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Robin Payes's avatar

"Shamanic and Indigenous traditions share the idea that multiple generations of ancestors—especially mothers—impact the present generation."

I've had this experience, too, Prajna, but in a different context. I experienced through a family constellation--based on traditions of the Zulu in Africa and adapted by a German missionary then working in S. Africa, Bert Hellinger who, when he returned to Germany just after WWII realized that this powerful technique of healing through the ancestors could help his own people and others in the West begin to recover from the horrors of the Holocaust and, now, applied more broadly to heal generational trauma.

The healing session I experienced tapping into 7 generations of mothers is something I will write more about in coming weeks in my Releasing Memory; suffice it to say it provided a powerful affirmation for the ancestor memoir I am working on about an experience I received from my grandmother.

Beautiful, loving energies.

Thanks for prompting me to tell this story soon!

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Stephanie Raffelock's avatar

​What a beautiful tribute and honoring of your daughter Autumn, of your motherhood, of earth and sky. The edges of all these things bleed together in unfathomable beauty on the page. Thank you.

How your essay inspired: If I stand in the center of my yard, close my eyes and stretch out my arms, I imagine the ancestral matriarchy standing behind me. First my mother, a woman who raised me alone, giving me a great sense of independence; then my grandmother Julia, who taught me to pray in her vegetable garden, pray with my knees on the earth and my hands in the soil; great grandmother Eva, who was in spirit long before I was born, the admired matriarch who made it across the Ocean from Ukraine, across the country and settled in Colorado with her growing family. After Eva, I don't know the faces, just the energy of all the women, all those mothers who paved a way and paid a price.

They are with me. They are in me. How did you discover the light in an otherwise dark cave? How did the water of rivers, oceans and streams come to sing to you? How is it that you know the whisperings of the forest around you and how to make medicine from that? These are things that I ask of them and they ask of me. This is my thanksgiving. I am the last in the line of these women -- there are no children in my life, but the blessings of many nieces who sometimes think I'm the cool aunt. The blessings of young women who I tuck into the folds of my heart by offering support, encouragement and open-hearted acceptance. There is no Autumn for me who will carry on the work, but still I am thankful for the different path that my mothering energy took -- a bittersweet recognition of life not always turning out like you'd planned, but tinged with grace and gratitude nonetheless.

The stories you tell and the way in which you tell them inspire readers like me to look deeper, contemplate more, to find my stories of how I'm woven into this world.

Thank you for the shout out, Prajna. I cherish our connection. May you, Autumn, Libby, Abby and the sweet pup celebrate a happy Thanksgiving. You are in my heart. ~stephanie

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