Walking the Scenic Route
When I was a teenager, I was adamant that I would live a life different from my mother's. She had such a challenging life. It was filled with struggle. She was a very resilient woman, but she never seemed to catch a break. As she reached her 40’s, she was riddled with health complaints. She had cancer twice, the second time lead to her passing in 2015. She had both her hip and a shoulder joint replaced and autoimmune conditions from thyroid issues to diabetes. When she passed, she had no womb and no breasts. As I reflect on this now, I feel into the deeper layers and how it reveals our societies' treatment of the feminine, but that is another story. My mother was alone for the most part in raising myself and my two sisters.
She was adopted as a child although it seems not necessarily through official channels as I have been unable to find any information to date.
Her life felt so sad and so challenging that I was determined I would do everything in my power to live a different life, a better life. This sometimes caused friction between us, and she often asked me why I couldn’t just do what other people did, why did I always had to swim against the tide?
I begin my mission to be different
I got some education and was the first in my family to do so. We were benefits class and it was unrealistic to have dreams above your station. The most I could hope for was to get married and work in a supermarket. Both these things are perfectly acceptable as options but not, I feel, as the only option. I was full of enthusiasm and vision, and this felt stifling for me.
I did get married at 21 and got a job in an insurance broker so by all accounts I was already breaking the mould. In my early 20’s I became interested in yoga and trained as a teacher. This was again, out of the norm for my family so I felt I was well on track to a better life. In my mid 20’s I decided, much to the confusion of my family and then husband, that I wanted to sing. I began voice coaching with a wonderful woman and one day she asked me if I had ever thought of writing songs, which of course I had not! So, I started. And within a few years I had recorded my songs, played on the radio and at festivals etc and was making a name for myself in the local music scene. I had to really knuckle down and be focussed as everyone around me thought I was losing the plot. I had to be determined. But yes, I was definitely living a life different to my mother and I was relieved.
The “Saturn’s Return Boyfriend”
And then, what we refer to in astrological circles as, “The Saturn’s Return Boyfriend” happened. I was swept off my feet and within a short space of time I had left my husband. It was a long time coming, this was just the catalyst.
I’ll spare any details because they are not mine alone to share, but this new man played the role of the trickster in my life, for sure. Two years later I was a single mother, raising my son alone and dealing with the stress of interacting with the trickster. Everything I had built disappeared. I had lost any dream of making music or anything else. I remember seeing an advert on the TV where someone was getting on a train. I cried. My life had become so small I felt I would never even get on a train again. What followed was a decade of struggle as I raised my beautiful son alone. I did manage to release more music but soon afterwards my mum passed away, and I just didn’t have it in me to keep participating in the music business.
I was diagnosed with autoimmune thyroiditis.
During a particularly challenging episode I began having issues with my eyesight and permanent headaches. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I sat in bewilderment at how despite my best efforts to avoid living a life like my mothers, I had indeed found myself in a life that mirrored hers closely.
Facing what I did not know I was running from
In 2020 I became aware of ancestor work and in an attempt to explore and heal some of what I was experiencing, I began working creatively with my ancestors. My lineages were unknown to me as we knew nothing beyond my mother and very little beyond my grandmother on my father's side. As I would sit quietly and tune in, I would have images come to me of people from different times and places. I would commune with them, witness them and make it clear that I would witness but not carry what did not belong to me.
Things began to shift in my life. Relationships changed, people who felt more like “my people” came into my life. I was able to manage the symptoms I experienced to a better degree. I began to feel alive again and to understand myself more. I began to understand my lineages more. Patterns, emotions, behaviours and beliefs that had up until now felt like part of me, I could now feel were different from me. Different from my essence. I realised I did not have to carry them.
My life continued to feel more like home, more like me. Then in 2022 I attended a gathering on ancestress magic. We were asked to write down the names of our mother, her mother and so on. I felt a little sad as I did not know them. The woman holding the gathering suggested that if we did not know, we intuit the names. I received the name “Mary”. As part of the work, we were going to come together two weeks later and craft and ancestress doll, putting the names of our foremothers inside.
A Lineage Revealed
By the time we were due to gather and make dolls, I had discovered the names of my grandmother (Ivy Mary) and my great grandmother (Margarita (Margaret)). It had been as if something had taken over me and I was led to documents that allowed me to cross reference and confirm these women as my lineage. It was a soul reclamation.
It was also emotional. I could see patterns of shame and mistreatment. One of the documents I found was a handwritten Catholic baptism register for my great grandmother. It was written in Latin. Her mother was not named on it. She had been excluded. There were several “missing ones” in the records I found. I began to make sense of some of the experiences I had had in my life.
Around that time, I was again facing a challenging situation and again I will spare the details, but this time it was different. I could clearly see the pattern of shame attempting to play out. With this awareness I was better able to work with what was arising. Having done shamanic work for years I thought I would enter my imaginal realm and be creative. I visualised the pattern, the egregor, and asked it to reveal itself. I worked with images, movement, sound until I was able to thank the pattern and allow it to become something new. I could sense that it was tired and actually wanted to rest. I no longer felt like a victim. I was able to deal with the situation I was facing in a new way. And it disappeared.
Living a life that feels like home
This is the beginning of a story of wholeness, possibility and of living a life that reflects me. I have had synchronicities and opportunities occur that would make me sound bonkers if I wrote them, so I’ll leave the story here.
But what I will finish with is this; I did not need to know the details of my lineage to be able to work with the patterns that were playing out in my life. Once I discovered the lineage I had inherited, I was able to see it clearly. I was able to sense what was not mine, what did not feel like me, and begin there. What I have discovered is that this process does not require knowing the details or the root cause.
This is a journey of coming home, of seeing yourself and possibilities clearly, and fully inhabiting the life that is yours.
I work in a playful, creative way. It is living art. This work is beautiful and enriching, if challenging at times. You deserve to be free to live your authentic life.