Working With Your
Badass Family
So how do we develop meaningful relationships with our ancestors? Well, obviously we start with the research—that’s a big part of it. We learn who they were and how they lived, we study them. It shows them that we’re actually investing time and energy in getting to know them. Not only that, we can try to live in a way that shows our reverence and respect for them daily. In doing so, they’ll help us out. It’s kind of part of the Afterlife Job Description.
One of the best ways to form these relationships with our people is to live in a way that honors them, spiritually. There are a number of ways that you can do this, and all of them will soon become life habits if you practice them regularly.
Live Authentically, With Purpose
For starters, do your best to live as an ethical and loving person. This means, quite simply, make an effort to fulfill your highest potential and find your purpose—whatever it may be—while you’re here on earth. Many cultures believe we have a karmic destiny to fulfill, and that we’re all just one more link in a cosmic chain. If that is indeed the case, then we honor all of the other links when we make it a priority to do what we need in order to live the most authentic life we can. Your ancestors are your allies—remember their power, and live life to the fullest in their honor. In contrast, when we lose touch with this ancestral power, we can ask our ancestors to help bring about the big changes we need to live our life with purpose.
What do we mean when we talk about authentic living? While it sounds like a totally catchy New Age buzzword, there’s actually a sociological concept behind it. Living authentically is a pretty simple idea, and it’s focused around the idea that it’s perfectly acceptable—and probably far healthier—to live in a way that allows our actions and words to be consistent with our beliefs and values.
Keep in mind that living authentically is a pretty subjective value statement; you’re the only one who can decide what’s real and authentic for you. But consider this: authentic living is liberating, because once we shed the artifice of worrying about trying to pretend to be something we’re not, all that’s left is the genuine article. There’s a linear progression in finding the true self. Once you’ve reached that point—or peak, or plateau, depending on your perspective—you’ve got nothing but authentic living on the road ahead.
How do we get to that state of finding our true selves, when we’ve spent much of our lives trying to please other people, make everyone happy, fit in, blend, and be part of a society that emphasizes conformity and leaves very little room for individuality? The first step on our journey to authenticity is self-awareness. Define your values and figure out what matters most to you. What are your goals? What things are important, both in your interpersonal relationships and your material life?
Train yourself to be watchful for times when you’re not being authentic. Did you do or say something that conflicts with your core values? Are you holding others to a standard you don’t meet yourself ? Pay attention to moments of your own insincerity and try to evaluate what fears might be at their root. Are you worried that someone might dislike or reject you if they see you for your true self ?
To develop a mindset of living as your true self, you have to change your way of thinking, not only about yourself, but about the way you interact with others. Let go of patterns, bad habits, and toxic relationships that no longer serve you. Be like Marie Kondo—jettison things that don’t bring you joy. If something doesn’t make your heart sing, it’s time to evaluate whether it’s worth keeping. Open your heart and your mind to the idea that you are deserving of love and happiness. You’re entitled to receive it, and you’re entitled to give it to those who are worthy of you.
Allow your spirit to be free. Do all the things that make you happy, whether it’s singing, dancing, or jumping around your living room. Ask strangers if you can pet their dogs. Spend time with people whose company you really enjoy. Make art and music and poetry. If you want to live an empowered life, living an authentic one is the first step, and your ancestors will be proud of you for taking the leap.
Do Good Works
Another thing you can do to honor your family lines is consistently perform positive actions in your ancestors’ names. Make donations in their honor (they don’t have to be large endowments or actions that create huge financial burdens for you). You could also perform smaller acts that represent who your people were and what they stood for. Two days after my brother-in-law passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer, my teenage son, a regular blood donor at the American Red Cross, contributed a pint of blood in his late uncle’s name. I participate in an annual Alzheimer’s walk in honor of my maternal grandmother. If you had a family member who did a lot of work with the local food bank, why not organize a drive in her memory? What about the dear aunt who took in all those stray cats? Donate a bag of litter or food to the local feline rescue organization. Here are a few other low-cost charitable actions you can take in honor of your ancestors:
• Handcrafts: Do you knit, crochet, or sew, just like someone in your family did? Assemble blankets, scarves, or hats, and donate them to a homeless shelter or a low-income school in an ancestor’s name.
