yeah.

As I was saying before,

My personal approach to working with ancestral wounds with myself and with my clients takes into account the mental body,

The emotional body,

And the spiritual body.

So in the emotional body,

We have all of these currents of emotions.

We contain these tracks that the emotional waters can stream through.

And a lot of those tracks,

Those emotional tracks,

Are correlated to these wounds.

They can be emotions,

Unprocessed emotions that were passed down to us.

They also are emotional patterns that we learned in this lifetime.

I work a lot with this abandonment wound and fear.

And flower essences are my go-to remedy for whenever I'm having intense and distressing emotions.

And this is my favorite way to work with someone with their emotional body.

I like to give my clients a flower essence prescription.

And the way that I match the right flower to the person is through my own intuitive method.

I'm very sensitive,

So I can feel that vibration of the flower,

And I can feel the frequency of the person.

And I can feel,

Just like they're two musical notes,

Which ones need to come together to help create balance.

And that's something that flower essences support.

They support this experience of balance.

They don't make the emotion go away.

They actually can bring it more to the surface and,

Like,

Wash those tracks.

Kind of the way when a flood comes,

It can create a new pathway for a river to flow,

Or a stream to flow.

Or it can change the pathway of the waters,

And emotions are associated with the water element.

So with the ancestral healing,

These emotional patterns that come from our parents,

That come from our ancestors,

Working with flower essences,

Especially essences from the native plants where you're from,

Are so powerful.

I made a set of flower essences on my recent trip to Italy.

And I mean,

I've been working with flower essences since 2013,

So I guess that's 11 years now.

And I have experienced relief from emotional patterns that I've been working at for 12 years.

And that is miraculous.

Flower power.

Flower power.

Flower power.

So not everyone might be able to get to the land of their ancestors.

But at the very least,

You might be able to buy a flower essence online that comes from there.

And if you find a flower essence practitioner you resonate with,

They could help you find the right remedy for you and also help you link it to the emotional pattern that you're working with.

You know,

For me,

I have certain flower remedies that I reach for when I'm experiencing a specific emotion.

And those are going to be different for me than they are for you because my constitution and my energy is different than yours.

So it's really not a one size fits all.

Pick intuitively.

Pick intuitively.

And we do encourage you to do that if you're confident to do it on your own.

Maybe there's an emotional pattern that you're ready to break free from that you can think of now.

Something that you just like chronically feel or,

You know,

You feel miffed when this happens or this irritates you or you spiral into sadness or self-doubt about some particular thing.

I would recommend honing in on one emotional experience and letting yourself be guided to a certain plant intuitively.

And you would take the remedy when you're having that emotional experience.

That's when you take it.

And the reason I love flower essences is because they are gentle,

Yet mighty and effective medicine,

Right?

Because they are that vibrational medicine.

And I love that combination.

And it's also earth power in a bottle,

Right?

And it's going to help us connect to the earth as well.

And for me,

I've been working with flower essences because I've been going through a lot of transitions in my life and lately.

And I found them to be just really supportive and helpful.

Yes,

They are supportive and helpful.

You're so right.

And like you said,

It ties in so perfectly to this conversation,

Healing the mother wound and how do we do that?

And restoring this connection to the earth,

This understanding that we're in a reciprocal relationship and really letting yourself be held and nourished by the earth through the plants.

Plant spirits have your back,

Let me tell you.

Yes.

I can't remember how many experiences and initiations I've had in my life where I've been stripped away of literally everything.

And the only solace and comfort and healing that I've found is in the plants.

I mean,

Of course,

As a plant medicine woman,

That would happen to me.

But yeah,

The plants are there for you.

Mm-hmm,

Yes.

Plant your plant-cesters because the plants are also your ancestors.

Beautiful.

So Lizzie,

Once we are doing this work,

Once we're on the path,

Once we're walking down the road of healing these ancestral wounds and this mother wound,

What is available to us on the other side?

Why is this healing work and healing these wounds important?

Because we're all sick of feeling alone.

And we're all sick of feeling empty and like we need more.

And we're all sick of feeling disconnected.

And we're sick of a lack of intimacy.

The result of this work is feeling supported,

Feeling one,

Feeling nourished,

Feeling whole,

And we're peaceful as a result.

And that helps expand our nervous systems to have more capacity to be with life,

To be with loved ones,

To be in deeper connection,

Because our ability to be in deep intimacy and connection also correlates to the capacity we have in our nervous system.

And the capacity we have in our nervous system correlates to how supported we feel.

So these practices are so simple,

So fundamental.

They strengthen our roots.

The deeper our roots grow,

The more sturdy we are in any storm,

The more we can grow back if we get cut down.

We really need that.

We need to be two feet firmly on the ground in this world if we want to contribute to a better one.

Roots,

Baby.

Yes,

I love that answer.

This is big and important and powerful stuff,

Lizzie.

And I also want to point out,

This is important work for ourselves in our own lives,

But it's also important work for our lineage.

It's breaking the cycle for future generations and also healing for our ancestors too.

As we heal,

The healing goes in both directions.

We heal,

It heals future generations,

And it heals our ancestors.

