A Little Ancestor Love

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Dearest readers,

Last week I announced that I’ll be starting a beta class for my ancestral healing method in July and was absolutely thrilled by the response. There’s only one spot left! My heart is full to bursting with joy that there are so many of you interested in this work. I believe, to the very core of me, that this is some of the most necessary and important healing work we can do, for ourselves and for the collective.

Reply to this email or send me a message if you’d like the last spot for the class. And if it doesn’t work out this time, never fear! I will be offering an expanded, year-long version of the course for paid subscribers beginning in October.

In the meantime, I felt called to repost one of my favorite ancestor-related articles that I’d originally sent at the beginning of my Substack journey, before most of you were subscribers. Enjoy this bit of ancestor love today! ❤️

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I’m just going to put it out there: I spend a lot of time with dead people, especially the ancestors. (Actually, we all do whether we realize it or not.) One thing I’ve learned is that the ancestors who are now well in spirit (aka the untroubled dead) LOVE it here. By here I mean this physical world where you and I live right now.

I have been utterly dumbfounded by this. My ancestors have shown me moments from when they were living people. Because I work with them in a healing capacity, these are often the moments that caused their wounds. These people’s lives were marked by tremendous suffering. It’s the kind of suffering that’s unfathomable to me. This is what they lived through and, yet, somehow, they love it here. They really do. They focus their attention here with nothing but hearts-in-their-eyes adoration.

I spend a lot of time wondering WHY.

I started to think they must know something I don’t know. I got myself into quite a state one day when I had the horrible thought: what if it’s that the afterlife is so awful that even their worst suffering here is better in comparison?

But then I quickly realized that can’t be it. (Whew!) The wise and well dead that I’ve encountered seem to be quite happy. If they were existing in an afterlife of awfulness, surely they wouldn’t come across as happy. Right?

Then I started thinking about a phenomenon I’ve noticed where people have a tendency to only remember the good stuff, especially after it’s gone. I’ve never been to a funeral where someone gets up and says, “Joe was really an asshole. He was selfish and cold-hearted. But I’ll probably miss him anyway.” It could be that I simply haven’t been to very many funerals, but the eulogies I’ve heard have been glowing reviews of lives lived in beauty and love.

Actually, I think this is a wonderful human trait. I love that we mostly remember what was good about something after it’s gone. I suppose it’s because it’s natural for us to focus on what we miss about it.

Maybe this explains why the dead love it here. They remember and focus on what they miss about it. They remember the sweet stuff. The beauty. They remember music and dancing and joy. The richness of the Earth itself.

Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t really tell me why they focus on this place so much in the first place. Sure, if they’re forced to remember their lives here, they might as well remember the sweet parts. But couldn’t they be focused on doing some really cool shit in some afterlife wonderland instead?

It occurred to me that maybe, after having worked through things and done some healing in their deaths, our wise and well ancestors are now able to see the deeper meaning beneath the suffering of their own lives. Maybe they see how it was all necessary in some big, beautiful web of experience and meaning.

Personally, though, I think suffering SUCKS. I don’t want it. I sure as hell don’t want to have to work very hard to plumb its depths for meaning. So maybe it was my own bad attitude about it all, but I still didn’t feel satisfied with any of that as an explanation for why the ancestors love it here.

Then, out of the blue one day, it occurred to me:

HEY, I COULD JUST ASK THEM.

I never cease to amaze myself with my ability to overlook the easy solution.

One of my ancestors waiting for me to stop overthinking the situation.

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Finally, I stopped trying to figure it out myself. I sat down at my altar, got centered and said, “Okay, guys, why DO you love it here?”

They answered loud and clear.

“Because you’re here.”

Oh.

I felt myself enveloped in that profound love that I know (and yet continually forget) is all around me.

It’s all around you too. Every one of us. We are each surrounded by hosts of wise and well ancestors who focus with adoration on this time and place because we are here.

This belonging and love is your birthright. You are the beloved. Lean back into that support, be held by it. It is yours.