Welcome to the Sacred Work of Ancestral Healing

I am Tara—named for the rocky home of the ancient high kings of Ireland—and I’ve been consciously performing ancestral healing work for about 15 years, now.

In a broader sense, I’ve been doing it my entire life. I was always the strange, off-kilter child who was more interested in hearing about and investigating the spirits and history of my places and people than playing games with kids my own age—more interested in spending time with the dead than the living, and I’ve always held the historical/familial/institutional memory for any group that I’ve been intimately involved with. But about 15 years ago I dove into the deep waters of more focused ancestral research. As I delved into the genealogical depths, I quickly became aware of the sadness and pain that many of my ancestors experienced. Some of this realization came with the facts I read in newspapers or the tales I was told. But it was most pronounced when visiting ancestral graves. I found that even if I knew nothing of the individual laid to rest there or their life while alive, I could feel if they were at peace or if some energetic imprint of sorrow or struggle was still attached. And I knew instinctively that some of this struggle and sorrow had been handed down through the generations.

Cemetery work soon became the hallmark of my genealogical practice and took on a very different flavor than that of most genealogists I knew. I remember the first time I arrived at a cemetery to find the office closed—no one around to look up the exact grave site of my family members, and it was the last day of my research trip—my very last chance to find them for probably years. I decided to strike out on my own. The cemetery was quite large—more than 68 acres and many thousands of graves—and in the tradition of historic, park-like cemeteries, had rolling hills and many sprawling sections centered around water features and more forested areas. I drove down the paths, having no idea at all where to go, but rounded a bend and halted the car in its tracks. “Why here?” my daughter asked, my eternal and somewhat unwilling research partner. “I don’t know…” I remember saying as I slipped the key in my pocket. Why indeed? I exited the car and looked at the ocean of markers before me—truly a needle in a vast stony haystack.  But I centered myself and my breath, went into soft gaze vision, and walked heart-led, diagonally across the vast section before me to the very last row. I have no idea how I knew to do this—but something in me simply knew. I stopped, opened my eyes fully, and right before me lay the family members I had been seeking. Jesse and Clara wanted to be found. They wanted to be remembered (and this particular couple had some unfinished business they wanted tended to, but I’ll save that story for another post). Though not my direct ancestors,* I felt extremely close to this particular couple, having found out so much about the pain of their life—the early death of her first husband and their little girl, Jesse and Clara’s own sorrowful childlessness and financial struggle and strife—but more importantly, how that pain only made them more loving and generous, taking in and caring for many family and friends over the years. I talked to them for quite a while. I could feel warmth and welcome—happy to have someone simply remember them.

After that I became much less interested in dates and lineages and more in who these ancestors were as people and what they had been through. I began by simply sending them energy and loving thoughts when I visited their graves and brought flowers and trinkets. But over time I felt called to make this practice much more conscious and have developed and deepened it over these past years. It has been a deeply healing experience both for me and for them.

This past April, I made a joyfully meaningful cemetery pilgrimage to my profoundly historic hometown of Philadelphia. While I sat at the grave of my Great-great-grandfather, Daniel, performing my customary blessing and healing work in one of the oldest Catholic cemeteries in one of the oldest cities in the nation, this message came flooding into my consciousness: so many people need this now—you need to share, so others can heal, as well. As a generally private and reserved individual, this gave me a bit of a start, and I admit my initial reluctance! But the message was clear. So, for the first time ever, I publicly shared a small bit of my ancestral healing work on social media and received numerous messages and questions from folks, wanting to know more—wanting to know the ins and outs, the hows and whys of what I do. The answer to those requests and the honoring of the message I received from spirit is this new baby of a blog—an offering to the ancestors and to all of you.

In the coming months I’ll talk about:

• the spiritual aspects of ancestral healing and cemetery work
• the practical/logistical aspects
• the importance of self-protection when doing ancestral healing–especially cemetery work
• ancestral devotional practices of different cultures that may resonate with you
• the concepts of “legacy” and “inheritance”
• ancestral ”programming” and energetic blocks
• books, websites, and other valuable resources
• hands-on tools to aid you in this work

and much, much more.

I look forward to walking down this sacred path with you.

Tara

*note: from here on in I will use the term “ancestors” to refer to any family–blood relations or soul family/beloved dead–who have passed, whether they are from a direct ancestral line or from an ancillary line. To me, they are all my dear family and my ancestral teachers and guides.