Ancestral Healing #Reverb15

   As each year progresses, we unknowingly gather many thoughts, beliefs, and patterns to us. In fact, what we are carrying may have been passed down to us from previous generations.  

Looking at the thoughts and patterns that may be holding you back from living the life you want, trace back through the generations of your family and see if your beliefs originated generations ago.  

In 2016, how can you bring healing to these patterns of thought that are holding you back?

Generational angst. 

We pass down our stories, our sorrows and our dreams.

This time of year my family passes down the same story; the story of the year the Salvation Army kept my grandfather and his family from starving during the Great Depression. Then, many years later, the Red Cross would charge my grandfather and his fellow soldiers for coffee and donuts. But at each train stop the Salvation Army was there to offer hot coffee and fresh donuts for free to the young servicemen. For those reasons alone the Salvation Army will always be on our giving list.

Kid 5 has a large jar at home just waiting to dump all the change we've collected into the Salvation Army kettle next time we are out at a store and see a bell ringer. 

Then there are the stories of sorrow. My grandmother, who was already being overtaken by Alzheimer's by the time my children came along, was a young child the day her mother told her to wait on the front porch while she went to the butcher shop. She promised my grandmother she would be right back. Her mother, my great grandmother, dropped dead there in the butcher shop from what we assume was a heart attack. So my grandmother waited on that porch step till long past dark. Her father had already been killed in the coal mines, now she was left alone to be raised by her brothers and sisters. This was before child welfare services, there was no one else to step in. One brother became a thief, a sister became the town whore. We'll never really know how being raised in that environment, and being left to often raise yourself, truly affected her. But from my recollections, my grandmother wasn't a happy woman.

I don't know what her dreams were. Maybe coming from that beginning she didn't even allow herself to dream. I know my mom had unfulfilled dreams. 

I have absolutely no concrete proof of this, yet I believe my mom was at times a discontented woman. I don't mean that to say she had regrets, that's not for me to know or say, but I mean I feel that at times she wondered "what if."

I know she was adamant with me and my sister about following our dreams and doing what we wanted. And during the times when we were discontent, she understood and supported us. But still always giving us that push to go, get up and do something with our life.

Even now I often feel like she is whispering to me, "Just go, do it. Don't hold yourself back."

As a single mom working myself to exhaustion for my kids, I believe that the moments I do pursue my dreams, are in homage to my mom and to her mom. I will try and do what they never could.

This post is part of #Reverb15, a series of daily writing prompts found at Kat McNally Words To Soothe The Weary Soul.