The Healing That Didn’t Start With Me: How Ancestral Wisdom Transformed My Life and Work

Why We Must Return to What Our Lineages Have Always Known

There’s a growing conversation in therapy, wellness circles, and spiritual platforms about ancestral healing. You’ve probably seen it in books, trainings, reels. Ancestral work is having a moment.

But here’s the truth:For many of us (especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, and diasporic peoples) this isn’t new. This is ancient. This is ours. This is a return.

And for me, it all started with a voice.

The Night I First Heard the Call

I was sitting alone in the quiet, empty office where I worked.I was a soon-to-be master-level social worker, a childhood survivor of domestic violence, and a fierce advocate for the women I served — many of whom were escaping abusive relationships.

That night, while catching up on case notes, I heard a loud voice say: “You are a healer!”

Startled, I looked around for a rational explanation. There was no one there.

Scared and confused, I packed up my belongings and ran out of the building. In my line of work, hearing voices was a one-way ticket to the psychiatric ward.

But even though I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something profound had happened.

Something woke up in me.

Something older than the training I was receiving.

Something deeper than clinical theory.

An Unshakable Inner Knowing

Isolated and unsure, I turned to prayer. I asked for clarity, for guidance, for meaning.And that prayer became a spiritual quest.

Eventually, I was introduced to the practice of ancestral reverence — an ancient, global tradition rooted in honoring our departed loved ones and calling upon their wisdom, protection, and presence in our daily lives.

It felt like a homecoming.

I began building a relationship with my Ancestors through prayer, meditation, offerings, and study. I listened for them in dreams, in synchronicities, in the silences between my thoughts.

And they responded.

In visions, stories, and quiet whispers, the tribes of my African and Indigenous Ancestors began to reveal themselves. I learned about my lineage through meditation, family history, and historical research. I remembered parts of myself I never knew were missing.

A Healing That Western Psychology Couldn’t Offer Me

As my relationship with my Ancestors deepened, I found a liberation I had never experienced in a Western psychotherapy office.

They helped me:

• Heal the wounds of intergenerational, racial, and systemic trauma

• Reclaim my identity and cultural pride

• Break cycles of inherited pain

• Shift deep internalized beliefs born from colonization

• Learn to love myself unconditionally, even the flawed parts, in ways I didn’t know were possible

They taught me to decolonize my mind. To challenge the idea that healing must come from a clinical model that often pathologizes culture, flattens spirituality, and ignores systemic harm.

My Ancestors offered a framework rooted in strength, not deficiency. They showed me how to bring values, rituals, and ancestral teachings into my practice in ways that honored my clients and helped them remember who they are.

This Isn’t a Trend - It’s a Legacy

It’s important to say this:

I’ve been doing this work for over 25 years.

Long before it was buzzworthy or trending on social media, there were BIPOC healers - like me - who were practicing ancestral healing with deep reverence and spiritual integrity.

Before we were therapists, we were medicine people.

Before there were degrees, there were lineages.

Our Abuelas, our Elders, our Curanderas, our Shamans, our Santeros, our Babalawos - they carried what Western psychology still fails to name:

That suffering is not just individual - it’s ancestral, global, systemic, and spiritual.

And that HEALING must be, too.

From My Healing to Yours

When I began integrating ancestral wisdom into my work with clients, I witnessed transformation unlike anything I had seen in conventional therapy.

Clients released long-held shame.

They reconnected with cultural pride.

They came to understand that their pain wasn’t only about their families or upbringing but was rooted in the deeply oppressive systems that shape how we live, relate, and survive.

They recognized that true healing required naming not only personal trauma, but the deeply broken systems we've all been taught to navigate as if they were normal.

They moved through grief, addictions, identity wounds, and inherited beliefs with a new sense of rootedness.

They remembered that healing doesn’t just begin with them, and it doesn’t end with them either.

A Call To You

So I ask you to reflect:

• What colonial conditioning might still be shaping how you see yourself or how you do your work?

• What silent assumptions have you inherited from your Western training?

• Where are you pathologizing what is actually spiritual or ancestral?

• What ancestral support have you yet to call on?

Now more than ever, the world needs healing that is liberating, transformative, and decolonized.

The ancient ways are not lost - they’re waiting for us to remember.

Let The Ancestral Wisdom & Healing Method™ be a path of return to yourself and to work that lights you up.

If You’re Ready to Begin:

Click here to learn more about the first cohort beginning later this year! More details coming soon!