Listen To The Voices Coming From Your Belly
My ancestors are still alive. They live in a world that watches. All the time. It is a forest of eyes. They move through lives, through lines; they do things - good things - bad things - other things. They watch over us. A surveillance camera 24/24. We, the descendants, are mostly not aware of them, mainly because we have lost the connection with them long time ago. Some of us still feel them, sense them, but we don´t dare talk about them - even less talk to them. Sometimes, we hear their voices but we often think they are just our inner voices or our intuition. But, are we really sure about who is talking? Whose voices do we listen to?
Once I had a shamanic dream. I call a dream ‘shamanic’ when it is loud and clear and big and giving me answers and visions. Here it goes: It is dark. There is a fire. It looks like a cave? People are sitting in circle. I recognise some of them. Some are my ancestors. Young people are running around. Elders are sitting and talking in what looks like a council. At one point, I am asked to leave and go outside to see where we are. In a second, I am transported outside the cave. There is a lot of light. The contours are smooth. Unstead of a landscape, a desert or a prairie, I see myself, my body, my skin, my belly. I realise. The cave was inside of me. This is where the ancestors live. Inside of us. This dream was such a revelation. A gift. We are not alone, we are multitude. We are never who we think we are. We are not individuals. Not outside, nor inside. I am their kingdom, their territory, their sacred place of assembly.
Listen to the voices.
It is said that humans can only act while they are alive. Of course, this seems absolutely logic. Humans interact and act best when they have a body, when they have agency. As pragmatic and practical as this may be, I recently came to the conclusion that this might not be entirely true. From the moment, my aunt passed, she became more active, more agitated as well. At least, in me, for me, with me.
Coming from a nomadic family, heritage, inheritance, legacy, are for me useless and empty words, unfortunately. They do not mean much. At least, for what concerns ‘material’ matters. I guess it is because I come from people who have been uprooted. Didn’t I choose the same path myself? My people are constantly on the move. Nothing is really owned or transmitted. The good thing about that is that we learn a new language every two generations. The bad thing is that we never leave anything behind to build up safety or security for people coming after us. We start from scratch. We are used to that. So yes inheritance is an weird word. We don’t really know how to give, and also how to receive.
Silence.
Listen carefully to the silence.
On our journey, we drag heavy suitcases full of secrets and painful memories. Even if buried down deep our hearts and psyche, they can pop up at any time and manifest into spiritual, mental or physical ailments. They bring depression, auto-immune diseases, accidents, dysphoria, alienation, and so many other forms of hindrances. My aunt Irene, the sister of my father, passed on 17th December 2023. She was 93. She was a mystery to me. She was living alone far away for very long. She was married twice, divorced. She had two children from her first husband. She gave birth in 1952 to a girl - Patricia - I have written a lot about that1 and some years after, a little boy - Philippe. Neither survived. What are the odds? How does a person, a mother, survive such massive loss, one after the other ? How much pain and grief and tears her heart had to endure ? Poor soul, she never talked about them. It is as if they never existed. I guess she had to move on, she had to forget about them. She needed to dig this deep down.
As a consequence, this created silence. As a consequence, this fabricated mystery. As a consequence, this transformed itself into a burden, a “hot potato” transmitted from her to her and to her. A family secret soon metabolised into an inexplicable burden and tyranny and absence of law and a constant hubbub of voices. The bed of “bad things can happen”.
This was long before I was born.
Shame and guilt were passed on, but no words. No story. No tale. No trace. But never forget: Trauma is porous. Trauma transpires. Trauma insidiously infects. Years after, her brother (my father) had his first child (me). My mother and my father decided to name me P. like the dead girl. They said they did not know. I believe them. They said this is coincidence; they just loved the name - and the name apparently loved them back. Entities are stronger than intentions. For long, I was at war with myself - without knowing why. In fact, I was energetically connected to a dead infant. My ancestor. It took me 50 years to finally realise I could actually do something about that. One day, I listened to the voice of my teen simply stating : “But Mama, if you don’t like your name, why don’t you change it?” It was as if I woke up from a spell.
Mutiny was possible. Ancestral ghosts energies were finally going to be cleared out.
When my sister called me with the news that our aunt Irene had passed, I did not cry. I did not feel anything. I felt empty. I was also very annoyed. I really did not care. I did not have time for that in my life! Bad moment for bad news, I thought. How pretentious! How arrogant! Soon, the same evening, a stringent noxious feeling came from deep inside my belly. I heard the voices calling again, pushing for more.
