Roots

I’ve been searching for roots for what seems like forever. Seeking it in locations, community, history, tradition, most of which was never my own. I come from a very long line of colonizers. My roots are diluted and stolen. As the descendent of oppressors I am both privilege and lost. My commitment today, the day before Native American Heritage Day is to find out my history, work on healing the ancestral trauma.

Multiple lines of my lineage can be traced back to the Mayflower. English and Irish on my maternal side, with smatterings of Dutch, Scots and French (Quebecois). I also carry Germanic and Jacobite blood. My 6th Great Grandfather, Malcom MacCallum (Malcom Callum) was a Scottish Prisoner of War from the battle of Dunbar. He one of 150 forced to the Massachusetts Bay Colony on the ship Unity, sold into seven years service as an indentured servant.

I feel so connected to so may things, but are they really my things? Or am I taking them from someone else to fill my own void?  Human Design and epigenetics tell me the patterns and trauma of my ancestors, not just my mum and grand mother is written in my DNA. (Patterns will be repeated until learned and broken).

A DNA test and ancestry.com doesn’t leave me with many questions about my origin and roots. I am of the Germanic and Celtic-Gaul Tribes. My ancestors were oppressed by the Roman Empire. My more recent ancestors were some of the first colonizers upon the shores of the indigenous Turtle Island. I’ve always felt a deep emotional connection to the Adirondacks and that I was part of the mountains and its original people. But I am not. While they are my Land ancestors, they are the people my ancestors oppressed and stole from. Perhaps the connection I feel is deep grief and sorrow for their oppression? The guilt and remorse of slivers of humanity in the brutalizer. The desire to appreciate and learn from something my people ripped from them?

I just joined The Honeyed Womb, with Torie Feldman, an ancestral healing guide (sacredancestry.com) and the first module already blew my heart and mind. In the foundational meditation, we went back as the sacred embodiment of your ancient feminine ancestors — earth and water and connected to the ancient, primordial force of feminine energy that lives in all things: The Original Mother.

The severance from the Original Mother is exactly where colonial oppression comes from.  It’s the Domination Paradigm.

“And god blessed them, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that move upon the earth” – Genesis 1:28

I shudder to think that is the root cause of what we have become. It’s the foundation of oppression. The foundation of the Dominator Paradigm.

We don’t have dominion over the Original Mother, Gaia, Mother Earth. We are to live in harmony with her beauty, with her bounty, with her cycles. This is the way of the indigenous intelligence. This is what was christianity took from my pagan, Germanic and Celtic-Gaul ancestors. And in turn taught them to steal land and oppress culture of the people of Turtle Island.

The primordial sacred feminine wound is what needs to be healed. Our earth mother is our guide. To heal these traumas we must reconnect to the divine feminine essence.

I cannot heal my ancestral trauma, my mother -wound trauma, my sisterhood trauma until I can address the severance of connection with earth, the great mother of all. She Soverign was my first step, tending to the earth (even if it was only growing a few dahlias, zinnias , tomatoes and beans) was my second. The Honeyed Womb is the next. It’s a stream of dominos…. decolonizing, connection to the divine feminine…stepping onto the green witch, herbalist, priestess path… It’s growth, It’s healing. I hope the steps I take will help me heal the trauma in my lineage. I know my wise, well and healed ancestors are cheering me on. 

I am tending the soil to breath life and anchor my roots. 

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