Yesterday I ran across a request for speakers from a group that does genealogical research. Normally I think that this really has nothing to do with my work. I do heal ancestral lines, but I don’t need to do the kind of careful research that most people interested in genealogy do.

My work is more like traveling back along the waves of trauma, finding the place that started the hurting, and reshaping the process to find wisdom from the hurt.

Of course, it’s not always a traumatic experience. About a month ago I had an encounter with an ancestor who wanted me to accept his bigotry as my own. I declined, but part of dealing with that wish was looking at why the ancestor felt the way he did and providing him with a less harmful perspective.

Also, within the past month, I helped design a ceremony to remove evil from the grave of a person who was well known for causing trouble while she was alive. As I discussed in my last blog, the essence of people can stay around their grave. It doesn’t always, and probably shouldn’t, but some people wish to continue causing harm here on earth even after they die. Leaving their essence in the graveyard is one way they can do that. Happily, this pile of evil essence was moved to a cleaning facility and won’t be causing any more problems.

So that’s three times in the past month that ancestors have come up. Actually there was a fourth, because Daddy Death asked me to walk through a graveyard in Massachusetts. But that’s part of another story I’ll tell when it’s more complete. Synchronicity suggests that the timing of finding this speaking request might have some meaning.

The group looking for speakers is the Association of Genealogists & Researchers in Archives (AGRA). They provide help to people who are researching their family histories and run into difficulties finding archives and accessing the records in them. The group is based in England, so there are serious archives going back hundreds of years.

Many people are interested in their family histories — enough that there are professional societies for the people who help them with the research. And I ask: Why do people care? Does it really matter who your family was?

I think most people have an instinctive response that of course it matters. I’ve always cared and I suspect you have, too. But why?

Let me propose the possibility that deep inside us we know that the only way to be whole is to heal ourselves — and complete healing requires work on our ancestral lines, too. Our culture has forgotten that, but it still resonates deep in our soul as a never-ending ache.

Who would be better at finding the places where healing is needed than the folks from AGRA? They’re not tracing feelings in a shamanic journey. They are looking at solid evidence of who, what, when, where, why, and how? When the families AGRA helps feel the ache of the long-ago trauma still resonating in their souls, the families can help a healer track to the exact place where healing needs to happen. I’d find that helpful in my work.

So, I’m going to offer to give a talk to AGRA. Do I expect them to be interested? I really don’t know. There is always this synchronicity thing. I do know that thinking about this has helped me understand the strange longing to know about our family lines. And I hope it helps all of us see that we should trust our feelings of longing for completeness even when they are found in unexpected places like this one.

For those in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving, and blessing on your family lines to everyone.