"The Ancestors Are With You": February 11, 1999

"Tell them Arroyo sent you." 

This is part of the message the Ancestors gave me when I arrived at the tip of Brazil, February 11, 1999. A 17-day sailing trip from Barbados during which I was silent most of the way. Retracing Middle Passage Routes for six weeks will do that to you. The words came in Portuguese, a language I did not speak at the time. In fact, when I returned to the United States, I called the Brazilian consulate to ask someone to translate what I had written in my journal. 

In its entirety, the message was a mandate for me to remember the chains that bind us and to help others heal what had wounded them. "Us" being sentient beings. To accomplish this, I would have to excavate what was hidden under the skin, in dreams, in a smile, or a slight turn of a head. And, in turn, those working with me would have to look at what had been found and decide what to keep, let go, throw away, or reconstitute. Together we would have to decide how to create what was important this moment in time and space to do so.

Since 1999 I have been doing what the Ancestors told me to do, but there is more. Always more to do. This blog is to share some of the messages I have received since that day. However, it is also to discuss "the work" that needs to be done - and that gets done - in our communities, neighborhoods, families, classrooms, and our selves to heal the things that remain buried so deeply they do not wake us at night but seep into our lives surreptitiously until they become real, tangible, overwhelming. Like violence and illness, discontentment and anger. And fear.

Three times a year I contemplate these messages and the work from a different perspective when Mercury is retrograde. A perfect time to retreat, seek a haven from doing and relish in being. During this first retrograde of the year, however, I find myself actively doing and being, and finally coming to a consensus with my many selves about how to communicate this mandate, and the type of community that is needed to carry it out in all its many manifestations.

It is hard to believe that almost 15 years have gone by since I took up my pencil and began writing while we approached Fortaleza. It was the first time I had ever seen the huge white windmills that can be found almost every where now. It was the day we were close enough to the equator for me to calculate what time we would cross it.

I remember thinking: how long would the lead last on the paper (all the pens had stopped working) and what would I do with this information I couldn't even read.

Everything in its time.

Doing What the Ancestors Tell Me To Do

So, what exactly does it mean to do what the Ancestors tell me to do? And, who are they any way?

Ancestors

In the simplest terms: The Ancestors are people no longer living. Most directly they are the people to whom we are biologically connected. However, they are also people with whom we have other connections. For example, non-blood "family" or extended family. If we are artists, we may consider the artists who cleared the path before us our ancestors as well. 

For me, my Ancestors are a combination of all of the above. My biological ancestors speak the loudest and it is to them that I have specific obligations. It is they who give me mandates. Sometimes, I have to determine whose voice and mandate must be addressed first because occasionally everyone has something for me to do. Imagine that you are the youngest child at a family gathering and all the aunts and uncles are calling your name simultaneously. 

However, I have also been blessed with the gift of being able to hear a larger group of ancestors, those who at the moment remain in a liminal space, who have been unable to reconnect to their living families, or who are unable to make the final transition.

My husband and I at an outdoor ancestral shrine (Chicago 2007).

Doing what the Ancestors tell me to do?

How do they sound? What do they say? Do I always do what they say?

I have been learning the answers to the first two questions (and others) for years now. And, just when I think I "got it", something changes. I had to develop an "Ancestral Lexicon" for myself comprised of dreams, messages from other people, guidance from elders, "signs", sounds, prayers, and good old common sense.

My biggest connections, however, are at my shrine and through dreams. In the former, I am able to connect with them via prayer and ritual. In the latter, they are able to connect with me when I, too, am in a liminal space. It helps when someone with whom I am familiar appears in person. Less to to guess.  

Often, my ancestors will make themselves known to me as a confirmation about something I have been thinking or feeling.

Do I always do what they say? Yes. I learned early on that to do otherwise caused results I didn't want, and often chaos and pain that had the potential to carry over into another lifetime. 

How do I know this is not my own "mind" speaking to me or my imagination? I used to ask myself this question, even developed a series of tests to prove that it was all me. However, a series of unexplainable events - phenomena - happened that made me stop asking and start believing, knowing, accepting, and doing.