2 Chapter Two – Drink the Ashes of the Dead: Whiteness, Atonement, Interdependence and Responsibility

I stew. Sitting in grief, reactivity and rage as the news comes in that Donald Trump was re-elected. How could this be? How could this possibly happen? I felt betrayed by my fellow Americans. Intoxicating fury fueled my body. An out of control energy consumed me. I was enraged and stuck in my rage for a long while. As the rage slowly began to ebb and flow, I could sense the edges of what lay underneath: enormous sadness and a sobering fear for our future in the United States.

I turn toward my ancestral guides for any insight, any answer, any hope about the mess that is to come. I connect with my elders, my ancestral guides in spirit, and I am schooled. My self-righteous anger was a tempting and seductive spiritual bypass.

My guides say: “Drink the ashes of the dead.” This, of course, is done in the energetic unseen realm – the same realm where unwell deceased can heal, and we the living can receive support from the well ancestors who came before us. My guides say that drinking the ashes of the dead whom my own ancestors harmed is the ongoing medicine for my self-righteousness and entitlement. This, they tell me, will help me to NOT distance myself, NOT forget, and NOT get caught in thinking that I am better or different than what Donald Trump is capable of. This cuts through me and I weep. My anger releases and I sit in humility with my guides.

My guides show me an image of Donald Trump as a hologram – a reflection of the human capacity for evil, specifically of whiteness, the same whiteness from which my people, my ancestors, have benefited. Since the founding of America, being racialized as white has afforded the deepest, most abundant well of opportunity, privilege and rights. As a system, America was designed for English-speaking people who are racialized as white, Protestant, male, straight, able-bodied and cisgender. The system of whiteness greatly benefited my British ancestors in particular, affording them privilege beyond their awareness.

Whiteness. As I learned in training to be an ancestral lineage practitioner, the repair of large cultural ruptures, including harms done, happens among the dead when at least one ancestral lineage has been healed. In my case, six lineages were repaired and well in spirit before my ancestors were ready to metabolize the reality of harm revealed by my guides.

I first felt it quaking in my body. After Queen Elizabeth’s death in 2022, my body remembered something that I had not known before. Without words, my body began to reveal the journey of my British ancestors, many of whom were unwell in spirit. This showed up in my body as a frozen dread and a reflexive bracing in my mid-section. I would soon learn that these physical expressions were fragments of lived experience from my British lineage, particularly those in male bodies.

Why was Queen Elizabeth’s death so impactful? I was not one of those white American descendants from the British diaspora who was obsessed with the Royal family (except I do think fondly of Harry, of course). Yet the Queen’s death opened something inside me that was beyond my understanding. As a trauma therapist, I knew I was having what is called hypo-arousal symptoms, an activation of the dorsal vagal part of the parasympathetic nervous system. My body wanted to curl up in a ball to collapse. I also felt disoriented, yet emotionally empty. The absence of feelings or emotions was sudden and pervasive in my body. I was experiencing pure emotional numbness.

Turning towards community was a forgotten reflex until I restored connection with my ancestral guides. Through Daniel Foor’s ancestral healing method, my ancestral guides came to me with such clarity, such wisdom, and answers that spoke to my bones. As I gradually began to trust the process of ancestral reverence, and consulted my ancestral guides regularly for support, for wisdom and for my continued inner work, I also turned towards them for care and council after the Queen’s death.

As I closed my eyes and greeted my ancestral guides, they were right there with me. They brought me an invitation by bringing me ashes. It was time to focus on my British lineage and bring healing to the unwell deceased. The guides also made it clear that I had a responsibility to be rooted in being a “regular-sized” human. “Right-sized” and “regular-sized” are Daniel Foor’s terms for one of the many transformative impacts of ancestral healing.

In my own experience, being “regular-sized” keeps me aware that I am a human in the living world, co-existing with the energetic unseen ancestral realm that holds the lineage secrets, remedies and wisdom. Humbled through ancestral lineage healing, I recognize my place as down lineage from my spiritual elders in the ancestral realm, my guides. Being “right sized” also aligns with who I am as the present-day face of my ancestors – what belongs to me and what doesn’t, and what is my duty and responsibility now as a descendent of my ancestors.

