For many years, I heard about the idea of connection to ancestors and thought of it in theoretical terms — always with a little distance, never quite believing that direct connection could be possible. I wasn’t sure that connecting to ancestors was even for me, as a white person (weren’t my ancestors the bad ones?), and even though I felt very drawn to indigenous cosmologies that included ancestor connection, I never knew how to enter that relationship in a way that felt authentic or real.
And then my beloved mother died, and all of a sudden, the most important person in my life was an ancestor. Connection to ancestors was no longer a choice, it was necessary for my survival. Then, the frameworks of ancestor connection I had been exposed to became a lifeline — something to deepen into, to help me feel able to trust the felt connection I still had with my mother, and to lean into a web of older ancestors, of the many beloved dead who would be welcoming my mother and holding me in care through my grief. This is still the framework that I move through the world in, by necessity, and alongside of my grief I feel so much gratitude to know myself as part of a larger lineage of connection across time and space. -Rose Gallogly, CLF
How do you feel a larger lineage of connection across time and space?