Is ancestral healing a good path if I don’t know or like my ancestors?

Most of us have at least some ancestors that weren’t our favorite kind of people. Some ancestors caused harm, sometimes even to us directly. There are also ancestors that we might find a little boring or we feel embarrassed about the way they lived their lives. Others among us may have never had a close relationship with our parents, let alone our grandparents or great-grandparents. Whether due to estrangement or simply not having the opportunity to know them, it’s understandable that we might question the value of forming a connection with those whose presence we never enjoyed while they were alive.

To me, ancestral healing is never about forcing something we don’t want or have no interest in. It’s simply about tending our roots so that they are the most nourishing foundation they can be. And we get to choose what feels nourishing for us.

One thing I’ve found helpful for clarifying how we want to relate with our roots is to expand our idea of what the ancestors are.

What are ancestors anyway?

It’s actually a bigger question than it might at first appear. When we look to the Proto-Indo-European roots of the word, we get something like ant=front and ked=to go. Although we could get into metaphysics and concepts of reincarnation—or animism and our other-than-human kin—for now, let’s go with the simple definition that ancestors are those who came before.

It seems to me that there’s a tendency to think of the ancestors as just the last several generations. Any of the ancestors whose names we might know, however, are but a tiny sliver of those who came before. The vast majority of our ancestors existed long before there were written records or family trees. And these much older dead are the ones we can choose to relate with, the ones who can be our nourishing foundation.

Relating with trusted guides

If relating with certain ancestors doesn’t feel nourishing, then that never needs to be a part of your ancestral healing journey.

In fact, through the ancestral healing process that I use, we never interact directly with any unwell, or yet-to-be-healed dead. Instead, we come to know our trustworthy guides and build a strong relationship with them. It is these guides who relate directly with the unwell dead, directing the healing process, while we witness.

One of the things these guides do is to contain the yet-to-be-healed dead—including the ones who caused harm. Through this, we stop being as impacted by their energy. Many people have experienced great relief from simply having this barrier placed between them and their unwell ancestors.

Once all the people of a particular lineage are healed—are fully well and vibrant in spirit—we can then choose if we want an ongoing relationship with them. Maybe we’ll decide that we still don’t want anything to do with them; or maybe we’ll find that we do want to forge a new relationship with them now that they are well in spirit.

In all cases, the choice is ours.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning

While forgiveness is one of the steps in the healing process, it never means that we have to like, condone, or get over, any harm that was done to us. For the purposes of this healing work, forgiveness simply means unhooking from the energy of the wound so that it can move. We don't have to confront those who caused the harm, but we do get the opportunity to speak our grievances.

The collective of vibrant, healed ancestors is definitely worth knowing

When we don’t limit our concept of ancestry to only a few individuals from the more recent past, we can give ourselves the gift of coming to know the vast collective of wise and well beings who always have our backs.

Connecting with our vibrant, healed collective of ancestors is like stepping into an ocean of wisdom and love that transcends time. It’s the feeling of being deeply seen and understood by those who came before us, who now stand in their wholeness, free from the wounds they once carried. Their presence is electric, alive with the richness of lived experience, and they offer us an endless well of support, guidance, and protection. When we open ourselves to them, we’re not just tapping into individual lives but accessing the entire, unified tapestry of their knowledge, their joys, their resilience. They remind us that we are never alone, that their strength is our strength, and that the love they pour into us is boundless, empowering us to carry their legacy forward with grace and purpose. It is an intimate, profound relationship, one that heals across generations and awakens within us a deep sense of belonging and interconnectedness with all that is.