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.

Something I’ve come to believe as this work has deepened for me, as I work with my ancestors and see how gifts they were unable to transformed into burdens and then into generational trauma, is that we in the colonized West have been cut off from being fully human for quite some time. Daniel talks a lot about being human sized. This means letting go of any notion we have about human supremacy. This work is deeply Animist, recognizing the kinship of all of creation. Plants, animals, mountains, stones, the waters, the fungi, are all kin. This also means that we can relate with them. Human beings are intuitive creatures. This is not a “power” reserved for “Others,” as we have been taught. We’ve been cut off from our intuition, told it’s not real. Or if it is real, it’s only for indigenous people. It’s primitive. It’s not legitimate.

For myself and many others, trusting intuition, learning how to feel it, where it comes in for us, is literally like developing new muscles. It takes time and practice and repetition. And patience! For me it is still a work in progress. Some days I feel it so strongly, it’s like a limb. Other days that old tape telling me “This isn’t for you, it’s for other people,” is so loud. But. I’m much better at recognizing it for the lie that it is now. I’m able much more quickly to identify it as a voice that’s trying to keep me safe. So I can thank it for the effort, for all of its work keeping me safe for so long, and ask it kindly to go away now. Go rest! Find a swing and have fun! Relax! I’ve got this now.

Another way I practice with my intuition and continue to build those muscles is through my daily tarot practice. Every morning I start with a brief meditation, some somatic shamanic practices I’ve learned for grounding myself, and a tarot pull.  It helps me center myself, gets me out of my head and into my body. As I work with the cards, I’m often able to channel messages from my guides, find guidance and often very practical advice. Like, “Please make time to meditate today,” or “ Please get outside. Go for a walk. Connect with the earth.” Sometimes it’s “We see you’ve been working on this. Great job. Keep going.”

Being fully human, I honor my ancestors. I can relate with them and have them in my life again. Just as I can relate with the higher powers, and the bees. And the herbs I take, whose medicine nourishes my body. The food I eat. Everything. And I can trust my body and my discernment to know when something is safe for me to relate with, and when something is potentially toxic, and to back off. Our ancestors want us to have full, rich, luscious lives. And they will provide support and wisdom for us if we ask. When we ask the wise ones to provide healing for those who need it, when the lineage is once again united and whole and complete, that support is able to come through at a much higher volume. That love and support shows up in our bodies and our lives in all kinds of new ways. 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.