Three brothers - An ancestral healing process
An ancestral healing experience emerged in me a week and a half ago. I’m still in it, though several layers have been processed and are beginning to integrate. I was leading a group session of relational presence when the back of my heart dilated, followed by the distinct inner imagery and feeling of a few people entering my body through my heart as if boarding a boat.
I felt two men and an illusive third presence. I immediately knew that one man was my great-grandpa Jacob, my middle namesake. The bony structure of his face was downcast, his cheeks slightly sunken, and he wore a hat and woolen coat. As I kept my awareness with him, I sensed gentle waves of grief, shame, and fear. I stayed with the nearly still-life image until his head lifted. I intuited that he was shielding another person.
Slowly, another man’s face was revealed. His eyes looked scared, and I sensed guilt and some freeze as I stayed with him. I noticed it was difficult for him to make eye contact with me, and I perceived more relational grief, shame, and fear between him and Jacob.
That night and the following day, I continued to bring my presence and loving awareness to the process. The words “hidden” and “missing” kept appearing as I stayed with these two men and wondered about the third presence. I messaged my dad to ask about Jacob’s history.
Growing up, I had only heard about my great-grandpa Jacob, his wife Edla, and their family. I never knew he had siblings. My dad informed me that Jacob had two brothers, John and Isaac. The three brothers emigrated from Finland to the United States and separated upon arrival. Jacob and John went to Ohio, and Isaac traveled west to find work in the mines. They never saw or heard from him again. My grandpa John and his sister Laura (Jacob’s children) looked for Isaac for the rest of their lives. I can’t be sure, but I imagine Isaac didn’t want to leave Finland, and perhaps there was some level of falling out among the brothers on the voyage over.
Returning to the process over the last many days and nights, waves of frozen emotion continue to unthaw, move, and settle in the ancestral layer of my nervous system. When ancestral healing emerges, the tone in this nervous system layer is often rounder, smoother, warmer, and more dreamlike, as if hearing an echo reverberating through the empty rooms of a house I may have once lived in. A gentle shaking usually accompanies the healing waves, allowing energy to return to a free flow in my lifestream while vibrating healing impulses through the ancestral root system of embodied time.
And there are these beautiful, poignant moments where the ancestral crosses over into the personal. I have carried some of the grief, shame, and fear of Jacob and John and an imprint of the lost, hidden, and missing brother, Isaac, which felt like anger and sadness. As I began to feel the presence of Isaac through my epigenetic imprint of Jacob’s experiences and memories, a deep wave of my childhood grief emerged as the youngest of three brothers who often felt alone, separate, and not in full belonging with my older brothers.
Two nights ago, I dreamed about my brothers John and Paul and felt more completely welcomed home into familial belonging as I woke in the morning, particularly with Paul, the middle brother in our triad. In my youth, there was often a slight tugging in me, wanting to feel closer and more accepted and included by Paul. In the night my solar plexus and belly subtly opened to a deeper connection between John, Paul, and me, where I can now receive a fuller abundance of life through the brotherhood of my male lineage.
I’m in curious wonder about what other pieces of family history may now come to light and how this dynamic may have impacted other brother triads in our extended family system. Ancestral trauma patterns continue to live in us through generations until we have the capacity to witness, feel, love, and heal them back into more conscious wholeness.
I’ll travel sometime in the coming year to Finland for myself and also for Isaac, the lost great-granduncle I never knew about, who has now apparently stowed away in my heart back to Europe. I’ll bring the three brothers back home and lay my body down on the Earth at the old Sippola homestead.
In April, I’m back in Duluth for a week with my wife to visit family and offer our Heart of Touch training to support personal, ancestral, and collective healing. Miriam and I have poured a lot of love, experience, wisdom, and passion into this offering, as we believe that the collective crises of these times call for collective processes of healing, awakening, and relational presence.
