Can Healing Ourselves Heal Our Ancestors?

Can healing ourselves heal our ancestors? This is a question I’ve been pondering this month.

I am currently taking a course with White Awake called “Before We Were White: Ancestral Recovery for Collective Liberation”. Our recent readings included a piece titled “Embracing Rootedness and Radical Genealogy” by Aurora Levins. The following quote is having a deep impact on me:

“If slavers, invaders, committers of genocide, inquisitors can beget abolitionists, resistance fighters, healers, community builders, then anyone can transform an inheritance of privilege or of victimization into something more fertile than either.”

Wow!!!

My ancestors came to the U.S. in the early 1900s from what is now called Eastern Europe (Poland, Germany, Vienna, and Russia). Although none of them were enslavers, my family has benefited (and continues to benefit) from white privilege, which includes a history of enslavement, genocide, and the colonization of other human beings. I know that acknowledging my complicity in the legacy of white supremacy culture, as well as being on an ongoing journey of healing, makes me a safer person for BIPOC to be in relationship with. I also know that by doing “my own work”, I am restoring or “recovering” my own humanity. As I think more on Levin’s words, I find myself pondering more deeply about transformation and liberation. Through my own healing work, not only can I be part of creating something that can lead to collective liberation, but could I actually heal my own ancestors? And might that be what they would want? What did they desire? Maybe this is why I have felt so pulled to do ancestral recovery work. This feels impactful. It is a call to the part of me that has felt so disconnected from those that came before me. What I do and how I choose to be in the world could actually heal and transform my ancestral legacy. If we white people can acknowledge and name the harm we and our ancestors have caused, then maybe we can also forgive both them and ourselves as we move through the shame and fear that blocks us from showing up for collective liberation. We could “transform an inheritance of privilege and victimization” into something “more fertile than either.” We can do this by continuing to hold each other in compassionate accountability. 

See you on the journey,

Robin

I published an article in the Three-Fifths Magazine. Be on the lookout for my April article, "I'm not like 'those' people".

  • Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond: Undoing Racism and Community Organizing (PISAB) https://pisab.org/. See below for upcoming North East Regional Workshops: 

Robin Schlenger