Ancestral Ground

There are many entryways to reconnect with our ancestors. We don’t need all the historical facts – we can find our way home through the body. We can sing, cook, plant, paint, pray, praise, and listen our way back into relationship. Some arrive to their ancestors through grief rituals to acknowledge and repair disconnection and erasure. Others tend ancestor altars, offering flame, water, flowers, and whispered prayers. Some walk mindfully in pilgrimage, returning to their homelands, their feet tracing the steps of their ancestors who left in search of a better tomorrow. Others cook the meals of their people, remembering the medicines and memory held in spices, grains, plants and herbs.

Ancestral wisdom and tradition can be found through the portals of myth and folktale. Our dreams can lead us back into connection and conversation. In our radical imaginations, we can wonder why our ancestors made the choices they made to survive. We can write poems and letters and speculative fiction about their times, their context, and their lifeways. We can enact their stories on the stage through ritual theater and dance. Traditional songs can rise up again in our voices and throats.

The ways of ancestral recovery are as diverse as the cultural and spiritual lineages we carry. Our ancestors live in us—in our bodies, in the land, and in the stories waiting to be told. Through embodied, spiritual, ecological, and imaginal practices and rituals of reciprocity we can connect to the past and become good ancestors to the future.