How We Heal Our Thousand-Year-Old Trauma

We Americans have an opportunity — and an obligation — to recognize the trauma embedded in our bodies; to accept the necessary pain of healing; and to move through and out of our trauma.

~ Resmaa Menakem ~

Trauma Specialist and Bestselling Author

of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies

The Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle I co-facilitate with the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries is grounded in a simple truth: what happened to and amongst our European ancestors still matters.

Over millennia, many of our ancestors became perpetrators, victims, and witnesses of atrocious violence throughout Europe.  Survivors endured horrors such as their land being stolen, their languages and cultures being outlawed; plague, war, massacres and famine; gender-based torture and religious persecution.  Our ancestors’ ruptured communities, broken hearts, and desperation led many of them to take long voyages and settle here, on Turtle Island.  

In his article “Healing Your Thousand-Year-Old Trauma,” Resmaa Menakem shares: the new lives they found here did not alleviate the trauma they’d carried across the sea within their genetic memory.  In fact, their trauma was projected onto bodies of Culture/Color.  For example, some of our ancestors participated in the genocide of Turtle Island’s Indigenous peoples.  Some received land grants and built an economy that was based on exploiting the stolen lives and labor of African peoples.

Their trauma was codified into law as systemic white supremacy.  Elites designed divide and conquer policies to build intergenerational wealth for their descendants.  Meanwhile, the descendants of indentured servants were often trapped in poverty for generations.  Many of our people became bystanders who kept silent in order to survive.  Our ancestors’ ancient traumas are still impacting many of us, whether we are aware of them or not.  They are also impacting our beloved Mother Earth.

Together, we redress these legacies in our Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle. The core of our practice is honoring our ancestors’ human complexity.  In many cases, for centuries, our peoples’ memory has been silenced by denial, amnesia and shame.  We unwind this pattern by learning our ancestors’ stories and sharing them with each other.  We listen to the insights of trusted Elders and Indigenous guests.  Through ritual, we restore the memory of our Earth People ancestors.  Within a supportive community, over six months’ time, we begin the process of healing our thousand-year-old trauma.  With mutual support, we build our resilience and make reparations.  We re-member belonging to each other and to this land, as good relatives.