The ancestors can help us make peace.

I used to feel a kind of anxiety I couldn’t name. I thought it was a generic mental health thing that everybody dealt with here in late-stage-capitalism, or alternately that I was a bigger weirdo than I thought. I had a constant, creeping sense that there was something wrong but I couldn’t fix it because I didn’t know what it was. This led to a lot of insecurity and ambivalence: what was the right thing to do? Was I safe? Was The Man going to show up on my doorstep because I forgot to pay some secret debt I didn’t know I had?

I did a lot of trauma therapy and ate some herbs and it was totally worthwhile to have done those things. I worked through some PTSD, unpacked bad relationship baggage, explored family dynamics — but the anxiety never felt any different. I learned to meditate, did a lot of yoga, ate some peyote and still had the wired but tired sense that I was forgetting to take care of something important. It seemed inescapable.

A few years ago, I discovered Ancestral Lineage Healing, a modality developed by Dr. Daniel Foor and that I have since become certified to practice. The premise is that something continues after death; that the dead are not all equally well, though some are very well and wise; that there is reciprocity and impact between the living and the dead; and that healing is as possible for the departed as it is for the living…