Ancestors

Knowing where we come from is essential to living consciously and understanding where we are now. We inherit not only genetics from our ancestors, but also a way of looking at and being in the world.

Our histories, our ancestors, and our living elders are more important to us than many of us realize. Indeed, many cultures believe that ancestors stay with us in physical and intangible forms, guiding, protecting, and, at times, interfering. Our ancestors are a potential source of cultural enrichment, infusing our identities with what has gone before us, giving us context for who we are now. 

Knowing where we come from is essential to living consciously and understanding where we are now. We inherit not only genetics from our ancestors, but also a way of looking at and being in the world. We may know what our ancestors believed about family and providing for family. We may know what they believed about gender roles, race, and religion. And with reflection, we can come to know what we do and don’t want from our inheritance. For certain, this inheritance can bring us joy, treasures, a sense of belonging, and connection to the longer arc of our family histories. Yet, it can also bring pain and suffering. We cannot change the past, but we can change the now, which contains all that we have inherited from the past. It is important to understand all facets of our inheritance so we can consciously decide what we will pass on to our Child and how we will serve the Child Self. 

We need to claim the gifts of our ancestors. Their gifts contain life-lessons—how to plan, prepare, create, and protect. We honor the attention they brought to living and enriching their lives through all they did and all they celebrated. 

My family uses only one chicken soup recipe. Who knows how old it is? We have a saying --the only answer you get if you don’t ask is No -- that we attribute to our grandmother. These gifts from the ancestors inspire us and give us permission to pass on this advice to our children, while limiting their tendency to reject the advice, since after all it came from grandmom.  

A grandchild resting her glass on a well-made table hears the story of why it is a revered family treasure, something from the old country, hand crafted by a distant ancestor. She learns where it came from and how it got here. Is there a better way to transfer appreciation for a well-made thing? What a wonderful way to teach having pride in one’s work, and therefore respect for a job well done? We need to translate the many good values from the ancestors into something that can be held and seen. And then give them to the Child and acknowledge them to the Child Self. When one is nurtured through these positive moments there is a sense of belonging to something, something good from the past and a non-judgmental way to carry it forward. Yet the language we use is important, saying something like “They just don’t make things the way they used to, everything these days is junk” is different than saying, “I really admire how well made this table is, and I like to see things well made now; Pop Pop felt the same way.” We want to transfer the values, let’s say for well-made things, not the guilt over not being able to make something to those standards or afford to purchase something of that value. 

My paternal grandmother was a very kind woman. I don’t remember much about her, except that she was soft and smelled good, and I felt safe with and unconditionally loved by her. When I spent time with her, she trusted me to go to the craft store by myself, to use my own discretion to buy supplies, and she expressed love for whatever I made.  

In the morning Grandmom would cook a plain omelet, thickened (a remnant of times of scarcity) with a healthy dose of Matzah meal. It tasted like heaven. After I ate all of mine, Grandmom gazed over at the half-eaten omelet on my Pop’s plate. With swift hands and a chuckle, my grandmother would scoop up his plate, sliding it out from under his fork and put it in front of me saying: “The baby is hungry.” He would smile, a little contract between them that said: “No matter what, the children come first.” I take this unconditional tending into my life and give it to my children and others. This is their ancestral inheritance. When my Child Self feels unworthy, my inner grandparent can chime in, “No matter what, you deserve firsts.” When our children need tending to, preferably without the energy of sacrifice, we can let them know: “You deserve firsts or seconds, it doesn’t matter, you are worthy.”

At a friend’s grandmother’s funeral, each grandchild talked for a few moments about her and essentially said the same thing: “I will miss her so much, I was her favorite.” The ensuing laughter was contagious. What a legacy this grandmother left each grandchild. They each knew that they could be a favorite, feel it in their bones, but not have to be better than anyone else or need to compete to feel worthy. 

When your Child Self needs this kind of attention, you can echo the good grandparent you had or always wanted, chime in and say, “You are my favorite.” When the Child needs to feel favored, pay special attention to something unique about them, let them know they are seen; that will do the trick.  

