Ancestors, Angels, Spirit guides and... Aliens.

I constantly question my connection with The Ancestors; mine, others - all.  Are they proud of me or do they find me lacking?  Will they judge me solely and wholly on my deeds alone? In relation: to myself, “The Others” and those in my family line? Other humans in general?  Nature? The Cosmos?  Aren’t they all inextricably linked?  Aren’t we all connected in some quantum form or fashion?  It seems to me that the overarching legacy of most cultures in custom and conditioning is the will to remain.  The legacy is and has always been to leave a legacy.  Should I refuse to imprint on current culture and ‘Leave No Tracie’?  What of The Others? 

Is there merit to comparing notes or at least creating a consensus as to what transcendent curses course through our collective veins?  How do we create a roadmap for intergenerational healing if we are not in agreement as to what needs to be healed?  How do we discern what is sacred and to be made social or what is distinctly subjective and therefore kept silent or close to self?  In short, could I heal honestly and openly?  Was their intrinsic value to my suffering? To my healing?  

I find that even to answer these questions requires co-dependency on, or a deference to a committee of some sort; angels, ancestors, spirit guides or even aliens. However, my relationship with most of those in my family are either tense, strained or estranged.  This is not at my behest, nor is it my desire.

In my immediate family, I imagine it is a result of having grown up in quarters that were entirely too close.  Fractured identities and mirroring made it karmically uncomfortable to be in each other’s energy for too long as we all try in our own ways to break generational curses and toxic patterns passed down.  There are obvious traumas that remain less “healed” and more “avoided” with my siblings that I feel I have consciously chosen to wrestle with an attempt to find deeper meaning and relief.  

It might also have to do with a perspective shift after parenthood in which I am the only of us five females to undertake the parenting task - although they would say that not having kids is their testament to fully embracing “healing” at the deepest level in the denial of their biological imperative. On a universal, cosmic and multidimensional level; if I commit to doing the work properly, I might be able to point out our originating offending thread within this transgenerational and trans-cultural textile. I could, with a tug; unravel the entire tapestry of trauma and toxic patterns, for all The Ancestors, not just mine.  The fabric of time would unwind and I could once again liberate Adam and Eve from their cumbersome clothes, and in so doing; prevent the fall of all humanity.

My father; like many of my ancestors (myself included for the most part), failed to keep their heads above water financially.  It feels as if 'The Ancestors' gave their fates over to the futility of their inherent inadvertency (real or imagined).  There seems to be much confusion between ritual as rites, poverty as profession; habit as hobby, codependency as coping - all feeding our baser consciousness and core beliefs.  If I am as lucky in this writing as I have been my entire life given that later, I will go unnoticed.  My abandonment will be my atonement and no judgment will fall on me for the misdeeds and misfortunes I confess here - not unlike my father’s atoning confessions to me on his deathbed.  

A lot was confessed by way of my father’s choices in parentage and pedagogy of his children.  Aside from leaving a legacy of athleticism and physical excellence, which are by and large positive patrimony; there were negative legacies as well.  With seven children, five of them girls; he was hard pressed to find a way to raise us all within warring gendered ideologies.  While we were all held to a standard of physical excellence and discipline, only the girls were held to a standard of physical abstinence, as God intended.  There would be no dating while under his roof, and though one or two dared to try, they were met with either a physical, mental or emotional wall in the form of my father and his expectations.  He was an unappealing all pervasive presence that humbled developmental hormones and threatened to permanently holster any young man’s trigger happy pistols pointed at any of his puritanical princesses.   

Much like the bible, there were a myriad of contradictory messages depending on the context, and Dad would quote whatever bible verse best validated his argument.  There was no argument that could combat corroboration from Christ.  With so many children to keep organized, my parents drew on the legacy of our ancestors to lend a proverbial hand.  “Spare the rod, spoil the child”; my father would always say loosely quoting the bible (Proverbs 13:24).  This meant that without regular spankings, children were apt to become spoiled and obstinate.  He rarely spared the rod, and was doing what he knew worked for his parents and their parents before them.  These aggressive ghosts came out often when us children were being “too” loud, “too” rambunctious and “too much” to handle.  