• Donate your time: Most nonprofits are short on volunteers. Contribute your time to an organization that needs your help and represents something that a particular ancestor would have liked to be involved in. Whether you spend a few hours a month shelving books at the library, cleaning cages at the humane society, or scooping food onto trays at a local soup kitchen, do it in a way that honors your people and your guides.
• Raise money for a cause: Donating to your favorite charity organizations can get expensive. Instead, raise funds and awareness on their behalf. Participate in activities like walkathons, charity bike rides, or other community events to collect donations.
• Contribute your skills: What are you good at? Are you a trained grant writer? Do you have mad accounting talent? Can you teach other people how to do something really cool? Offer to help out a local organization by sharing your talents on their behalf. Most nonprofit groups are thrilled when someone shows up and says, I’m a professional Whatever, and I’d love to help you out by Whatevering for your organization.
There is a definite spiritual benefit of performing acts of generosity. By giving to help others’ well-being, we increase our own well-being. If you think of it in the context of the adages you get back what you give or like attracts like, you can see how generosity is weirdly paradoxical, something that is true in nearly every spiritual path.
In the Christian religion, charity and good works are part of the trajectory to grace. Islam has a practice known as sadaqah, the act of giving charity or alms to another without any expectation of return other than to please Allah. The concept of tzedekah in Judaism includes not only morally upright behavior but also the call to give generously; material support for those who might need it isn’t just a suggestion or guideline, it’s a requirement. The Hindu and Buddhist dāna is not just the act of giving itself; it’s also the desire to give from the heart without any demands for repayment from the recipient.
Traditional and indigenous practices of many cultures often place special emphasis on the benefits of sharing blessings and abundance. In other words, if your people have been benevolent to you, pay it forward to others. While we could argue that acts of charity make us feel good about ourselves, and are therefore self-serving, the fact remains that there are scientific studies which show that generosity is also good for us physically; it can lower blood pressure and reduce levels of stress.
Listen to Your Heart
Stay open to communication from your kinfolk—sometimes it’s direct, and other times it’s non-verbal. While ritual itself often brings about contact, it can also happen spontaneously in dreams, through symbols, or via other messages. When we’re willing to hear what our ancestors are saying, it makes their work easier, and we get to enjoy the relationship we develop with them. In chapter Five, you’ll learn how to do rituals that will help you talk to your people so you’ll know how to speak with them, but here are a few key things to keep in mind:
• Follow the same etiquette you might use if you’re speaking to a living person—take the time to introduce yourself. Hi, I’m Samantha, daughter of James and Jasmine, and I’m really happy to meet you.
• Remember that just as you speak casually to one group of people in your life, you might speak more thoughtfully and formally to another. Think about how your ancestors may like you to speak with them—should you say I call upon my people, known and unknown, going back through generations? Or, realistically, would they prefer Hey guys, it’s me. Need some help, y’all! as your introduction?
• Sometimes, we don’t know what to say at all, but we still need to speak. In those cases, it’s perfectly fine to just start talking. Grandma, I know you’d love this joke I heard, or Aunt Margaret, you are not going to believe what Ethel Sanderson told me about Cousin Alex the other day! Have conversations, either aloud or in your head. Talk to them in a way that shows you’re ready to develop a relationship.
In addition to speaking to your people, you have to teach yourself to listen to them in return. So, how do you do that? First of all, you’ll probably question your sanity and start wondering if you’re really getting these messages, but just hear me out. After all, we’ve all been to the movies—we know people think you’re nuts if you start whispering, I hear dead people. But hearing your ancestors is primarily intuitive. Much of their communication with you will be nonverbal, in that there won’t be an audible conversation … but you’ll still hear them.
Make sure you’re working with evolved and benevolent ancestors and not manipulative entities. Ask your ancestral guides to give you feedback on other beings you might be working with to make sure you can trust them and that they have your best interests at heart.
How do you know that you’re working with a real ancestor spirit and not just some random being—or worse yet, your own fanciful imagination? Well, the more you speak to your ancestors, the more you’ll notice patterns. Some will speak formally, others more casually. You have to trust your instinct, and it’s just as important to use some basic critical thinking skills as you’re getting to know them.
When I first began doing ancestor work, I discovered that my people were the ones who would pop in and tell me things that I needed to hear but didn’t necessarily want to hear. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re doing some work in which you call upon a long-dead ancestor and you’re trying to develop a relationship with them … and they ask you to prepare their favorite food and place it on their altar. Unfortunately, their favorite food is something you don’t know how to cook and don’t want to learn how to prepare, for whatever reason. My paternal ancestors are Scottish, so there’s a lot of potential there for someone to demand I fix a plate of haggis.