All of it.

Yes,

Seven generations before and seven generations back is what they say.

But now I've heard it's 14 generations back and forward.

I'm going to go with that one because it's bigger and I like it.

Yeah,

Breaking the chains,

Liberating the soul.

You get to feel the result of that as you experience a more peaceful and grounded life.

Whether you have children or not,

This healing will trickle down to the younger generations in your family.

It's hard,

Dirty work.

For sure,

It can be.

But someone's got to do it.

I'd say that's what we're here to do.

We're made for this and no one ever said it was going to be easy,

Right?

No one ever said it was going to be easy,

But you know what?

Maybe in 500 years people will be having an easier time and we'll have helped create that with our fearlessness and bravery to look at what is.

To be that crab that's like,

I'm getting the hell out of this bucket.

Ain't nobody pulling me down.

Even if then it gets out and it's alone.

Because that can,

You know,

That can happen.

It can be lonely to get out of the bucket and that's why it's so important to be in devotion to your connection with the earth and your ancestors and the plants.

You will never feel alone in that.

So when you're feeling alone,

Think about your ancestors.

Feel your feet on the ground,

Look around you and acknowledge that everything that gives you life has come from the earth and your ancestors.

You know,

I,

I,

There's some saying where you're the,

You know,

You are your ancestors dream,

You came from them and sit with a plant,

A plant that draws you in.

A plant that draws you in,

Say hi to it,

Thank it,

And just be as simple as that.

And then get a therapist.

Lizzie,

This is big.

And I think this roadmap is really,

Really helpful for people.

And I do wish this healing for everybody truly.

And I know you've been focusing on this a lot in your own life recently,

Especially with your recent ancestral pilgrimage.

And I'm curious,

You know,

Now that you're on the other side of your pilgrimage,

How do you feel?

How do you feel on this other side?

How do you feel in this post pilgrimage integration period?

I felt so elevated when I got back from my trip.

I felt more grounded than ever,

But I also felt like a great giant bird circling my life with this razor sharp vision.

And I wasn't ready to land.

Even though I was more grounded than ever,

I wasn't ready to land and I'm still not.

I'm staying in the sky and I'm allowing my life and my reality to rise up and meet me there in this new dimension of reality,

This elevated state.

And I'm going back to Italy in three weeks with my entire family.

Wow.

We're going to my grandmother's village.

And in typical Italian fashion,

Dysfunctional Italian fashion,

There are people that don't speak to each other and we're still all going together.

It's people that don't like each other.

Gosh,

I mean,

This trip feels like the result in some way.

Not to take credit,

But it does feel like a culmination of all of this ancestral healing that I've been doing,

That somehow this year my entire family will have our feet in the soil of our maternal homeland together.

So I'm doing that.

I am taking it to the next level and I'll have to report back.

So powerful,

Lizzie.

Thank you so much for sharing.

And I feel like you are a beacon leading the way and helping the rest of us of how to live in this connected and embodied way while still,

You know,

Existing in society.

Yes.

Thank you for acknowledging that.

A huge pillar of my work and something that's really important to me is to be a spiritual master and chop wood,

Carry water with two feet on this earth.

I'm a single mother,

I'm a business owner,

And I know how to get shit done in the physical world,

And that's super important.

If we want to create a new paradigm,

A new earth,

A new way of living,

We need to be stable and functioning in our day-to-day lives.

And I also just want to bring up,

And I'm sure you can speak to this,

When we are doing this healing work,

The healing journey is not linear.

I kind of visualize it almost like a spiral.

And remembering that there's always going to be opportunities along the way that the universe will present to say,

Are you going to repeat the same old ways,

The same old patterns,

The same old behaviors,

Or are you going to show up differently?

Yes.

My psychotherapy practice is called New Body Psychotherapy,

And the reason it's called that is because I see these loops and these patterns as the old body.

The old body is always there.

Those tracks are worn,

You know?

It's like if you drive,

If you bushwhack the same path in the woods every day,

You know,

There's always going to be that track.

And the new body are these new pathways that we're creating and connecting to,

And sometimes rewilding to,

You know?

We're coming back to the new body.

Yeah,

That old body,

It's always there.

These patterns and loops can be like a never-ending echo chamber.

They're always there.

What changes is that you become a master of them.

It's like,

Oh,

Here's that old money scarcity feeling that I trend towards reacting to with some kind of panic,

Or here's that old abandonment fear that sneaks up on me.

You fill in the blanks here.

What's changed is you have space to be with that.

You see it,

You recognize it,

And you know how to come into the new body.

You've got this new body technology that you've installed,

But then you need to run that program.

So you get to know the old body really well,

And that's that consciousness piece coming into consciousness about these patterns I was talking about before.

You know the map of the old body,

And then you've done all of this work to create the new body on the other side,

And you've forged all these pathways,

Right?

That's the practice,

Is how do you get from the old body to the new body?

Yes,

The universe will put opportunities in place for you to do that again and again until you get really good at it,

And it's a lifetime practice.

Then there's that difficult time where you have the new body technology,

But you have no idea how to get from the old body to the new body.