When I turned toward my guides in ritual space to ask them about these body responses, I noticed a big pile of ashes in my energetic space. These ashes were just to the left and in front of me. As I saw the ashes, my breathing slowed and softened. I exhaled a deep sigh of resignation and surrender. Part of me knew without asking that these were the ashes of the deceased my British ancestors had harmed.

This was my guides’ invitation to show up for atonement and to pay respects to those that my British ancestors had murdered. The healing remedy of this process was to witness the harms my ancestors enacted: the generations of harm across war after war after war, across many borders and many stolen lands, across the ocean, and many waters, for centuries.

Whiteness. Whiteness is the present day version of the ‘power over’ energy enacted by my British lineage. It can show up in me as a knee-jerk reaction, a self-advancing ideology that justifies my behavior and justifies how I think: “Of course I deserve this.” “Of course, I have a right to access this.” “Of course, I earned this.” “Of course, I have the right to own this.” It is the dehumanizing and commodity-making of everything and everyone, the relational objectification of ‘the other,’ represented by whatever is outside the white body. Whiteness is the instantaneous default reaction that assumes colonization is the answer. It is the conscious and unconscious impulse to take and reap, the assumption that the world should organize itself around my comfort and my benefit. The action orientation toward the world and towards all fellow human beings, including toward my fellow white people, shows up as: “What can be extrapolated and exploited here?” “What can I consume for my own benefit and advancement?”

This has emerged in my own body and psyche in the instinctual knowledge my body carries of how to climb a ladder and how to navigate hierarchical structures. Yet the muscles to navigate sitting in a circle in community are gravely underdeveloped and have been malnourished. Whiteness is the assumption of superiority. Whiteness can show up unconsciously in my nervous system as an entitled, self-righteous, vehement energy against anything that I don’t agree with. It is the reflex to compete rather than collaborate – to find a way to work together in cooperation and explore what may benefit the collective.

Whiteness can show up as the dangerous illusion of meritocracy, the thinking that I alone ‘achieved.’ This masks the systemic privilege I have been allotted by the lack of melanin in my skin and the open doors through which my ancestors walked. Whiteness is not only a system, but is cultural and relational in nature, fueled by a ‘power over’ energy. This power over energy shows up in the images my guides are revealing – of warfare and the gruesome ways people have died at the hands of my people.

My guides have created a healing cocoon, the likeness of a large pumpkin in the unseen spirit realm to hold generations upon generations of my British male bodied ancestors. The men go into this cocoon for healing. Since my male ancestors were the ones who used their bodies, their hands, and their blood to wield power over in the name of the British monarchy, they went first into the healing cocoon.

There is old sorrow and stuck grief. My guides show me many images emerging from the healing cocoon – people who need to run and hide, a shock that is deeply buried, a sense of conformity, and a need to ‘stay in line.’ For the sake of survival, the women on my British lineage were cut off from their feelings and became cold and rigid. The men and young boys were ushered into the cocoon for healing. Sounds of boots. The roar of the ocean. Images of land fought over and stolen. Images of boats and fire. Graphic images of murder and death. Persecution. Bodies on land. Bodies in the ocean. Lost bodies.

For these male ancestors, generations of unquestioned loyalty and sense of duty concealed any feelings they had about doing things they did not want to do, but did in order to survive. I feel sensations in my teeth. I have had these sensations before in healing my other lineages. My guides tell me that the teeth and bones hold the in-between connection, the connection between me and this lineage. And my teeth are in pain. Boys are crying. Older men are crying. Everyone is crying and weeping in grief.

The men in the healing cocoon – stiff and rigid soldiers of duty – eventually shift from being energetically stuck. The healing process involves a restoration of their capacity to experience feelings. What emerges is their deep sorrow and grief over the murders they committed as the British monarchy took and took, fought and fought, killed and killed. Sorrow and sadness. Within the healing cocoon, these men move through a layer of disconnection. They reel from their betrayal of their own integrity and dignity in the name of duty. Their blind loyalty to the empire, loyalty that had hardened into rote conditioning, was passed down the generations in the form of toxic pride wrapped in imperialism.

