Ancestor work is the practice of feeding our hungry ghosts, breaking patterns, and sewing solidarity.

This work is customizable to your needs and interests. For example, I’ve worked with people on:

  • genealogical research

  • digitizing family photos

  • designing family history / photo books, and

  • the creation of altars and writing rituals

Ancestor Work

Contact me for Ancestor Work

How I arrived at this work

In middle school, I had a side hustle scanning people’s family photos. Digitizing is monotonous labor, but sometimes I’d also get paid to create family photo albums with these newly digitized ancestors. Even though they weren’t my ancestors, I felt they were aware of me, thanking me for paying attention to them.

Around this time, I discovered the many shared traits and interests I had with my own maternal grandfather — who I never met in flesh. We both collected elephants, did film photography, passionately believed in aliens, etc. My mother never spoke of him, so of course I became deeply fascinated with how one could be so similar to someone they’d never met.

In Fall 2022, I spent two months with Aurora Levins Morales on her ancestral farm lands in Puerto Rico. What pulled me there was a need for deep rejuvenation and an honest hard look at wasn’t working in my life — ancestral patterns and addictions that kept me trapped in cycles of burnout, anxiety, and depression.

Off-grid in the mountains of PR, I had the slowness to reconnect with my body and observe how the wounds of whiteness and traumas of colonialism block the free flow of energy inside me. The more grounded I became, the quieter my mind — quiet enough to hear my ancestors speak through poetry. After my time with Aurora, I knew why I rummaged; I understood why there were so many stories intentionally buried by my people and why ancestral reconnection is one of the necessary steps towards healing the wounds of colonization and capitalism.

So I started my own ancestral writing rituals, which led to the creation of two books, one devoted to each side of my lineage: True Image (maternal) and Family of Goofy Bodies (paternal). I’m excited to create containers for others to do this work because I know, after doing it myself, that it is oh so worthwhile but often heavy and lonely. The immensity of the cultural and ecological griefs we face now can only be held communally.

Testimonials

  • Carolyn Williams

    "A few years ago, I inherited dozens of family Memorial/Funeral cards from my older sister. She had been saving them for decades. They typically include a photo of the deceased and a brief biography. My sister passed these on to me, as well as some old family photos dating back to our grandparents. I wanted to create a family history photo book to pass onto my children and nieces and nephews.

    Vernonica thoughtfully organized the Funeral cards and corresponding family photos into a wonderful book tracing my family’s history and that of my mother and my father. Now I could send each person their own copy, including my sister.

    As I told Vernonica, not only has this photo book given me so much pleasure, but my sister, too. She passed away in 2017, and her copy of the photo book was given me to me as a keepsake. I could see that the spine of the book was pressed flat because she had read it so often. How happy that made me.

    Veronica was careful and respectful of these treasures. Working with her was a gift!"

FAQ

What is radical genealogy?

Radical genealogy is the process of “connecting individual family histories to the broader histories of racism, colonialism, capitalism, traditional culture, and political resistance that shaped our ancestors’ lives.” We trace the stories of our lineage to “develop a renewed and rooted sense of self that can power our efforts for collective liberation.” — David Dean, White Awake

Why do ancestor work?

The Somatic Transmission of Trauma

“The answer to why so many of us have difficulties is because our ancestors spent centuries here under unrelentingly brutal conditions. Generation after generation, our bodies stored trauma and intense survival energy, and passed these on to our children and grandchildren. Most of us also passed down resilience and love, of course. But, as we saw with my grandmother—and as we see with so many other human beings—resilience and love aren’t sufficient to completely heal all trauma. Often, at least some of the trauma continues” ― Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

Finding Allies in the Struggle for Liberation

"Ancestors pass on habits of mind, wounds, and silences that come from the historical context they inhabited. But in the larger, more Indigenous view, they also pass on love and support from a place that is deeper than that history. Much of the world believes that once the old ones enter the Spirit World, they see with true vision. They recognize harm they've done and are appalled. No longer able to undo their mistakes, they look to their descendants to clean up after them. And ancestors can offer us energy to powerfully assist in this." — Louise Dunlap, Inherited Silences

Locating Ourselves in History

“Mapping the specificity of our ethnicity also reveals hidden relationships. European Americans in this country need to find out in relationship to whom they became white… Questions about our place within the megastructures of racism become intimate and carry personality…it becomes possible to see the choices we make right now as extensions of those inherited ones, and to choose more courageously as a result.

The past is a powerful resource with which to explain and justify the present and create agendas for the future. Therefore it is only in the context of social movements against oppression that psychological trauma can be examined.” — Aurora Levins Morales

Decomposing White Supremacy

"Unresolved ancestral trauma contributes to and perpetuates supremacy within white bodies. The postures we embody as white people — superiority, domination, appeasement, and numbing — are protecting our underlying, untouched wounds.

We all come from people who once had healing and ritual practices, connected and reciprocal relationships with the land, and a rooted sense of collective belonging. As white people, we often lack the knowledge of who we are descended from or have been told partial truths about their lives. Tracing our ancestry in an embodied way offers us an opportunity to feel into how our people became severed from their ways of life and learned to inflict supremacy and domination onto others.

The feelings of fear, defensiveness, anger, and shame we carry around race tell a story about who we come from and what happened to them. Most of us were never told these stories, but they live on in our bodies." — Marika Heinrichs

Who is this work for?

Maybe a box of photos gathering dust in your basement brought you here…

or a suspicion of untold family stories

or a yearning for roots and belonging

or a reoccurring dream…

This work is for anyone curious about who they are and where they come from. You do not have to already know a lot of information about your ancestors to begin. I’m excited to meet you wherever you are. An open mind and willingness to go to heavy places helps this work be as meaningful as possible.

Can I combine this work with psychedelic integration?

Yes. They are deeply intertwined!

What do sessions look like?

This work is customizable to your interests and needs. I like to begin our work together by setting intentions and goals, as well as a set number of meetings. I find that providing a container for this work helps it stay directed and purposeful. Sessions may incorporate any of the following:

  • archive digging + research

  • deep listening + collaborative contemplation

  • writing / drawing prompts

  • tarot / oracle cards

How have I prepared to do this work?

  • BA from Grinnell College in Narrative Studies (coursework in English, History, Studio Art, Sociology, and American Studies)

  • 2-month embodied writing apprenticeship in Puerto Rico with Aurora Levins Morales focused on ancestral research

  • Wounding of Whiteness workshop with Tema Okun

  • What our Bones Know: An Introduction to Embodied Ancestral Inquiry with Wildbody Somatics

  • Colonialism, Cultural Healing, and the Dead course with Ancestral Medicine

  • Animism, Ancestors, and Psychedelics course with Ancestral Medicine

  • Radical Genealogy Training with White Awake

  • Reiki I/II Training

  • Years of space holding, personal ritual, and reconnection with my ancestors