These positive grandparenting experiences show us that unencumbered love matters. It can serve to energize the life force and return us to our True Selves, the joys and treasures. 

It is a gift to give your Child Self and your Child the stories of the ancestors, but I caution against giving them the pain. We should NOT convey—explicitly or implicitly—that they are obligated to carry the ancestors’ pain, fear, guilt, and shame. It is not, and should not be, their burden. Transferring such a burden can have damaging effects on their minds, emotions, intuitions, and bodies, and in the end, their wills, leaving them in a past that is not theirs.  It is not the way forward.

We must also refrain from teaching our ancestors’ beliefs, morals, and values in absolute terms, leaving no room for questioning, gray areas or change.  Although we can’t change the past, we can mediate and reframe the lessons we take from it to serve the well-being of the Child and Child Self. We can honor the past by saying such things to them as: “We used to believe that and now we believe this” and “We like to say this about that now.”

When we have a painful tale to tell our Child or recall to our Child Self, remember, our goal is to harvest the gifts—the lessons of joy, hope, and possibility. We want them to be aware of the pain, not to re-experience it. We want them to separate the present from the past so that they can make conscious choices in the present. 

My husband is the child of Holocaust survivors; they came to this country after World War II. Their experiences became the unspoken backbone of his family history. We wanted our children to know and honor this history and teach them empathy for others. But the stories were gruesome, and their lessons were often passed on silently or with no filter, transferring the pain, guilt, and fear to my husband and our family.  

Both my husband and I were raised on death camp stories. The images of acrid ashes floating over villages while children played were palpable to us. My husband learned at an early age that many of his family members—uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents—were “burned up.” His parents escaped the labor camps, but carried deep feelings of sorrow, loss, and guilt for having survived, along with searing memories of hunger, exposure, and terror. 

My father-in-law never mentioned the burning fires to my husband or my children. He never directly spoke about the horror of knowing that his brother, who refused to escape with him to Russia, was taken away by Nazis. He would often not tell the story as a story but say, out of context, when his family was mentioned, “To this day: I won’t forget, I can’t forget,” and his unspoken remorse, guilt, and grief were passed on to us. Like so many others, survivors convey without words that somehow, we, as the survivors’ children were guilty too, that our suffering could never measure up to theirs, that our problems and pain are not valid. In turn, survivors’ children feel guilt for experiencing their own painful life experiences. 

We are in the kitchen; the kids are eating breakfast and my husband has just burnt the toast. To me it is beyond repair and I move to throw it away. When he was young his dad had often scraped off the dark, sour burnt parts of toast and, with a smile chomped on it himself, treating it as a badge of honor. Not wasting food is a good value, one we taught our children, but for him it also assuaged his guilt for having plenty. Back in the kitchen, my husband rescues the toast and starts to scrape off the burnt parts, prepares to eat it and to give it to me and the kids. This time I stopped him, shoved the toast down the garbage disposal, and said to my husband: “You're not starving, you're here alive and well with plenty to eat.” I said this in front of our kids, pointing out this truth (less gently than I could have), shifting our focus to appreciating our abundance. 

We are responsible for repairing these ancestral memories, putting them back together differently, keeping them with us but not in or over us. What language can we use to honor, but not inhabit their experiences? 

We can speak to either the Child Self or the Child in these ways: 

“There was a time of great war and struggle. Our family suffered a lot. We are here and safe and we are grateful.”

“Do you notice that when Grandfather tells you stories about that time, his eyes seem far away?”

“Do you notice sometimes we don’t agree with Grandfather, but we respect and love him. We don’t have to share his views or do what he does.” 

“You don’t have to feel what Grandfather felt, but you need to understand that once he didn’t have food and was hungry. That’s why he wants you to eat everything on your plate.  But you don’t have to do that just because grandfather was hungry. We have choices he did not, you are safe, you are not starving. We have food, some people don’t. How can we share our food with others who need it?”

