My Work with Ancestors

I don’t usually talk about my work with Ancestors. I touched on it when I was in the thick of investigating MMIW across North America because They were the ones that led me into and through it, however, I’ve otherwise remained silent. I’m inspired, though, to share now because the connections that Ancestors weave through circumstances they either take advantage of or create to bring me into kins’ lives are increasing. The frequency and intensity with which They bridge the gap between me and Their breathing kin is met, mostly, by fear or it occurs within a context outside what others define as acceptable expressions of spirit. I didn’t know until the winter of 2017 that I’d been watched by many Others since I was a child. I met that awareness in the thick of danger when Morrigan came through a man I was acquainted with in Helena, Montana. She rattled through him a poem that told how (and where) They’d all followed me from college on. Though Their original intent wasn’t clear at the time I read the words that were spoken through him it, in the years since it has undeniable. Interactions I have with the living kin of Ancestors and Others (defined as culturally-specific deities, creation story inspirations, Beings from places humans have only visited in imagination) are pointed and specific. They are: first, for the healing of the breathing one I am encountering either face-to-face or through the webbed nature of the internet. They are for the healing of this person so that their body and brain can be readied for the spiritual transformation they were made for. They are being made into their name. They are made into the vessels that will contain the memories I will give them; the memories that I was given to carry in October 2014. Those memories include stories, songs, ritual, ceremony and relationships to plants, animals, minerals and stars tied to their original places on the planet. There is a reason that those who experience the most intense interactions with me have family from other places on the globe. I am made for those from the brown-skinned diaspora whose lineages were containers for, prior to colonization and monotheism, the unadulterated songs of the universe specific to their location on the globe. In the fall of 2014, those memories were poured into me. It’s one of the reasons I’ve said I was ‘prayed into existence and poured into Being.’ The songs want to be released and taken home—not necessarily to the place on the ground from which they were born but into the hearts of those they used to call Home. They, too, want to be made into their name; refolded back into the breath of life through those who can bring their full expression into being. In addition, the Ancestors and Others weave me onto the path of other people have the understanding that the MMIW issue isn’t contained on this continent; that the institutions perpetuating it are global and require a global response and that the re-homing of ‘lostness’—the lost connections to the invisible—is one means to end the forced disappearance of brown-skinned girls and women for sexual exploitation and murder. They are wiser than I sometimes, these Old Ones. They have a broader vision of the impacts of our work together, should someone finally engage with me and Them. They, bless them, are unmitigated forces of nature that push me past limits I thought I had. They are skilled manipulators of the human psyche, especially this wounded one, with a singular focus that crosses all mental barriers and invisible boundaries of culture, race and state to bring about the changes that mothers have prayed for for centuries. So if I’ve landed in your barn yard or you’re seated in front of me at the emergency room, our interactions have been orchestrated or taken advantage of by Those who see you in ways you cannot see yourself. I can see through your fear of me, yourself and Them into what lies in the heart. When you do not engage, my own heart pulls toward you because song wants to move from me into you; a way of seeing and stirring the stars has been waiting within me to be released into you; your own gifted nature wants to be re-born into it’s own answer to long-held-in-the-ground prayer. Whale song and buried roots and recipes for curing want to see the light of day through your heart and sight and sigh. When they bring us together and I speak their words outside the context we’re in, you are not meant to be afraid (though it happens). You are meant to recognize the truth in spite of that fear and within it, be curious, touch courage and open to the story of Creation that has been waiting for you. My job is to not deny Them their voice, no matter where we are, no matter the happenings around us: “When you speak your heart, you speak us.”