It all started with a tarot reading!

How did a Lutheran pastor’s kid, raised in rural Northern Minnesota and Central Kansas come to offer ancestral lineage healing as a practice?

It’s a long and circuitous story, of course. I spent my early years searching for something that felt right. Church didn’t feel right in my body, so I studied religion in college, and then went to Harvard Divinity School and got a master’s degree in it. I studied other religions and got closer to the something else I was looking for, but as it was mainly an intellectual exercise without really any somatic components, it left me cold. I learned to meditate, and yes that felt different and potentially great, but it took discipline and really wasn’t something I could make myself do with any regularity. Meanwhile I left academia and found a corporate job in clinical research of all things.

The turning point came in 2015, with a tarot reading.

A work friend and I, with our annual bonus checks in hand, decided we were going to get our tarot cards read on a lark. Not knowing where to start, I asked my hairdresser for a recommendation. As we all know, hairdressers know everybody. She lead us to Nancy Antenucci, and that reading, unbeknownst to me at the time, lead me here. It’s a direct path, although full of twists and turns like they all are.

In that reading, Nancy told me my inner High Priestess was asleep. She said I would find a teacher who would help me wake her up. Of course, through a series of serendipitous meetings and conversations, I found a local teacher, Heidi Steffens, a shamanic reiki practitioner and powerful intuitive, who would become a very important teacher/mentor for me. One of the first things she did for me after we first met was a soul retrieval. I had never experienced such a powerful energetic healing before, and it ignited my excitement and curiosity in exploring Spirit in a new way.  She taught me many things, from how to ground myself, and get in touch with my intuition, to level 1 reiki and an intro to tarot.

I first came ancestral lineage work in 2018, again, as a result of a tarot reading with Nancy. She saw in my cards so clearly that I needed to do ancestral work, and she knew of this teacher, Dr. Daniel Foor. I ordered his book, then found his website, and began working with a practitioner on my first lineage. I took the online Ancestral Lineage Healing course a couple of times to work with my lineages at my own pace, while also taking many of the other courses offered by Ancestral Medicine. Finally in 2023 I applied and was admitted to practitioner training. As fate would have it, my time at my corporate job (17 years!) ended just around the time I got the nod to begin working with clients.

To say that I’ve found ancestor work to be transformative would be an understatement. Since I’ve begun working with my lineages I’ve noticed such a shift in my body. I feel supported and resourced in a way I never did before. I feel my ancestors at my back, quite literally! I’ve been able to stop taking my anxiety medication, and have a much easier time detecting old beliefs and ideas when they inevitably do pop up again. I’ve experienced positive shifts in my relationships with my family. I am able to show up more authentically in my life and in my relationships.

Now, as a practitioner holding space for others, getting to witness them finding those connections with their people, and letting that love and support into their bodies is such an honor. I love holding this space for people. I also get to watch as people who are new to working with their intuition slowly begin to feel it and trust it.

For me, I feel whole and centered and certain in a way I never did before. I have tremendous gratitude that Spirit lead me here.