Too often, we transfer ancestral stories that focus on suffering and only causes more suffering. I was sitting at a music festival with a group of my children’s friends. I had come to think of them as my young friends as our conversations were as meaningful and deep as adult ones. One young friend, about 23 years old, said to me: “We all suffer, that’s our common bond, suffering.” I felt the immediate desire to shake that construct out of him because I knew it came from ancestral teaching. As we move though life’s experiences what we often remember, along with the joy, are the times we have suffered. It can seem like that is the common bond between us. And this is often the focus of ancestor stories.

The Child Self and the Child do not want their life force constricted and bound by suffering.  I shared my belief with my young friend that our common bond, which is also present in our ancestor stories, is being driven by the desire to return to a feeling of joy and wholeness. Humankind has always wanted this. Whether the definition of “wholeness” is a God relationship, a Garden of Eden, a connectedness with universal love, wisdom and kindness, a transcendence of the physical plane, or a socialist vision of equality, it is still an ancestral memory.  And that memory is our common bond--striving for balance, peace, and harmony. 

As parents to our Child Self, we have to pause before transferring a message of the ancestors and ask ourselves, what do I want to transfer: the suffering or the joy? 

I worked with a young Mom during the Covid pandemic whose son had experienced trauma at a preschool, one from which she ultimately removed him. As he calmed and healed, Mom and I had a conversation during which she listed all the calamities that were bound to befall him and the family. He might get afraid, stop sleeping well, and decline play dates. He might not trust the sitter at the park or the adventure guide in the nature program, seeing them as “teachers,” who may harm him.  

I spoke to her as if I were speaking to my Child Self and said: “You do not need to live all the pain and suffering now that may occur in the future. You do not protect yourself or your child from suffering by living it in advance. From the experiences of our ancestors, we learn the false lesson that we prepare and protect ourselves when we expect the worst.  Instead of protection, we only shred the joy and harmony that exists in the present, turning them into discordance. The true lesson is to live what is now and reject the false belief that we can insulate ourselves and our children from what might be. It’s not tomorrow that is at risk, it’s now. By taking today as a gift, not a privilege, we take responsibility for tomorrow. It’s like planting fruit trees at the end of our lives. We do it to enjoy the dirt, water, and warmth of the sun as well as to invest in future generations. We don’t do it to grieve the fruit we will never taste.  

We must help our Child Self and our Child reject the notion that we are supposed to suffer to deserve joy. This is often an unconscious message in ancestor teaching and story. We can say an inner “NO” to any guilt that comes up when we reject this message. We can embrace becoming conscious and to live in the seat of our own lives and not on the false throne dedicated to ancestors. 

What To Do With Dead Parents

Put the feminine* on your left

for containment and guidance

let it be unconditional love

“all you do is right”

claim it as an impermeable bowl

 for the flow of you

“all you do is honorable”

and when, perhaps, it is not,

look for that finger the one on the left hand

that bobs itself at you

like a gull does

preparing to feed its young

reminding you

“it’s worth behaving.”

Put the masculine** on your right.

When you need to do something

when confidence and perseverance

are required.

Consider its unconditional support

like the base of the pyramid,

the strongest structure humans have made

“all you do is honorable”

and when it’s not

look for that finger, the pointer one

on the right

tapping like the woodpecker

guiding you to find

the insects within.

The dead father and mother are within your reach.

When either has a critical voice

put them right in front of you

put your hands up palms out

and say

“look at the breadth of my swan wings

back off

there is no place for you in my way”

Let the wind of the wings

you have

grown

slide them back to their places.

If they have come to stand in front of you

notice if they are leading the way

to some new and unknown confidence

a perch high in a mountain

a place to view it all

a place to take flight from.

When you need a shove,

or to lean back in

full force

put them behind you

to be done with what they brought

that you never needed

and fully shored up by what

can become potential and reality.

Put them behind you but with shield in place,

owls hearing disclosing what they are whispering about

and if it isn’t what you need to hear

laugh.

Dead parents are an asset

you can make them into what they

need to be

what they would have liked to be

what they were supposed to be

or what they were, once again

left, right,

front, back

now center.

*Feminine = archetypical feminine the inner container 

** Masculine- Archetypical Masculine, the inner facilitator 

A Word on Living Ancestors

Many of us have living ancestors. They are our Elders, and we need them. In our generationally segregated society, they do not typically live with us, but our Child and Child Selves still need their protection. We even need them so we can correct the things they do and say to bring consciousness to a better way of serving the Child and Child Self. 