Their perpetrator role begins to unravel. They alternately resist and welcome the necessary untangling of their loyalty to the monarchy from their own collective and individual spirits. They feel the tempered pride of being a red coat. My guides showed me that pride and loyalty to empire were embedded in their bones, along with an assumption of dominance. Group solidarity flourished – in their bones, their minds, their bodies – in loyalty and duty to empire. It was their core identity. My guides show me the vastness of land that these men battled over, acquired and controlled. There is a felt sense that connecting to the land and the reality of harm caused, also means connecting to the blood that was shed on the land, knowing that blood is on our hands. To make amends, the guides ask for an offering to the spirit of the lands.

Bitterness is part of the remedy for the deceased. The remedy for healing in the ancestral realm often includes giving the deceased a taste of the same energy that the ancestors put out into the universe. My western brain views this as similar to homeopathy in the living world; there is medicine in ‘like curing like.’ Bitterness is the salve. It is delivered with intention and the sharpness of metal arrows. My guides use the element of metal purposefully for healing. I see lots and lots of red coats. I hear lots and lots of boots marching in unison on the ground. Flashes of images emerge: working class men in the fields, shields, hand combat, swords, guns, gigantic ships, fire, smoke, ocean waves, violence, unbearable fear and terror.

My guides share that in order for the spirits of these male ancestors to be free, they have to feel. Toward that end, my guides have them experience the same process of dying as those upon whom they perpetrated heinous deaths. For their spirits to be free in the ancestral realm, they must experience for themselves what they did to others. My guides include a sliver of felt sense experienced in my own body, so that I will NOT FORGET what I am down lineage from.

Unraveling continues to happen for these male ancestors, like separating the marrow from the bone and then redefining their relationship to both. A year of ancestral healing on this lineage moves through the generations of the deceased until, eventually, there is a release – a release of loyalty, of fawning through fighting, of toxic pride and deep grief.

The healing cocoon changes over the course of a year. It shapeshifts to one large male spirit body whose tailbone is reconnected to the earth in order to affirm this lineage’s relationship with Earth and humanity. To the chants of “you are not more important than anyone else,” the guide energetically cuts off a piece of my own tongue and gives it to a figure in the healing cocoon. Words that move through this lineage still have the power to do harm. These words can also move through my tongue. The guides want me to be aware of the words I speak. They want me to know the power of language either to harm or to provide healing and support. They explain that part of my responsibility is to use my power of speech for healing and for good in the world, not to perpetuate and re-enact the harms caused by my lineage.

The ashes that were in my space at last transform to beautiful stones and kelp at the bottom of the ocean. The guides show me a rock. One side looks like volcanic rock encasing all the remnants of harm. Turning the rock over, I feel a smoothness that represents the healthy side of the loyalty now present on this lineage – the smooth clean healing energy of being transparent and harnessing healing energy in the world.

The guides give me this stone as a reminder that we are connected and that I am the modern day face of this lineage. I am not immune from doing harm, and I also can be loyal to the work of transforming ‘power over’ energy to equity and shared access to power. The guides put stones in my body – one in my heart for me to feel, one in my third eye for me to mindfully see, one in my shoulder around mindful action, and one in my mouth to be conscious of how I use my voice. My guides put rocks in the palms of my hands to guide how I treat people and how I touch, care and nurture. The ancestors on this lineage are looking at me – my actions, my presence, my words, my heart, my body – and how I harness healing energy. They are aware that their actions when they were alive continue to impact people today.

Light comes at last, a lantern of healing light. My guides ask me to “step back more, away from the shape my skin makes, and let the work move through me.” The spirits transform to babies and another layer of misguided toxic loyalty releases. I see images of wolves.

“Don’t disrespect the energy and power to hurt people,” my guides say. “You have the ability to break bones and cannot forget that you can break your own soul. You must respect the energy to hurt others and know that it’s not going to take over.”

There is soup now for all those still being healed in the cocoon. The men in the healing cocoon are breaking their own bones and putting the bones into the soup in the unseen world. The guides are giving the soup to all those who are still receiving healing in the cocoon. The soup is salty, made of tears and blood and their own bones. The guides explain that the soup is helping them transform their relationship to humility.

Yet even with transformation, my guides are clear that this lineage is still connected to the wolf. The wolf is an innate part of this lineage and can enact great power in many directions. My guides share that this lineage can be ferocious and, even with their transformation, I must not forget to look in the mirror. They say that when I, too, drink this healing soup, the lineage can continue to transform and not be hungry. Theirs is a distorted hunger and does not belong to each individual man. Rather it is a collective lineage hunger for domination and toxic loyalty. Right now the wolf is not hungry, but that can change. Even with the transformation of these ancestors to a well and vibrant state, the lineage is capable, just as I am, of being taken over by this old hunger.