That's the work of where sometimes we are super conscious about something,

But also equally as incompetent being able to get there.

And you still got to love yourself in that too.

Yes,

Absolutely.

It is a lifelong practice.

And Lizzie,

I'd love,

As we end today,

To bring it to a higher level perspective.

Some visioning,

If you will.

What do you think the world would look like if we collectively healed these ancestral wounds and these generational patterns and cycles and reestablished our relationship with the earth and the connection to the land?

We'd have space to be with life.

We'd have space to receive and give love and really digest it,

Really experience intimacy.

Our nervous systems would be calm and regulated,

And we'd be able to face hardships with equanimity.

One of the images that I see is of a mother and a child.

The child is having a tantrum.

The child is throwing toys and frustrated,

And they want to get their way.

And the mother is sitting with that child,

Spacious,

Regulated,

And able to be with them in their pain and frustration.

Supporting them and helping them feel not alone.

And then,

On top of that vision,

I see pain in the world,

War,

Things that break our hearts that we see on the news.

And we're able to see that and be with it.

And we're able to see that and be with it.

And in this spaciousness and being able to witness the pain,

The grief,

And hardship,

We all begin to heal even more.

Because when we can really be with things,

Even when they're uncomfortable,

When we can really be with things,

Even when they're uncomfortable,

We stop needing to react.

And reactions to the discomfort of pain and loss and trauma create more wounding,

Create more warring,

Create more disconnection.

It's why I'm such an advocate for these simple practices that start with the individual.

Because if each individual can expand their capacity to be with life in all of its discomforts,

And that doesn't mean that you're like,

It's okay that these things happen.

It just means that you're able to see them and meet them in their fullness.

Real change is going to happen from that.

So beautiful.

Thank you for painting that picture for us.

I also think we'd be able to tap more into and receive,

You know,

Unconditional love,

Unconditional safety,

Unconditional abundance that's available to us on this earth.

And we'd be able to find more loving and supportive community too,

Which I think we're all seeking.

And also tap more into our ancestral wisdom as well.

I can really see it in my mind's eye,

And it's beautiful.

Well said.

It's like the more spaciousness we have to sit with and be with these things,

The more we're able to truly receive unconditional love,

Right?

Like you're saying,

That nourishment in abundance.

And if that can really be received and digested,

Then people are going to stop needing to seek outside of themselves so much.

Lizzie,

Thank you so much for being here today and coming back on the podcast and sharing yourself and so much wisdom with us.

I'm eternally grateful.

You're so welcome.

Thanks for having me.

I want to say one more thing.

People listening would not know that in the middle of recording this podcast,

I wanted I wanted to give up and said to Marley,

Let's cancel this.

I'm tongue-tied and insecure and experiencing imposter syndrome to level 10.

I can't speak about these things.

I was flooded with all of my insecurities.

And in hindsight,

Now that we have finished this recording,

I recognize that I was in the spiral of some of my own patterns.

And I could not get out of them alone.

And it was in Marley's reflection to me that I was able to see myself again and continue.

The reason I share that is because I think it's really important to be vulnerable and realistic.

It's fine and dandy to talk about,

You know,

Leaning on the ancestors,

Leaning on the plants,

Not needing anyone.

And it's also not accurate for the reality we're living in.

There's going to be moments where that is possible and situations where that's enough.

But the only way that we can get there is through relationship.

Through healing in relationship,

Through finding and creating safe connections with friends and community members that mirror to us who we are again and again and again until we can really see that ourselves.

And I just want to thank you,

Marley,

For being a person that does that for me,

Who sees me in a way that's helped me see myself and live my purpose with more strength and power.

And I know that you do that for many people.

And that part of your podcast is that.

Empowering and lifting up folks like me who have a message to share and need to be seen and validated just like anybody else might to get there and help create a better reality.

Thank you for being so vulnerable,

Lizzie.

I love you.

I love you,

Too.

You're welcome.

I have one final important question for you today that I didn't get to ask you last time.

What is your vision for the future of humanity and the Earth?

Spaciousness.

It just builds off what I said before,

That individuals can come back to this place of space and neutrality and hone that ability.

I don't know what it would look like after that,

What changes would happen.

And I don't even want to project my ideas or visions onto it.

I know the feeling of spaciousness in myself,

And I've witnessed it in my clients.

I've witnessed it in my teachers.

And I'm willing to be surprised by what the world could look like if we all had vast spaciousness and capacity to be with what is.

I'm willing to be surprised by the beauty and splendor that might be beyond my wildest imagination.

This human experience is a wild ride.

There are so many layers and intricacies.

There is so much to discover.

And the Earth is here to hold us through it all.

Our ancestors are here to hold us through it all.

There is so much beauty and abundance available to us on this Earth,

And we are all deserving of that beauty and abundance and also safety and connection.

Let's rediscover our roots,

Retrieve what we've lost,

And come back to our connection to each other.

To the land and to our ancestors.

I'll end today with a quote from Mark Wollin.

Our healing journey is an act of love,

Not just for ourselves,

But for those who came before us and for those who will come after us.