We need to encourage and help cultivate our Child’s and Child Selves’ relationships with Elders, our own or someone else’s, while watching them with careful eyes. 

I run a program in nursing homes where local high school students write memoirs with the home’s Elders. These experiences are rich with meaning and connection for both the students and Elders.  The students are always surprised by how much they get from the attention, direction, and diverse experiences of the Elders, while the Elders are always surprised by the depth of love and respect they receive from the students. 

We hope the youth may come to realize how important this intergenerational connection will be to their own children. The students—children on the verge of adulthood—feel the need for the attention and care of the Elders of their communities. Even when the students disagree with them, they still smile and nod with respect. 

All of us can benefit from developing the inner Elder in ourselves—the one that tells us to act with integrity, watch out for life’s potholes, and instruct us on how to weather the ups and downs. We also need the inner Elder, the inner grandparent who accepts and loves us unconditionally. We especially need this if we did not or do not have this in real life. 

A 12-year-old in my practice had a grandmother, unlike my own, who did not show him unconditional love. His grandmother scrutinized everything he did and used bribes and threats to get him to do what she wanted. Finally, exasperated, my client remarked, “I am a much better grandmother to myself and my sisters than she will ever be.” Bingo. I said, “Congratulations on the birth of your inner grandmother.” Then, I said: “Now, let’s look at your actual grandmother. You can have compassion for her because she does not know what she is missing. And it’s not your fault.”  

My client’s mother was able to reflect to him, with neutrality, that the way his grandmother interacted with him was unfair and unfortunate. Because his mother did this without concern for herself, she was able to mitigate the damage and shine light on the grandmother’s own injuries. No excuses were made for the grandmother, but he was given the opportunity to understand her. As a result, the boy was able to build what he needed, a good inner grandparent. We all need one. 

It is always possible that an Elder will see us and our children for our True Selves, in a way that no one else does.  When I was in my late teens my most memorable moment with my grandfather was when he said to me, “I don’t just love you I like you.” We can all use the wisdom and the direction of a “grandparent on the porch.” And if we can’t have that, we can create them internally for our Child Selves and our Children. 

Grandparents on The Porch

We need Grandparents on porches,

looking down and across the way 

seeing 

and saying:

“get in the house and help your mother,

leave that boy alone 

put that down you’ll hurt yourself!”

These are the things that we need to hear 

to keep us 

to hold us 

to say that we’ve been seen.

We need to be pulled safe

between legs and on laps,

nestled under whiskered chin

nestled into safe soft bosom 

read to 

taken on journeys

Told:

“Dear ones there is nothing wrong with you, 

you have sight

you have vision

come

I will keep you safe.

Now shell these peas clean that bucket,

put grandma’s leg up on the stool,

get me that brush, 

I’ll brush your hair, 

Now go and help your mother”.

Where are they?

Sheltered away and shut away and separated 

and told that they don’t matter

or told that they matter more to just themselves 

than they do to the rest of us.

It’s too quiet without them 

and too fast 

and smells bad 

without their powders 

their pomade 

their cologne

their dirt

their whiskey sours 

their lemonade.

We know these things 

though perhaps we never had them.

We have wandered about, alone 

without grandma without grandpa 

without bubba 

without zayda 

without ta

without ma

without pop.

We look for them under the chairs 

We look for them in the kitchens,

catching little glimpses perhaps, 

as they fly by.

Perhaps they weren’t on the porch,

and they are not on the porch now, 

but they need to be. 

We need them here to have an eye on each one of us

every one of the seers and the be-ers 

and the players and the try-ers 

every one of the diggers 

and the climbers

and we need them 

Telling us:

 “Ah you are ok,

watch out over there, 

don’t poke your cousin with that stick,

stop picking on that child,

come over here and talk to me,

Now go in the house and help your mother.”  

©D'vorah Horn 2025. We invite you to share this work, but please do not copy any portion without attribution to D'vorah Horn.