I feel a sensation in my teeth again – that in-between connection. When everyone has finally emerged from the healing cocoon, the male spirits seek forgiveness with tears and their foreheads on the ground. They are praying and saying sorry for the harm that they caused in their time on earth. Generations upon generations of men prostrate themselves down to the earth as they emerge from the healing cocoon. They shed many tears as they reunite with the collective Well Ones from a long time ago on this lineage. There is a sense of salvation and them being warmly received.

The somber celebration of this transformation is marked by biting into a lemon, which is both sour and bitter. The image of the wolf returns. The guides share that shifting the relationship to power is the ultimate and ongoing medicine. The guides then invite me to embody the blessings of this healed lineage, with the messages of responsibility tethered to the blessings.

Even with the deceased of my British lineage now in a healed state, their continued healing is tied to my conscious intent, as their living descendent, to not re-create the harm they caused. The atonement is not over; it continues in present day. My responsibility lies in how I use my privilege as a person racialized as white and living in the United States. My community of ancestors and I are interdependent. How I move through this life now impacts them, just as how they moved through life impacts me.

Whiteness. The gooey sticky mess that can seduce me to default to the self-absorbed, pompous, narcissistic distortion that my life “is all about me all of the time.” This is how my whiteness can show up and move through me. My own whiteness is the cultural energetic reflex to objectify and see everything outside of my body as “not me.” In this frame, that which is “not me” becomes a commodity for consumption. My own whiteness can show up as relational withdrawal and a hollowness of embodiment.

Whiteness. I am both the spider and the web, and caught up in the web all at the same time. I am the spider who can energetically create that which reinforces the greater system of human supremacy, which currently moves through the living world as whiteness. I am part of the web because I have power in a world that assigns privilege and worth to my white skin. I also live in the web – the sticky gooey system of whiteness is now on my body.

More recently, the web is consuming me as a woman. Almost overnight, my body has become a commodity to be controlled. Whiteness is winning, as my country has recently separated my body from me. When Roe vs Wade was overturned in the United States Supreme Court, I lost the right to own my body. The state of Texas owns my body, not me. I, too, can be annihilated. I am now both an object and also caught in the “power over” web. At the same time, I continue to have the choice of how and to what extent I will enact being a spider executing “power over” energy in the world.

Shape and Whiteness. What shape will I make? I have the choice for how to show up in the world. I can choose to be conscious and responsible for what I put out in the world in service to continued atonement, and in support of liberation for all. I have choice for what shape I make with my white body.

Interdependence as a remedy. Being conscious of my impact, the impact of my presence, the impact of how I use my privilege as a white person, and leaning into relational interdependence, are all remedies I can embody in the world. I experience relational interdependence with my guides and the collective community of ancestors who support me in being ancestor-led. Over time this helps me learn how to use my new muscles in consideration of the collective. In great contrast, the muscle memory still in my body considers only my own life as an individual designed by whiteness. There are many ways to show up as a social justice advocate, and there is relationality in each moment.

My continued healing includes befriending the wolf in my lineage. The power over energy of whiteness can move through the wolf and take over my body. Befriending the wolf energy that has historically been used to enact harm is the next step for continued healing. My current task, the present day medicine, is to drink the ashes of the dead. To NOT disconnect and disembody. To resist the temptation to move with urgency, to not get caught in the delusion that I am separate from my ancestors and from all other beings – including human, plant, animal, and those in the unseen world.

As this chapter is writing itself from my guides, I’m aware that it does not want to end because the healing of this lineage is not fully complete. What was shared here focused only on the healing process of male spirits of my British lineage. These ancestors continue to ask for atonement through my actions. While I alone, as a single individual in the living world, cannot undue the harms systemically caused by my ancestors, I can be in service to the healing energy that my guides now bring forward through my body as a descendent of this lineage.

My guides say to be present and FEEL in the present moment. As the atrocities of whiteness repeat and persist, the guides remind me to not succumb to the kind of self-righteous anger or bystander dissociative numbness that can ignite my nervous system. The repair work lives within me and moves through me. The healing continues.