Repairing the Wound of Not-Belonging
“Why, Dear One, don’t you turn towards your own bones and blood?”
I heard the voice of the forest whisper.
Twenty-three. Lost and found. Burned a dream that was never mine to begin with. Followed the call of the Earth Mother and found myself in the land of misty forests, ancient mushroom villages, and fairie songs. Living and working on a farm beside a glacial river under a volcano.
Feeling the drum beat of a body painfully ignored and abused. The medicine songs of a confluence of lineages—forgotten in the name of other cultures, lands, and practices. And an entire realm of ancestors patiently awaiting my homecoming.
Turning towards your ancestry when you carry the blood of the recent colonizer can be difficult. There are so many other readily available cultures at our fingertips. Cultures that have been taken from and stripped yet whose living traditions remain more ‘in tact.’ Which perhaps we unconsciously approach, appropriate or pedestal driven by our inherited pain and flailing roots. By the barren wastelands of not-belonging, we may feel towards our own ancestral rivers.
Yet since that first recognition of the avoidance of my own bones and blood—turning towards, feeling in, and walking through—has been the bittersweet medicine I was unknowingly seeking in trying to find spiritual solace in lineages and lands that were not my own.
Last year, at the culmination of 7 years of tending and remembering the wild seedlings of my own heritage, I went on a pilgrimage to the place of my Maternal Mother-line—Northern Italy.
It has been one year, and I still feel speechless in the face of my experience. To feel at home and simultaneously homesick on my first visit to a place. Meeting my Nonna—meeting parts of myself, in every wrinkled face, terracotta pot overflowing with herbs, hands dancing like water amidst passionate conversations, and meals served with immense pride. The mountains, the lakes, the sea. The bursting feminine heart.
The spirits of the land sing songs of rejoicing – “You’ve come home, Dear One!”
A sound faintly familiar of those voices that invited me inwards in a fertile dark Autumn forest seven years ago.
When I returned, my Nonna completed her journey Earth-side the day I turned 30. This death left me as the last living woman in my Maternal Mother-line.
I am only beginning to see how my pilgrimage prepared me for this in seen and unseen ways. To remember myself as a pillar of belonging, to find solace in and become the Mother, and to stand on the bridge of my lineage, holding a water-filled jug. Carried by the women who walk behind me, ready to pour forth into the ones who will come through me.
The blessings that arrived through the star-lit soup of my return felt like the gifts granted in deciding to walk home. Home to my body, bones, and blood. Home to my inherited caverns of separation, destruction, and loss. Home to the Motherland, the Mothers who saved me, and the Mother-within.
My love affair with other cultures and lineages hasn’t ended. But instead, become anew.
In tending a relationship with the tributaries of my own ancestral blood—mossy banks have formed. Smooth welcoming boulders. Places to anchor my body and locate myself in time and space. A logical and non-linear awareness of who, what, and where dreamt me. The foundations needed to enter into the paradoxical relationship of not-mine-ness and deep reverence as I play sacred and curious visitor to other holy rivers.
A prayer to honor all bloodlines
Please feel free to use and replace words with the denizens of your own heritage
Greetings to all of my ancestors—willing and pain-ridden. I am your dream, and you are mine.
Greetings to the colonizer and the colonized, who both make a home within me. Eyes wide open to the destruction, the harm, and the unmistakable pain of ways, lost; cultures, obliterated, and spirit; repressed.
Greetings to the Slavic Witches, the Italian Medicine Women, the Celtic Druids, and the overwhelming amount of medicine that flows through my bloodlines.
Greetings to the witches who were burned, the mystics who went into hiding, and the lost esoteric libraries.
Greetings to the boundless magic, the indestructible mysticism, and the living wisdom of the Ancient Ones in all my ancestral rivers.
Nothing was in vain. For you have not been forgotten.
Greetings to the wells that hold the songs of the fairies, the crystalline lakes in the Alps that shimmer with ceremonies past, and the underground European tunnels that beat with the hearts of the fleeing Essenes.
Greetings to it all inside of me — destruction and creation. Harm and pain. Forgiveness and grace.
May what is mine to carry transform through me.
May I recognize my body as a living legacy.
May I endlessly return home to my spirit, my vessel, and my walk upon this Earth.
Greetings to all of my ancestors, lineages, and lines. I am your dream, and you are mine.