Now, I’ve never made haggis. I don’t want to make haggis. I’m repulsed by the very idea of haggis, a sheep’s stomach stuffed with oats and a bunch of other things that were eaten in Scotland a few centuries back. I’m pretty sure it would smell terrible if I made one, and I don’t want my house to carry the aroma of haggis. But if I was calling on one of my MacFarlane or McFadyen or Kerr or MacKie ancestors and they demanded haggis, I’d learn how to make it, and I’d put it on my altar for them.
Are your people asking for things you don’t even like? That’s a good sign it’s not your imagination. Because if I got a request for a batch of my amazing homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (pretty much a twentieth century treat), I would know it probably wasn’t my kinfolk calling but my own desire for some butt-kicking chocolate chip cookies.
You may encounter your ancestors via dream visitation; even skeptics sometimes get visits in their dreams—especially once you’ve set up an ancestor altar and begun researching your people and learning their stories. Sure, your grandmother’s been dead since 1973, but that doesn’t mean she can’t pop in and check on you. Don’t be shocked if she—and other kinfolk—start appearing to you while you sleep. They might speak to you in your dreams, or they may simply watch over you. The key is that if they do seem to have something to say, pay attention. You may find it helpful to keep a notepad by your bed so that when you wake up, you can jot things down—even if it’s just Uncle Herb says to get my act together—before you forget. Record now, interpret later.
If you feel as though you truly met and spoke with your kinfolk in a dream, you probably did. Meeting ancestors in this way can often help with healing generational trauma; if pain runs in the family, you have the power to make it run out. Offer to work with any ancestors for healing purposes if they seem to be in distress. Offer to help with reparations for those who seem as though they need to atone for the misdeeds perpetuated during their lifetimes.
You might also find that as you’re holding photos of your people or heirlooms or other items, you hear a voice that’s not really a voice or words that aren’t really being spoken … and yet are real. One moment you’re dusting off a photo of Great Aunt Agnes, and the next moment, there’s a soft voice murmuring Thank you that’s as clear as day, even though no one else in the room has heard it. Don’t dismiss these as your own imagination. Instead, acknowledge them and let them know you’ve listened to what was said.
Finally, don’t discount the value of symbols, signs, and omens. Did you suddenly get a whiff of tobacco smoke out of the blue as you sat down for breakfast? Maybe it’s that one ancestor who always smoked a pipe in the mornings as he read his paper. Perhaps you keep seeing the number seventeen wherever you go … could it be a sign from your great-great-uncle the riverboat gambler, who claimed seventeen was his lucky number?
Calling Your Ancestors as Badass Spirit Guides
If you’ve tried talking to your ancestors, set up the altar, done the research, and are still having trouble connecting to them, don’t worry. It doesn’t always happen overnight. One thing you can do is specifically invite them in to be your guides. In this sense, they are guides—ancestral spirits who are there to guide, not offer protection from your crappy neighbor, help you win the lottery, or mess around with healing your various medical issues. Often, asking for a guide is a good way to get started with ancestor work, because it’s sort of a low-pressure way for you to get to know each other. So how do you find your ancestral spirit guides? A lot of times, it’s just a matter of opening up to them—remember, most people in the Western world grow up thinking this sort of thing is nonsense, so you have to train yourself to suspend the disbelief you’ve been conditioned to.
Start by welcoming your natural intuitive gifts. Everyone has them to some degree, but some of us are more aware than others. Have you ever heard that soft little whisper in your head that tells you it’s time to do something, even though it makes no real sense to you? Take the north freeway to work instead of the southern one, make a big change in your life even though it’s scary, or just sit back and pay attention to the things people don’t say to you … all of these are things that your intuition may be telling you, and so often, we just dismiss it with I must be crazy for thinking this. It’s possible that this intuitive voice is actually the presence of a spirit guide, and it could well be an ancestor popping in. Learn to evaluate your intuitive ideas and see if they work out for you. If they do, it may well be an ancestral guide talking to you.
Some people find ancestral guides using meditation. While there are a number of guided meditations you can do to meet your guides available commercially, you can also connect with them by meditating on your own. As you begin, clear your mind of anything that’s not related to meeting your guides; you may want to light some incense or play some soft, non-intrusive music in the background.
