Healing Multigenerational Trauma and Pain – You and Your Ancestors

1. personal and collective healing;
2. remembering and living one’s sacred purpose; and
3. being true stewards of our beautiful earth.

While I could explore each of those areas in depth, today I want to focus on how being in a conscious relationship (and engaging in Multigenerational Healing) with our healthy ancestors relates to personal healing.

First, what is Multigenerational Healing?

Also known as Ancestor Repair Work, Multigenerational Healing seeks to heal the wounds and trauma of past generations that wreak such havoc in our lives today.

While there are numerous ways to approach this work, the approach that I use and find to be very effective includes:

• being in direct relationship* with the healthy ancestors of our lineage,
• visioning (or deep listening) and
• body-centered trauma resolution work.

*direct relationship involves talking with them, listening for guidance, making offerings, and other ritual tending.

Second, why is it needed?

Take a moment and pretend you are viewing your life from an external perspective.

From this perspective, you can see specific patterns running through your life, patterns that you may also have noticed running through the lives of your siblings, your parents, perhaps even your grandparents and extended relatives.

Physical attributes might be the first thing you notice – height, hair color, body type…

From there, you might notice other patterns that speak to the strength and gifts of your lineage. Patterns such as musical, artistic or athletic ability, intelligence, generosity, an ability to fix things or find creative solutions to problems… the list goes on and on.

As you take a deeper look, you will likely notice specific unhealthy patterns as well.

While these patterns can vary greatly from one family system to another, some common examples include:

• depression/anxiety
• addiction
• abuse
• insecurity or other self-worth issues
• fear of abandonment
• abusive or dysfunctional relationships
• a general sense of stuckness
• patterns of scarcity or lack
• headaches, migraines
• other chronic pain or illness…

Some of the patterns I mentioned above are fairly obvious; less obvious patterns are also often ancestral.

Things like:

• ongoing feelings of fogginess,
• not really knowing who you are or why you are here (your purpose),
• a general sense of not belonging or fitting in,
• feeling disconnected from yourself, from others, from Spirit,
• a sense of something ‘missing’,
• an inability to be fully present for yourself or in your life…

And on and on…

(If you don’t know your family or are not well connected to them, take a look at your life and notice any unhealthy patterns that have not responded to other healing methods.)

Multigenerational Healing is needed to shift seemingly intractable patterns of pain and stuckness.

Basically, patterns of pain, confusion and dysfunction that feel really stuck, that have not shifted through other means, or that feel as if they are rooted into the core of your being and are therefore intractable all likely have an ancestral component.

Multigenerational Healing is therefore needed to shift and transform these patterns of pain and limitation where they originate, in your lineage.

Note: how these wounds originate and are passed through generations is a topic for another time.

These patterns of pain have not shifted through other approaches because they are not solely yours.

I suspect that if they were simply your wounds or your difficult patterns, the healing work you’ve done so far in your life would have led to resolution.

If resolution has not occurred, it is time to look elsewhere.

In my experience, your Ancestors likely hold the key to much deeper levels of healing.

Fortunately, working with the Ancestors in this way, to bring healing to your entire lineage, is fairly straightforward.

I’m not saying it is easy. There is often resistance. Fear or terror may arise. Grief as well. These are very real wounds and trauma seeking healing.

However, through understanding that this pain and these dysfunctional patterns aren’t just ours, a little distance is created between us and the pain.

Plus, we aren’t alone in this work.

We are here, doing what we can to support our lineage in healing itself.

We show up, we do our part (visioning, feeding the healthy ancestors, listening, witnessing, grieving as needed); the Ancestors do the rest.

Through this work, we become connected to a vast network of nourishment, guidance and love.

As we tend and feed the healthy ancestors of our lineage, they become sources of immense nourishment, vitality, guidance and love.

In my experience, accessing this source of love and support is, in and of itself, deeply transformative, life-affirming and healing.

For you:

Over the next couple of months, I will be spending more time with this subject including offering a complimentary online class in September. Until then, here are a couple of questions for you to ponder:

What challenging, painful or unhealthy patterns do you see running through your family and your life?

On the flip side, what do you see as the gifts or strengths of your lineage?