Recently I began investigating the concept of Ancestral Trauma and Healing Ancestral Trauma in greater depth. I have spent almost eight years focused on healing my past issues from this life and others and healing my ancestral lineage. This focus on myself has allowed me to help military and family history clients with their journey as they discover things through research that were secrets or unspoken.
Family secrets, shame, guilt, negativity, abuse, trauma, fear, and other negative-based energies create a lot of blockages in our lives. They also create grief of which we may not always be aware until someone dies or we lose a job or have some other loss.
Healing Ancestral Trauma is also a topic most family and military history researchers avoid. It’s kind of a taboo subject like admitting you can hear/see/smell/touch the spirits of our ancestors or other dead. However, when we do not address our family’s trauma and baggage – we continue to carry it forward in our life and pass it to future generations.
Online Course – Healing Conversations
I discovered a healer/facilitator named Shauna Janz through the Ancestral Medicine practitioner listing. Her website discusses all of her services but what drew me in were her three classes on grief. She has a Teachable website for Sacred Grief where she teaches these courses.
Having been living in anticipated grief and other things since I met my now husband, especially the last two years if you have followed this website and my YouTube videos, I noticed many of my clients had similar issues as I did.
Shauna teaches a short course called Healing Conversations. I signed up for this yesterday and spent all morning reading the material, taking notes, exploring websites she recommended and now am ready to sit with the material and let it simmer.
This course talks about how we as a friend, therapist, facilitator, researcher, etc. can hold space for those journeying through grief. Shauna explains that in our modern world, most societies do not teach you how to grieve or even give you permission to grieve. It is more about “get over it,” or “men don’t cry” or “this will pass and time heals all wounds.”
When we hold our grief in because we have not been taught or given permission to express it – it can create more issues in our lives including disease. Isn’t it about time we learn some tools to move through grief for ourselves or to help our loved ones.
What does it mean to hold space for someone? It means we listen without judgment, we validate someone’s stories or feelings, we are a safe container for them to share their feelings and thoughts. Sometimes holding space just requires us to give a hug or be silent and hold someone’s hand. Other times it is us speaking up to validate what we heard and ask questions to which the griever may have no answers.
This class gave me exactly what I required today to learn some new tools in a quick way with easy to understand examples and narrative. Several handouts were provided and a resource guide was given at the end of the course. Now I’m all set to journal on what I read and consider how I can use these tools with my clients or friends and even myself.
Visit Sacred Grief to learn more about Shauna’s classes. I did register for Roots and Resiliency which begins soon and is only offered in the fall. I anticipate this will help me on more levels than I can even imagine.
Can I help you?
Are you ready to learn the bigger picture of your family member’s military service? Would you like support moving through the emotional and spiritual side of family and military research? We are a firm with not only hands-on document experience but also travel experience and can connect you with a guide or suggest places to stay and visit. I also facilitate clients and course participants through the mental and emotional parts of their family history.
We are taking new clients and can help you find the answers and tell a deeper story about your family member. Email us at info@wwiirwc.com to set up your free phone consultation today to discuss project options, fees, and time.
© 2019 Finding the Answers Journey & the WWII Research & Writing Center
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