For many people, this meditation takes the form of a long, solitary journey. Visualize yourself walking in a remote place, far from the crowds and technology and your job and your cell phone. Maybe you’re on a path wending through a forest, or on a trail traversing a craggy mountainside, or surrounded by tall grasses out in the steppes of eastern Russia. As you wander along the trail, allow yourself to look around, and you’ll often meet someone along the way—and this person could be your ancestral guide. Often, guides appear as representative archetypes—that means they can be someone who symbolizes other things. If your guide looks like Eleanor Roosevelt, that doesn’t necessarily mean Eleanor herself is your ancestral guide, but she may represent a person who wants to share certain things with you—honesty, leadership, discipline, and so on.
Much like meditation, a lucid dream journey is a way you can meet your guide or guides through the work of your subconscious. However, unlike in meditation, you’re actually asleep during a lucid dream journey. Lucid dreaming is dreaming with a purpose, so as you tuck in for the night, start thinking about what you want to dream about—in this case, focus on meeting an ancestral guide. Allow this to be the last—and only—thing you think about as you fall asleep. Lucid dreaming can be a challenge if you’ve never done it before, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to pre-plan your dream journey, and what you might be doing on your adventures. Because most of us forget our dreams shortly after waking, it’s important to write down any messages you get during a lucid dream journey as soon as you’re coherent enough to pick up a pen. Include information about anyone you happen to meet; go back later and evaluate your notes for meanings, symbols, and patterns.
Speaking of symbols and patterns, we often look for these things when they aren’t there … and then fail to recognize it when they’re right in front of our faces. Some guides might decide to make themselves known to you—especially if they’ve got some important tea to spill—with a series of signs and symbols. These symbols can be very basic—perhaps you keep seeing owls, and you’ve never noticed them before, but you just found out that your 4th great-grandmother raised barn owls in her spare time. Signs and symbols can also be more complex and detailed, which will require a bit of self-analysis in addition to figuring out how those patterns connect to ancestors—including those who are yet undiscovered.
Many people believe that if you want real answers from your guides, you have to actually ask them something—and you may have to present the question more than once. Don’t just assume your people are going to spoon-feed you with information because you want them to. Ask a question—or for a solution—then watch for signs or omens that provide an answer.
Finally, consider doing a bit of psychic divination. Most people want to discover their ancestral guides on their own—it’s a pretty personal thing—so if you’re skilled at divination, you can try your favorite methods yourself to see if you can contact a guide or guides. However, if none of the above methods have really proved effective despite your best efforts, you can ask a friend with psychic skills to do a bit of divination on your behalf. A talented psychic—and this doesn’t have to be a professional psychic, it can be anyone whose intuitive gifts you trust—can see if you’ve got guides around you and often can help you identify them.
Remember, not all of your guides are going to appear at once, and you may find them showing up in turns. Once you discover your ancestral guides, they may not all be available to you all the time —after all, they’re busy, just like you are. Sometimes they wait to appear until they’re needed— after all, the purpose of a guide is to guide you. If you’re doing okay without them for a while, they might be off helping others who need it more than you do. Keep in mind that you may not be their only descendant who needs a hand.
What Can Your People Do for You?
Your ancestors are there to offer help. They can show up with nuggets of wisdom garnered throughout the centuries, transcending generations, and give insight when you need it—but again, you sometimes have to request it.
Ask for guidance from your ancestors. Trust me, they’ve seen it all, and they’ve probably got plenty of ideas about what you’ve done and what comes next. If you’re stuck, invite them to come in and help you problem-solve. I have a couple of very specific ancestors that I’ve discovered are really good at critical thinking. They help me look at a problem objectively, break it down into all of its individual components, and then guide me to evaluate my different choices and all of the possible outcomes of each decision. It’s a bit like having a team with a flow chart pointing out If this, then that for me, but it works incredibly well, and they’ve never steered me wrong.
Thank your ancestors for good things that have happened. Remember, in a lot of cultures it’s believed that if you’ve been the beneficiary of good fortune, it’s because your ancestral guides are watching out for you. Remember when you were a child, and you wrote thank you notes to people who gave you gifts? Write a thank you letter to those ancestors, either collectively or individually. It could be complex and detailed, or as short and simple as:
Dear Aunt Martha,
Thank you for giving me the wisdom and strength to make the right choices.
I appreciate all you have done for me.
