Last night I found myself googling the differences between a spruce and a fir. “Firs are friendly,” I read off one site. They have flat and soft needles, whereas spruce needles are sharp and square. Firs have smooth bark as opposed to the spruce’s scaly rough bark.
This morning, while on our daily ritual family walk through the forest with my partner and the pups, I gazed up at the community of trees we had passed hundreds of times and began to test my new tree ID-ing skills.
I reached out and felt the needles of every fir or spruce-looking tree, marveling at how the ability to name each tree was also bringing a pronounced sense of closeness and familiality with them.
How many trees had I passed on these daily walks that I hadn’t ever thought to name, to keenly observe their traits with curiosity and acknowledge their presence in my daily life?
How many people do I unconsciously coexist with in my community that I don’t even think to inquire about, relegating them to be the background supporting characters to my protagonist self?
How many spirits in the Unseen world around us – well ancestors, the dead, guides and teachers – do I unconsciously disregard because I’m moving and doing too much to stop to listen and feel their presence?
How many beings, both human and non-human, have I missed out on knowing – receiving their energy, their love, their presence – because I myself am not fully present in my life?
It’s been 13 days since I concluded my first medicine retreat JIA for asian women/femmes, centered on ancestral healing and deepening our relationship with ancestors to reconnect to our roots. To call it a profound experience is an understatement. It was soul-aligning and nourishing across all our bodies – mental, emotional, physical. It collapsed the gaps in time and space and memory that had created disconnection between each of us and our lineages.
We experienced the medicine beginning to work with each of us way before we gathered together in Idyllwild. The first night, we co-created an ancestral altar together. One by one, we lit a candle for our ancestors, and shared objects and photos that represented our roots, our little selves, and our intention for the retreat journey. We placed them on a small coffee table along with offerings of incense, fruit, and sake. Many of us shared stories specifically about our grandmothers that night. We felt their presence powerfully with us in the circle.
As I stared at the altar during the sacred mushroom journey the next day, tears spilled out of my eyes as I realized that this small humble coffee table was holding the weight of centuries of stories. Stories of sacrifice, survival, abandonment, sexual abuse, hope, grief, assimilation, mother/daughter relationships, desperation for a better life, queerness, scarcity, adventure, brave transpacific journeys into unknown lands, racism, love, joy.
As we shared our journey experiences with each other the following day over a traditional breakfast of congee/juk, I was struck with the realization that we were all here healing our mother wounds, together. Even myself and my co-facilitator friend Yvonne were healing our own mother wounds by playing the mother role – cooking each asian meal and providing the emotional care and presence that so many of us didn’t get to receive fully from our mothers as we were growing up.
That evening, we gathered around the dining table to fold dumplings (gyoza) together as we talked and enjoyed each other’s company. After our feast, we sat around the fire and shared our gifts with each other, while also naming the gifts that we witness in each other. One soul offered their poetry. Another guided us through the ritual of making lei. Another offered her prayer. Another offered her translation of an ancient Chinese poem. And another offered her healing hands through bodywork.
I quietly drank in the energy of the moment, receiving the gift of presence and heart from each one of these beautiful souls sitting around me. I reflected on the magic I was witnessing moment by moment, the abundance of love that I was feeling and breathing into my being, the gift of Nature and how the weather had shifted to inexplicably provide the perfect setting for each activity of the retreat (a foggy veil during the medicine journey that cleared to reveal the first snowfall of the season), the presence and support of the dead and our well ancestors, especially our grandmothers.
Many of us had entered into this retreat experience with little to no knowledge of our lineage and the stories held within. One participant was an adoptee who never knew her Korean birth mother or Japanese father. During our ecstatic dance offering to the ancestors the morning of our integration, she declared for the very first time that she was a Korean-Japanese woman, claiming her asian roots and lineage.
I realized that day that this retreat was something my own ancestors had guided me to create as part of my own healing journey. I didn’t understand the power of this ancestral healing work until I witnessed and experienced it happening within those I was holding space for.
The relationships with our ancestors that we open ourselves up to, that we intentionally call in, is how we come back into wholeness.
Many who are walking the healing path or the medicine path are intently focused on just healing their own bodies. They’re looking for a way out from feeling depressed, unfulfilled, fearful, stuck, anxious, suffering in pain.
But what they’re missing is that HEALING IS RELATIONAL.
Healing is about our relationships with each other, the Earth, the Cosmos, the Unseen. It’s about opening up the flow of energy among all – giving and receiving, back and forth. And that requires us to investigate what keeps our hearts and bodies closed from being in the flow of loving relationships.
What keeps us from being curious about one another?
What keeps us from wanting to know by name and spirit the tree and plant and animal kin that cohabitate with us on this giant rock?
What keeps us from reaching out to our well ancestors in the Unseen and opening up the channels of communication – asking for their support and guidance, and offering them gifts of gratitude for our being here now?
When we meditate, we are opening ourselves up to be in relationship with the divine.
When we hike in nature, we are opening ourselves up to be in relationship with our Earth Mother and her children.
When we create altars, we are opening ourselves up to be in relationship with the dead and the disembodied spirits of the Unseen.
When we commit to healing work, we are opening ourselves up to be in relationship with all that is. Because that is the point of healing work – to connect more freely and deeply with the energetic beings around us, including ourselves.
The purpose of healing is to connect more freely and deeply with LIFE, and embody ALIVENESS as fully as we can.
May this new moon in Sagittarius reveal overlooked channels of connection for you. May it guide the path for you to embody your aliveness as fully as you can.
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