Uncontrolled pushes.
Imaginal ombilical cords.
Enough.
Pain needs mutiny too.
Since Irene did not have descendants or any other relatives, it is just my sister and myself who were first in line to eventually/legally receive her inheritance. She owned a land, a property, and probably some money. Maybe some other values. Not bad for a family who never left anything behind. Finally, something would be “passed on”2. After many days and weeks of reflection, tainted with a lot of fear anxiety and chaos, I would take a radical decision.
Also things happened. That very evening my sister called with the news of the passing, my two front teeth broke in half, chipped: a real sight of horror! Out of nowhere, my teeth just broke horizontally. How could this happen without a proper shock? I did not associate this with anything at first, but what happened just three days after3, would definitely make me wonder.
My ancestors are angry.
They want me to wake up.
I needed to pay attention, now, more than ever. The world was cracked open. Upside down. Both realms - the one of the living and the one of the dead - were getting closer. The veil was getting thinner. What was I summoned to do? The thing that was constantly coming over and over - like an obsessive mind trick - was that the heritage, the house, the land, the money were poison. Beware. Dont touch! I started imagining that this was just another way to get at me, finally, and for ever. I know this is just crazy but something felt wrong. Something was off. I sensed it in my body. I felt it in my soul. After all these years, after I had finally freed myself from the sticky name, I was not going to let myself be swallowed again.
Breathe.
Breathe from the belly.
Listen carefully.
The message was loud but not so clear. Beware. Don’t get too close. The ancestors have agency. They can do things. They can give you sleepless nights. They can make you sick. They can make you stuck. They can make everyone go desperate. You can lose your soul. I am not implying that my aunt is behind all this. Aware and all. This is not how this works. What I am suggesting is that the energies in presence, the ones that have been pushed down for so long, by her unresolved pain and her traumatic life are coming up to surface. These energies are powerful, chaotic and extreme. They need out. Metabolic processes did not happen. Healing could not start. Silenced Voices.
On the 7th February 2024, date that (of course!) coincides with the death of P. (7th February 1953), 71 years after, I signed off the official documents declining my part of the inheritance, leaving everything to my younger sister and her daughter. I had to. This was the only possible decision. This is rooted in bigger than me. That night, in our garden, in the snow, I also made a ceremony with some prayors and a ritual. I made a large bonfire and burned three china dolls that my aunt gave me some years ago. I had them stored in the basement. I did not remember them at all until suddenly, while searching for something else, they appeared…. I had to feed them to the fire. I also wrote 3 letters to the dead : one to my father, one to my aunt, and the last one to P. I explained what I decided to do and why. Each of them were addressed with kindness, reverence and gratitude. Three versions of the same releasing act and pact. So that they know. So that they stop being hungry ghosts.
Pain needs transmutation.
Pain needs mutiny.
I refused the legacy. I refuse to be stuck anymore. I refuse to be left in the same place I started out from. I am exhausted. Calling out, pulling down, taking back, chucking out, doing the work, doing more than the work. When nothing works, when progress does not lead you anywhere, when the voices are weakened, we need to step up or down. It does not matter. Listen. Be. Do something else. It does not mean I am not scared of my choices. Oh, I am so scared. I try every day to find a way into clarity and into peace. This time, attuned to the voices. When they say: surrender to the unknown, be vulnerable, be uncertain, be humble, I listen. When they say: act, move, stop, decide, I listen too. When life gets messy and being grounded is not easy, I am also there. In it. In my belly.
Entangled visions, paths, states, events. And death all along. Always. The womb is also made of wounds.
I will not give up. I will try and try again. My vision, my experience, my ability to feel, my capacity to learn, to be more aware, every day, respectfully participating into the universe is illuminating my way. The best thing I can do now is stay on the road and transmute the pain. The best thing I can do now is to listen to my ancestors, listen to my belly.
I wrote many times about this story. For example, here:
https://medicineofthesoul.substack.com/p/life-and-death-dance-together
Of course, she did not prepare anything. She did not leave any will/paperwork. She did not make any steps to activate a donation while still alive to avoid the taxes of 55% taxes for her indirect heirs. Though we talked about it many times…But this is another story.
For more about this you can read https://medicineofthesoul.substack.com/p/motherhood-as-disability