After you’ve written a letter to your people, bury it near a place of family significance or burn it in a small bowl or cauldron on your altar.
Ask your badass ancestors for protection. They have a vested interest in keeping an eye on you that extends to other living members of your family. When you call upon them and invite them into your home, it becomes their home as well, and they’re far more likely to keep a watchful eye upon it.
It’s perfectly okay to ask your ancestors for financial assistance. How you do this will vary, but there are traditions all around the world in which ancestors are petitioned to grant material blessings upon their living descendants. In China, there’s a custom called spirit money. Practitioners write their ancestor’s name on joss paper or extra bills, and then burn it at the altar to send them money in the afterlife. In return, money comes back to the living in abundance.
No matter how you choose to work with your blood kinfolk, above all, honor them. Celebrate them. Take the time to show them that they matter, even in death, to those who still live. Again, the how of ancestor work will depend on your belief system. If you’re Catholic, you may use rosary prayers, or if you were raised Baptist you may have devotionals more in line with your beliefs and practices. How often you tend your ancestor altar will vary as well. It’s up to you to decide the proper form the veneration of your ancestors takes—just make sure that it fits with who they are and what they expect from you.
For most who begin spiritual ancestor work, the establishing of a ritualized format becomes a long-term habit. What I typically do before I start with any other ancestor work—is light my candles and then offer an opening prayer. I use the same one almost every time; it’s a short part of a longer Gaelic prayer that the old ones in the Scottish Highlands are said to use before they do the rest of their spiritual work. It gets me in the right frame of mind to do whatever else it is I have to focus on with my ancestral guides.
An suil an Athar a chruthaich mi,
An suil an Mhithar a chruthaich mi,
An suil an Spioraid a chruthaich mi.
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Mother who created me,
In the eye of the Spirit who created me.
Your opening prayer—in whatever form it may take—can be followed by an invitation welcoming your ancestors into your home. Address them by name and ask them to commune with you, be cared for by you, and to share their gifts of wisdom, protection, and guidance to you, your home, and your living family members. When you’ve finished whatever work you need to do, thank your ancestors for stopping by—and remember, even if you didn’t get the answers you had hoped for, you likely got the answers you needed to hear.
Stepping Outside the Gender Norms
For those of us living in the 21st century, there’s far more open discussion about gender, sexuality, and binaries than there was for our ancestors, even those who lived just a generation or two ago. We’re talking about privilege, about heteronormative cultural mores, in today’s world, and we’re doing it in a way that the generations before us probably wouldn’t have understood. However, that doesn’t mean that all of those people from centuries gone by were constrained by the boundaries of their assigned gender roles.
If you’re someone who’s something other than a cisgender heterosexual person, you may find it comforting to know that transitioning into the spirit realm can sometimes be helpful for ancestors who were unable to embrace their true gender identity in life. Even if you are a cisgender heterosexual person, you’ll probably encounter long-dead kinfolk who identify with any number of spots along the LGBTQ spectrum. You may discover that navigating their queer or nonbinary or trans or whatever identity got a whole lot more manageable for them once they were no longer constrained by the social norms of their time and place in life.
Consider for a moment that it’s a fairly recent idea that our gender isn’t based on body parts at all, and that the parts and plumbing we’re born with don’t have to be predictors of our personal life or our professional path. We’ve figured out that it’s unhealthy to force people to conform to traditional gender stereotypes if our authentic selves need and want to travel along another path. Whether you’re a woman who exists in a professional space that’s traditionally masculine, a man who has hobbies considered traditionally feminine, someone who was assigned female at birth but lives as male (or vice versa) or a person who identifies with both genders or none at all, there’s room at the table for you in many facets of modern society.
Not so for our ancestors. For much of the human timeline, certain roles based upon assigned gender were the standard expectation. Women were conditioned to grow up and marry, have children, and raise them, all while following proper decorum and behaving in ways that were seen as feminine. For men, the path consisted of traditionally masculine roles—working, supporting a family, being the breadwinner. Women were taught to be passive and obedient and pretty, while men were raised to take up whatever space they’re in, be dominant, and strong.
But imagine for a minute what it might have been like for an ancestor in the past—maybe not that distant, either—who wanted to break those boundaries, for women who were loud and boisterous and confident and took up space … who might be considered mannish? What about a man who would rather paint or dance than go hunting for sport, who could be called a fop or a dandy? What about that ancestor a few centuries or even a few decades ago who had to hide who they were because they were born in the wrong body or because their queerness—that today we’d encourage them to embrace—was a criminal offense punishable by hanging?
