The Ancestors Are Rooting for You

One day, you will be someone's ancestor.

It's a strange thought, isn't it?

We spend so much time looking backwards, wondering what we have inherited from our parents, grandparents and the generations before them.

But rarely do we consider that we are also shaping something that will continue long after us.

Every generation receives a story. And every generation adds something to it.

This is one reason cultures around the world have created traditions that keep us in relationship with those who came before.

At this time of year, some of these become particularly visible: Samhain in Ireland, Día de Muertos in Mexico, and All Saints' and All Souls' Days. Elsewhere, traditions such as Obon in Japan and Qingming in China take place at other times of year.

Different histories, different rituals — yet each one places the living in relationship with those who came before.

And that relationship may reach further into our everyday lives than we realise.

What we inherit

We tend to think of inheritance in tangible terms.

The colour of our eyes. The shape of our face. Certain physical characteristics. A predisposition to particular health conditions.

DNA makes it easy to understand that something can travel from one generation to another.

But families pass on much more than genes.

We inherit ways of thinking, behaving and relating to the world. Beliefs about love, money, safety and belonging. Expectations about who we should be. Roles that are assumed rather than consciously chosen.

Some are taught openly. Others become so familiar that we barely recognise them as inheritance at all.

A fear that feels larger than our own experience.

A recurring relationship pattern.

A responsibility we have carried for as long as we can remember.

Research into intergenerational trauma suggests that the experiences of one generation can affect the next through a complex combination of family relationships, caregiving, social conditions and other pathways.

In the healing sessions I facilitate, I encounter patterns that seem to reach beyond an individual's personal history.

This becomes particularly striking when I work with people from the same lineage — a mother and child, siblings, or relatives separated by generations.

I have witnessed similar energetic patterns emerge in different members of a family without prior knowledge of their personal histories or the difficulties they have experienced.

Sometimes it is only afterwards, when I share what emerged during a session, that the connections begin to appear.

Something that seemed to belong entirely to one person suddenly sits within a much longer family story.

In my practice, I understand these recurring patterns as expressions of ancestral inheritance — energetic imprints carried through generations.

But recognising where something may come from is only part of the story.

We also get to decide what happens next.

Because inheritance is not necessarily destiny.

This is not about assigning blame to those who came before us. It is about becoming more conscious of what we carry, and discerning what we want to continue carrying.

We inherit more than wounds

When we talk about ancestral inheritance, it is easy to focus on trauma — what went wrong, what was carried, what needs to be released.

But that is only half the story.

What about everything that carried us?

The courage of someone who left everything familiar and began again.

The resourcefulness of a grandmother who found a way through circumstances we can barely imagine.

The creativity, intuition, humour, determination and wisdom that survived long enough to reach us.

We inherit strength, too.

That matters, because becoming conscious of our inheritance is not simply an exercise in finding what needs to be healed.

It is also about recognising what deserves to continue.

In my own understanding, our ancestors are rooting for us.

That doesn't mean every family story was loving or uncomplicated. It doesn't require us to romanticise where we came from.

It means that our lives are part of something larger than one lifetime.

And from that perspective, the question begins to change.

Not only: What did I inherit?

But also: What do I want to pass on?

Seven generations

The Seventh Generation Principle in Haudenosaunee teaching invites us to consider how the decisions we make today will affect those who are not yet born.

I find that perspective deeply resonant with ancestral healing.

Our lives are shaped by what came before us, but our choices also become part of what comes after us.

Healing is usually spoken about as something we do for ourselves.

And of course, it is.

But sometimes its reach is wider.

Sometimes breaking a pattern means deciding that something will stop with us.

Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us offers a very tangible example. At the centre of the story is a woman choosing to end a destructive cycle not only for herself, but so that her daughter does not grow up inside the same pattern.

That is what makes the idea of ancestral healing so powerful to me.

When we recognise a pattern and choose not to repeat it, the environment in which the next generation grows is already different.

When we question a belief that has travelled unquestioned through a family, something different becomes possible.

When we become more conscious of what we carry, we also become more conscious of what we pass on.

We cannot change the lives our ancestors lived.

But we can change what continues through ours.

Remembering

Honouring our ancestors does not require an elaborate ritual.

It might mean lighting a candle.

Speaking someone's name.

Cooking a dish that has travelled through your family.

Looking at an old photograph.

Visiting a grave.

Or simply taking a moment to acknowledge that your life did not begin with you.

For me, that acknowledgement also extends to place.

The land beneath our feet had a story before we arrived. Other people lived there, worked there, loved there, grieved there and moved across it.

In my geomancy and land work, acknowledging those who came before is a simple act of respect — a recognition that we are not the beginning of a place's story either.

Honouring does not mean excusing.

Some family histories are painful. Some relationships remain complicated long after someone has passed away.

Respecting our place within a lineage does not require us to continue everything that lineage handed us.

We can be grateful for what nourished us and still put down what did not.

Perhaps that is one of the deeper invitations of this season.

Not only to remember those who came before us, but to become more conscious of our own place in the story.

One day, you will be someone's ancestor.

What would you like them to inherit?

Anna Mathys — The ChangeMaker

If you would like guidance in exploring ancestral patterns more deeply — within yourself or in the land you live with — you can learn more about my Healing Sessions, Geomantic Assessment and Land Healing here.

Sources & further reading

Yehuda, R. & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 243–257.

Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Values — on the Seventh Generation value and considering the impact of present decisions on future generations.

Earth Grid Keeping

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