THIS POST SHARES INTIMATE DETAILS ABOUT DEATH & SUICIDE
I felt the call to work in ancestral healing when I was a small kid, as silly as it sounds. An empathic compassionate child I was—sitting with the elders always trying to learn whatever they had to offer. At four and five years old, I sat with my elderly neighbor, Frieda, as often as I could to give her companionship in her last years of life until she passed away. Frieda lived with her children at the end of our driveway and loved cardinals. The bright red male cardinal will always remind me of the beautiful woman who initiated me on the path of becoming a reverend and death doula.
I watched my family suffer from deep mental struggles—little did I know how deep these stories ran through my blood. My aunt Brooke died by suicide when I was only seven. She was my favorite person outside of my parents and sister—she was beautiful, kind, intelligent, and deeply depressed. Although, I never knew it. She gave me such a deep love and never showed me her pain. I will never forget laying on the green carpet in our PNW home, playing with my puppy Sadie, as my mother received a phone call. She sounded worried and anxious. “What is happening?” I ask, “Aunt Brookie is sick,” my mom says. We load up on our green pickup and head to my aunt's apartment a couple towns away. We pull into the apartment complex to see police vehicles, an ambulance, the fire truck, and my family. My papa and mom tell us to not get out of the car. “What is happening?’ I ask myself. “Why are they taking Aunt Brooke’s cat out of her apartment?” I wonder, but immediately have the knowing of “She is gone. She is dead. They would not have taken her cat out if she were in there alive” as my heart breaks into a million pieces. Another initiation. These deaths were just the beginning of losing many many more people in my life to death.
As I grew up, I would find out how depression had preyed upon my family. My nanny’s (grandmother) sister died by suicide at the same age as my Aunt Brooke. My papa’s (grandfather) brother died by suicide a few years after my Aunt Brooke. This is all on my mother's side—and it was my mother that lost her sister to suicide. My mother would later tell me that she would stay up all night playing solitaire on the computer because her grief was too strong to sleep. She was haunted by this tragedy, but I never knew to the degree that she suffered. She is the best mother I could have asked for. She is kind, stern, compassionate, funny, empathetic, and encouraging. Growing up I would often hear people speak so ill of the folks that died by suicide. People would say how selfish one must be to commit suicide, but I knew it was the exact opposite. I knew the people in my family were not selfish, but deeply struggling with sickness. I knew they felt like that was the only option—which breaks my heart, of course, how could it not? Although, I would sit in silence because of the stigma suicide carried.
I was led to many places with many lessons to be learned—but the ancestral threads remained. The stories of my ancestors were woven into my heart. Whispers of “break the cycle, break the cycle, break the cycle, and show others the same” would come through the wind.
I had a plethora of experiences over several years that would bring things to light. In this journey, I had a vision of traveling through the woods. I was running beside a reindeer, as fast as the reindeer—the woods resembling the woods of my PNW childhood home, but a little different. It felt familiar, safe, and primal there. We ran until we found a clearing in the woods. There were folks of all ages gathered around a fire, with children running around. There was not any snow on the ground, but everyone was wearing handcrafted suede jackets with animal fur around the rim of the hood. There was a small house made of local materials directly across the fire on the other side of the people gathered. “This looks and feels so familiar,” I think to myself. The vision shifts as I live through the life cycle of one of these people. I am first a child running around while all the adults are in ceremony around the fire. Then I become a young adult participating in the ceremony, then an established adult participating, then finally an elder leading and holding the ceremony. I then have a flash of being transported to a body of water nearby. I catch a glimpse of myself in the water and in this vision, I am a beautiful native woman with long straight hair and the same style jacket I mentioned earlier. After coming out of this journey, I researched northern tribal communities from all over the world.—yet, nothing looked quite as similar. Until I came across native Siberian folk “That's what I saw” I thought to myself. I try to spiritually rationalize “Maybe it was a past life? Someone elses ancestors coming through? Hmm not sure---This isn’t a blood ancestral because I don’t have any lineage in Asia” I wonder. Time passes and I feel this call to study Siberian shamanism since the word “shaman” actually originates from the Tungusic people of Siberia. I’m reading this beautiful book on Siberian shamanism and I shook dead in my tracks “That is the house I saw—no fucking way”.
During this same time in my life, I am doing a great amount of genealogical and DNA research on myself, my family, and our lineages—and it is there I discovered I come from many lineages on nearly every continent. Most interestingly, the native Siberian peoples and Secwépemc peoples of Canada. It is there I realize they have been leading me the whole way. I realize the depth and the gravity of ancestral healing—the importance of folks coming into their multicultural heritage with sacred reciprocity, respect, and humbleness. It is there I see all the ancestral stories lost to travel, migration, and persecution. Looking back, I had to experience that monster of depression that preyed upon my family to understand the depth of ancestral healing. I had to experience the loss of culture, lineage, and ancestors to learn to find my way back home to them.
Sometimes we receive messages, visions, or feelings without understanding them at that moment. The point is not to understand these experiences at that moment, but to explore what has arisen and then to let go until further clarification comes through. Don’t force the understanding—because in time the clarity will reveal itself and you will realize your ancestors have been guiding you home this whole time.
Love you sharing your story and love how Spirit guides us to finding forgotten pieces of ourselves. It will always amaze me.
Ahhhh this is so deeply beautiful