When no one would own up to a disruptive misbehavior, my dad would turn to me and say: “Tracie, I know it was you.  Come and get your spanking.”.  Despite my protests, I became the proverbial ‘whipping boy’.  He would take me to a separate room where we were alone, and he would spank me lightly, or not at all explaining that he understood it was not me, but that someone had to be made an example of.   Sometimes he was angry enough to spank me full force despite my protestation, and I knew in those times that he did not care if it was me or not, his anger was so great.  It took me many years before I realized the implications of having accepted this treatment for so many years without adequate therapeutic release.  It has been told to me that spreading his ashes is akin to desecration or a sacrilege, and to that I say “Now we are even.”

It took having my own child and having the desire to end that particular legacy, that I began to really examine the epigenetic conditions that resulted in corporal punishment.  Fears of what would happen to slave children if they were disobedient or unruly in public became clear to me with help from my past ancestors.  They insisted that they were doing what was necessary to keep their kids safe at the time - but were now giving me permission to do something different with my own child.  I am thankful for their guidance, clarification and blessing.  

Both parents were raised in very rural areas of the south-east United States and are of African-American “slave” mix.  My mom was born at home and the doctor; being white and male, and so the voice authority on her claim to existence, did not have her birth certificate signed until a week after her birth when my grandmother was finally able to bring her into a hospital.  She never knew her dad, but her mother had 4 husbands and many lovers.  My mother’s role as the second oldest of four (but only female), was to care for her brothers, even if one was older than she. 

My grandmother worked cleaning houses and had an active social life as is evident by her many suitors to take care of her and give her nice things.  My paternal grandmother was a nurse and I remember thinking that for her to crush cockroaches with her bare feet made her one of the toughest women I had ever known.  My dad was the second oldest of four and spent most of his time in the church with his sermonizing father, playing sports, or tending the garden of his mother lest she beat him or his siblings with a shoe, a rake, a block of wood, or whatever else was close at hand.  

Just kids themselves when they met, it became more and more obvious, as I grew older, how stunted they were in aspects of their young adult development .  Having learned from their obvious mistakes, I managed to outgrow them before leaving for college myself -as did most of my siblings; fleeing the roost, never to return.  I suppose we all met each other out in the “real world”, negating any need to return home and rework those complicated relationships, they followed us around surreptitiously waiting to usurp our progress on our chosen path to enlightenment, tugging at us like an ever attached umbilical cord, tethered to our collective origin story and shared trauma.  It is for this reason that I feel the need to embrace the real work, and to check myself against any toxic “family” systems and its pervasive reach into relationships in my life.  

I mean “family” by way of blood family, and the “family” that I choose and build community with. Examining whether those closest to me are loyal and sincere in their intentions and placing those suspected of disloyalty farther in my periphery.  The “fact” of the matter is that even the choice of social family, their roles and functions; stem from my blood family which serves as a constant barometer for my healing. Perhaps this is why I do not have any close contact with my family, and few friends to call on.  I try to cultivate my relationships with a great deal of consciousness, wishing to avoid friendships that mirror toxic family dynamics and become blindspots for projection or deflection. My healing has taken precedent to phony and superficial partnerships and affiliations.  I am not trying to find individuals with compatible trauma or whose demons dance best with mine.  I am only interested in the company of those souls that yearn for true salvation, and are willing to suffer to see it so.  A lasting "Ancestor" legacy that transcends intergenerational trauma, but holds generational spiritual wealth. Angelic beings.

This ‘suffering to salvation’ path that I align myself with at present, is not a “path” so much as a karmic cycle of suffering sans salvation. The misstep from suffering to salvation indicates a karmic failure of some kind, a lack of non-attachment which may lead to liberation, the catalyst to true salvation.  I think the key to this failure lies in my relationship with The Others; and many others outside of that.  There are so many in my family whose names I do not know and/or whose stories I cannot retain, and far more “others” of the community at large, whose karma I also carry systemically; or who I have come in contact with and have made a lasting karmic impression I am needing to cleanse myself of.  The karmic conundrum does not lie in my insincerity, vanity or narcissistic victimhood.  It lies in my ego, as surely only ego would ask that I break curses and heal at all costs, especially in the projective analysis and comparison of the healing of those around me.  Only ego would demand that I become a "worthy ancestor". I am, therefore, ironically closer to sin than salvation. Perhaps that realization is my present suffering. #nofilter