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You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.  ~Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

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Healer reader,

We are all impacted by our ancestors. There are the real-time hurts that our mothers and fathers and grandparents and aunts and uncles gave us, yes. And there are the deeper wounds, the ones that live in our flesh, in our DNA, passed down, generation after generation.

In the therapy world we call this the "intergenerational transmission of trauma." Yes it's a mouthful. And sounds so ominous. And hopeless.

The truth is the experiences of our ancestors do live in our DNA. AND we have the power to heal these pains and hurts and to connect more deeply to the strengths and power of those who came before. Yes, this trauma lives within our DNA, and it is a strand of our DNA that is changeable.

Neuroscience has shown us how our brains are also malleable. How we can change our neuropathways, also healing trauma and hurts and ways of being in the world.

I'm full of science today, aren't I?

What I am getting to is this: I've been feeling my ancestors rattling within my own bones. Over the past several months I've been feeling them in me, whispering, shouting, laughing, crying. Most loudly I hear my maternal grandmother. I hear the roar she stifled when she was alive. I hear her howling and moaning. I feel her rage. Her passion and love course through my body, whispering and shouting at me to do things different, to be different, to love my babies differently, to love my self enough.

She was a woman, who  in life, never let us (my mother, me, my sister) feel good enough in who we were. Watching the relationship between my mother and her mother as I was growing up was heartbreaking to say the least. Then when my grandmother drew me in, stating how I was the daughter she always wanted... well you can imagine how that played out in my relationship with my own mother: not well.

I could paint a very ugly picture of this woman who birthed a dead son and then years later my mother. And we humans aren't that simple, are we? She was a complicated woman. She loved my mother so hard and deeply that it terrified her and that terror came out in hurtful ways. She looked to me with hope of being the woman she could have never been and the woman my mother had no interest (or really too much baggage) to ever be. She experienced her own heartbreaks and pains long before she even met my grandfather. She lived with the shame of not only having her first child die within her, but of then ending up a divoree at a time when divorce was unheard of. She felt pride in our Native American heritage, and yet it was something we rarely talked about. She was a kitchen witch and a stitch witch and could create anything for the home, and yet would declare she was not at all artistic. She was alive when Women's Sufferage was a happening, lived a few decades before television and witnessed the world changing faster and faster over her nine decades of life.

I could tell you much about her and really I know very little. I don't know what burned in her heart. I don't know what her passions were, what she gave up to be a mother and wife. I know nothing of her first husband and only learned she had been married before my grandfather (and of the stillbirth she had) after her death. There are a million questions left unanswered of who she truly was and who she could have been had time and circumstance and history been different.

Thinking of her and looking at this rubber maid bin filled with old family photographs of people I do no know has left me with an aching. A curiosity of my roots. A wondering where did I come from. A wanting to connect with those women who came before. What were there stories? What of them do I carry within me now?

I feel on a precipice. With all the woman who came before me lined up behind and my daughter and all the women who are to come lined up in front of me. I am hearing their calls and pleas to heal the past, to not pass on these hurts to the future. To howl and moan and roar, for me yes and for them. To give voice to the women who never had it and to the women who always will.

How do you feel the roars and moans and howls of your ancestors? What parts of your history are you being called to heal now?

P.S. Awakening Our Womanline is the latest iteration of my Being & Becoming series. It is a three month journey connecting deeply to the women who came before and to our Self: body, mind and spirit. It will be an intense journey and I am currently accepting applications from those interested in being a part of this circle. For more details and to request the application, click here

P.P.S. After a lot of thought, it has settled into my being that it is time for me to start sending weekly emails again. Starting this week, I will be sending out my newsletter filled with goodies every Saturday evening. You are always welcome to unsubscribe at any time, no hard feelings. (And of course I hope that you don't! ;) )

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STREAM OF CONSCIOUS WRITING PROMPT

What is the roar of your ancestors? When you think of the women who came before howling, how do you envision them? What does it mean to you to connect deeply to your own womanline?

GUIDED MEDITATION

This week I am offering a powerful walking meditation to guide you to connecting to your own womanline.  Access the Walking Your Womanline Meditation by clicking here. The guided recording is about 21 minutes long. I invite you give yourself space to breathe after you complete the meditation, to record your experience and allow the power of it to settle into you. xoxo.

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ONLINE WORKSHOPS & RETREATS

Awakening Our Womanline. A 13-week journey into connecting deeply with the women who came before, healing our ancestral wounds and embracing our own whole self as we are today.  I am currently accepting applications for this circle. March 18 - June 18. For more details and to receive the application click here.

Mindful Mantras. A year long, free, program offering a guiding word or phrase to help you become more centered and grounded through out your week. Emails go out on Sundays and discussions will be posted in the FB group each Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. I will also broadcast on Periscope each Sunday at 12noon PST, talking about our word or phrase for the week. New this year, each week I will randomly choose one subscriber to receive the handmade mantra card along with a handwritten note from me in your "snail" mail box. For more information and to register, click here.

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LINKS OF INTEREST

No you are not a hysterical female - A great piece reminding us all to listen to our bodies and that we do know what we are feeling

Why we need to stop devaluing femininity - An amazing piece that had me shouting yes, yes, yes and reminding me why I get so angry anytime anyone talks crap about Barbie dolls (and playing with them)

My Instagram Page - I have been busy over there, writing and writing and writing some more (and oohh... pretty pictures) thanks to the latest Liberated Lines Flash.

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GWYNN RAIMONDI, MA, LMFTA

Explorer | Healer | Guide

Connecting you to your own embodied knowing