Grief Tending & Ancestral Healing
For those carrying loss that predates them, grief that has no name, and ancestral pain asking to be witnessed
"And yet I fight this battle all alone / No one to cry to, no place to call home." — Alice in Chains, Nutshell
Grief isn't just about death. It's about all the ways we lose: people, places, versions of ourselves, the futures we imagined, the families we needed but never had. Sometimes it's loud and devastating. Sometimes it's subtle and slow. Sometimes it's inherited.
Your grief doesn't need to be justified or explained. It needs a place where it can be witnessed. I hold space for grief in all its forms: fresh, complex, ancestral, ambiguous, disenfranchised. I don't flinch at it. I sit with it. I hold it slowly and with care.
Grief is a spiral. Not linear. Not logical. It shows up in the body, in dreams, in sudden flashes. I work with grief through a somatic, ritual, and archetypal lens, and I understand it as medicine rather than something to move through quickly.
What we might work with
Personal grief: recent loss and death, childhood grief still held in the body, ambiguous loss when relationships end or identities shift, disenfranchised grief for losses others don't recognize as valid.
Ancestral grief: the grief you carry for your mother's mother's mother even if you don't know her name, inherited patterns of loss and silence and survival, lineage ruptures and unnamed wounds, dreams and visitations from those who came before.
Soul-level grief: the ache you can't explain, the pain that feels older than this lifetime, karmic grief reflected in your birth chart through Chiron, Pluto, and South Node placements, spiritual disconnection and feeling exiled from Source.
Shadow grief: grief that shows up as rage, numbness, anxiety, or confusion, the grief of never having had what you needed, grief for the person you might have been, collective grief for what's been lost in your community or lineage.
Grief and the Ancestors
Sometimes your grief isn't just yours.
It lives in the family field. It's woven into your body. It's the grief of generations who weren't allowed to cry, to scream, to break down. When we do grief work together, we aren't just tending your pain. We're beginning to soften the wounds of those who came before you.
This is lineage work. It's about recognizing that some of what you carry was never yours to hold alone, and that the ancestors want to help repair what was broken. We may work with the mother wound and father wound, lineage ruptures and lost names, ancestral visitations and dreams, and ritual to release inherited pain and call in the healed ancestors.
This work is informed by my ongoing study with Dr. María Hetényi in the Dagara lineage, where grief is understood as medicine and ritual as repair. I am also in ongoing mentorship with my Elders.
Grief as Spiritual Portal
Grief work isn't always about moving on. Sometimes it's about becoming more yourself. In the ashes of what was, something sacred begins to emerge. You become someone who can hold the complexity of love and loss at the same time.
If you're holding something heavy and you're tired of pretending you're okay, you're welcome here. Whether your grief is recent, ancient, spiritual, or unspeakable, it deserves time, tenderness, and truth.
Who This Work Supports
✓ Black sheep healing mother and father wounds ✓ Cycle breakers carrying unmetabolized family grief ✓ Mothers refusing to pass pain forward ✓ Those who've gone low or no contact but still carry the weight ✓ Highly sensitive and neurodivergent people absorbing ancestral pain ✓ Anyone grieving losses others don't understand or validate ✓ People experiencing spiritual or existential grief ✓ Those ready for ritual, not just talk therapy
Related Work You May Resonate With: Ancestral Healing & the Mother/Father Wound · Motherhood, Matrescence & the Mother Wound · Complex Trauma, C-PTSD & Inner Child Healing · Pluto's Realm: Shadow Work, Sex, Death & Transformation · Therapy for Highly Sensitive People · Shamanic & Ritual Work
From the Blog
Letter to Cycle Breakers: Healing Childhood Trauma and Breaking Generational Patterns