What is Ancestral Healing?

From what I’ve learned, ancestral healing can be done in different modalities and have different approaches. Ranging from gathering knowledge around who your ancestors were and your family constellations, to working with mediums to help communicate with those in your family who have passed. I’ve done both.

And in the short time I’ve been doing this work, the amount of life-altering information that came through was astonishing.

I learned why certain behavior patterns are ingrained in me, how certain trauma from my female ancestors still reflects itself in me, and how to heal some of these inter-generational issues. It connected dots for me that never made sense, or that had gone completely unnoticed. I started seeing the patterns, the connections between me and all the women who came before me.

And now, I am getting the information I need to heal…

To be the one who finally BREAKS THE CHAIN.

Almost always, my clients are women who are ready to break free from the patterns of THEIR families — to stop repeating the same cycles and heal themselves — before they have their own children.

They show up ready to start the work — after hundreds of years of inherited female trauma — of beginning a brand new chapter. They’re sick of old patterns coursing through the bloodlines of the women in their family, and they’ve seen how destructive they can be.

They show up fully awake and aware of these patterns. They show up ready to dig deep and make a change. It’s made me believe strongly that this generation of women is here to heal the wounds our mothers, grandmothers, and all those beyond couldn’t. Not because they didn’t want to. But because, for the first time ever, women have the resources to do this work at their fingertips. We have access to therapy, spiritual healing, and education that not even our mothers had. We are the generation that can stop the trauma from going down into one more generation.

So, how can you start the work?

Begin simply, by making a family tree that includes everyone up until your grandparents (or great-grandparents if you have access to that information). Then, next to each person, write down any and all traumas they endured. This includes everything from being in a war, to being killed or dying young, to losing a child, having an abortion or miscarriage or traumatic birth experience, experiencing any type of abuse, neglect, or addiction, being in a accident or seriously ill — anything that may have rocked their world, write it down.

They just observe it all with a wide lens.

Are there patterns there? Does something keep repeating itself within your family line? Do you feel oddly linked to a family member, and have never been sure why? This simple exercise might give you the answer.

Intergenerational trauma is when we experience the symptoms of someone else’s trauma — a family member who came before us. It can be unexplained panic attacks or phobias or irrational fears. And until we do some digging, we can’t ever explain why we feel this way.

As you work on creating your family tree, see if anyone in your family might have experienced something similar to what you’re feeling. Maybe you have an unexplainable fear of water, but have never experienced anything traumatic relating to it. Check and see if anyone in your family has every drowned, or lost someone to drowning. Did someone have an accident in the water?

This work can apply to any symptom you feel doesn’t REALLY begin with you.

You can then choose to work with a trained therapist to help understand and shift these irrational fears. To begin sending messages to your subconscious that this isn’t your fear to hold anymore. That it doesn’t do you any good to keep holding it. Begin to reprogram through visualization, meditations, thought-shifting, and even taking actual physical practices to break the fear cycle.

A perfect place to start is by reading the book “It Didn’t Start with You” by Mark Wolynn. It gives you the science-backed explanation on how intergenerational trauma can affect us, and how to begin working on it on your own, through specific exercises and journal work.

Remember, you are never locked into your family patterns. It will require steady, consistent work and facing hard truths, but you have the capacity to clear the old — and thus begin a new, healthier, more aligned way of living.

The beautiful woman in the photo above is my grandmother, Aurora, from my mother’s side. We lovingly called her Abuelita Bola. She is my guardian and my guide — and a reminder of the long lineage of powerful women that I come from. I never knew her as a child, since she passed right before I was born. But discovering she was my guide, through the help of some spiritual healers, I began asking more questions about her and her life. And it led me to make a beautiful connection with a woman who, although I never met on the physical plane, I now deeply feel as a part of my life and healing.

This picture sits on my altar to remind me every day that I am being guided and protected.

To doing the work for the women who came before us who couldn’t.

Ferny