The notion of ancestral healing is relatively new to me. I hadn’t heard of it until maybe a few years ago. And I didn’t really have an understanding of what it entailed. The thought of it, however, as another arena in which I might have to uncover more deep, multi-faceted, inter-dimensional feelings, maybe even trauma, was something I wasn’t at all interested in. And in my many conversations with my Spirit Team, both through channeled sessions, and through my own inner communications, ancestral healing had never come up…at least not until I moved to Colorado.

As all this came up, I started to remember how much Native American influences played through my life since the early 1970’s. It began with something I hardly ever talk about — a short-lived but abusive relationship with a man who, in part, was of Cherokee ancestry. But the important thing I realized about that relationship was that he’s the one who taught me how to work with leather. It was effortless for me, like something I had always known how to do.

In 1974, I moved from Woodstock, NY to Fort Lauderdale, FL, not by choice, but due to circumstance. It was there that I met Frank, who would become my partner for the next twelve years, my third husband for eight months after that, and my ex-husband and still friend until his death in 2022. About a year after we met, we decided to open a leather shop together in a new artisan cooperative in the early days of the promised resurrection of the downtown, somewhat dangerous historical district along the river known as Himmarshee Village. We called our custom leather shop Sun Leather. It had a Native American feel with the scent of white sage wafting through, and the achingly beautiful echo of Carlos Nikai’s solo flute. I taught Frank everything I knew about leathercraft, and as a draftsman and engineer, he learned very quickly. We did everything by hand, including dying, cutting, punching, stitching, braiding, finishing. All our designs were original, unique, and one-of-a-kind.

Sun Leather, Ft. Lauderdale FL

Deerskin bag with beaded amulet, braided strap, and long fringe

Other pieces of this story surfaced this week. Frank and I had moved from Florida to Chapel Hill, NC in 1987. After we married and divorced in 1988, Frank moved to Asheville while I stayed in Chapel Hill another three years. It was a smooth transition. He and I remained friends.

When we first moved to Chapel Hill in 1987, Frank and I had started a metaphysical discussion group in our home based on the Seth Material channeled by Jane Roberts in the 1970’s. Barbara Marciniak came to that group and we became friends. She told me and others that she would very soon be channeling ET’s. In 1988, Barbara began channeling a Pleiadian collective that brought forth a whole new perspective on who we are, why we’re here, and what’s really going on. Over the decades, she, her work, and her books, especially Bringers of the Dawn, went on to become internationally known.

Soon after Barbara started channeling, she held sessions for a group of us who would become a kind of spiritual family. There were lots of things the P’s, as we called them, encouraged us to participate in, many from Native American practices. In addition to chanting together harmoniously, attempting to spin thirty-three times in each direction, and getting rid of our televisions, some of us did a sweat lodge, and we held drumming circles, one of my favorite things.

I remember driving a ways out of town to the shop of a Native American drum maker to pick out my first drum. I fell in love with a larger one made out of elk hide. It cost way more than I could afford at the time — a little over $100, but I bought it.

Doing a sweat lodge was not one of my better choices. I thought I was going to die. Especially when some soot got into the fire pit and it was difficult not to breathe it in. We had fasted all day, another thing my then 105 pound body wasn’t good at, and I remember crawling out of the tent on my hands and knees, turning onto my back and lying on the grass next to Barbara looking up at the now dark night sky. “You see those three lights,” she said. “They’re ships (as in spaceships).” There was nothing to reply. They looked like ships to me.

But one of the most traumatic things that happened during that time was when I was driving home one night from a group channeling. It was after 11 pm and I took the back roads because it was faster. When I turned on to the last road leading to the new duplex I’d rented, everything was pitch black. I got almost home when suddenly I saw this beautiful deer run out in front of my car headlights. I hit it with a giant thud. I was immediately traumatized. There were no cell phones back then. And not a soul on the road or a house in sight. I sat in my car, keening, begging the deer to get up. Miraculously, it did and ran into the woods. I was shaking uncontrollably, but somehow got myself home. Later on, I found out that the deer had died. I was devastated. And I had $850 in damages to my relatively new Honda Accord.

As I was remembering this a couple of days ago, I also recalled writing a song — I sometimes wrote songs for guitar — that came out of the experience with the deer, although, after re-reading it, it seems really about something else. It seems more about what I’m experiencing now, over thirty-five years later. It feels directly related to the ancestral healing stuff I’m being told about. It’s uncanny. And disturbing.

Here is the song. I’m not sure why I named it Sowelu, which is the name of a Rune stone that translates to sun or wholeness, and represents a state of being complete and unified.

Is there some kind of order running through the seeming disconnected chaos of our lives? Have we, on some level, laid out hints for our Selves along the way, a kind of cosmic connect-the-dots? And how am I to embrace and embolden myself to integrate this wise, strong, fierce warrior I’m told that I am? I hate the word warrior. I don’t want to be a warrior. I don’t want to fight anyone or anything. Were these words meant to be a glimpse of what this ancestral healing is about? Was I male then? Was I a warrior? And if so, what does it all mean?

I will put these things to rest for now and focus on how to get my body more alkaline — a necessary part of my new self-care, prepare a list of places I want to explore when the weather gets warmer, and figure out how to get my upstairs neighbors to stop letting their door slam. I will focus on practical things…at least for a little while.