Trust me, some of your people are existing in the afterlife on the wide-ranging branches of the nonconformity tree, and it’s incredibly important that you acknowledge and respect that. No matter how you identify yourself on the gender spectrum, your ancestors were who they were—and there will be more than a few who are going to let you know about it, once you start working with them. They may pop in and say Oh, by the way, I’m claiming my spot as part of the queer community. If you get a hint that the great-something grandmother who had two husbands and nine children actually preferred the company of women, let her run with it and honor that part of her that was likely kept hidden throughout her lifetime.
If you yourself are gender-nonconforming, then working with these ancestors can be healing and beneficial for both you and them—because they may want a chance to finally live authentically, in a way that they couldn’t in their own time and place; they may wish to do so by celebrating through you and your experiences. However, it’s also crucial to listen to what your ancestors are telling you—they may prefer to keep their gender identity private, thanks to their own history, as well as the social and cultural norms of the time and place in which they lived. It’s not up to us to force anyone out of the closet, living or dead, if they indicate their stories are not ours to share.
Working with Historical Figures
At some point during your genealogical excursions, there’s a good chance you’re going to run into someone famous—or infamous, depending on your people’s propensity for bad behavior. In a way, this can be a super-lucky find, because if they’re famous, you’ll be able to find a ton of research on them that’s already been done. The downside, however, is that you’ll be able to find a ton of research that’s already been done—in other words, you’re going to be reading about their pitfalls and bad habits right along with their good ones. Take this with a grain of salt—just like living people, dead ones were human too. They made mistakes, got sloppy and careless, and sometimes lived in a way that was less than honorable. It’s who we are, as a species.
If you’ve managed to trace your family tree back to any of England’s aristocracy, it can make for some pretty interesting dinner table conversation, but remember that most people of European descent who are alive today are genetically tied to the kings of England, simply because genetics are a numbers game. In 2013, a pair of geneticists, Peter Ralph and Graham Coop, did a study showing that anyone who was alive and left descendants in the ninth century is the ancestor of everyone living in Europe now. Take Charlemagne, the Carolingian King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, for instance. He’s my 35th great-grandfather …but he was also the father of at least twenty children, and the great ancestor of around a trillion people over the twelve centuries since his death. That’s a lot of descendants, and we’re all genetically connected, which means if one of us is special because we’re related to someone famous, then we’re all special. If we’re all special … well, you get the idea.
I’ve got other famous people in my tree—again, mostly thanks to the European royalty connection—and they’re not all in a direct line. I’ve got William the Conqueror and his great-something grandfather as well as Rollo the Viking, who laid siege to Paris. King Edward Longshanks and the kings of Scotland are in my direct lines, and a couple of America’s founding fathers and Abraham Lincoln are tied into my family through a complex web of cousins, marriages, and cousin marriages. I’ve quite possibly got one of the scandalous Chicago Black Sox of 1919, although that one still isn’t confirmed. I have saints and popes thrown in there for good measure—the great irony is that I’ve never been Christian, or anything even remotely close to it, but I still work with these people on occasion.
The point is that I treat them like any other ancestor I would work with or call upon. No one gets a pass just because they’re a historically well-known figure. While it’s easy to get excited about famous ancestors and see them through rose-colored glasses, hold them to the same standards you would hold the pioneers, the farmers, the blacksmiths, the scullery maids, the paupers, and everyone else who didn’t get a special on the History Channel.
When You Just Can’t Even
You may find yourself not wishing to work with blood family members, ever, for any reason. There are any number of possibilities—perhaps you’ve got Problem Ancestors or people who have perpetuated cycles of abuse, bigotry, and violence. Whatever your rationale behind it, that’s completely your decision—don’t ever let anyone tell you that you absolutely must do ancestor work or you’re obviously not a True Pagan.
In addition to giving you life—admittedly, a bit of a problematic and heteronormative concept—your ancestors may have given you a legacy of terror and pain. Perhaps you grew up in a family where violence was the norm rather than the exception. Maybe your people were cold and distant, and emotions were something that only the weak showed. Did you grow up in a family group whose religious principles made it nearly impossible for you to feel loved and accepted? In cases where blood family is a problem for you, consider working with archetypes instead, covered in chapter Eight.