Do you know where your tribe came from, your people,
your ancestry? I did my DNA testing and
I have a strong Celtic association.
While I have long been interested in DNA roots, inherited body, mind, heart,
spirit areas, I had not focused in on one, specifically. What does such do for me?
Having been found by my maternal birth family, I can
tell you, you know a great deal more of oneself by making that connection. It gives me reason to connect to the most
ancient goddess of my maternal birthright.
There are so many considerations that we might not have thought of, as
we venture on knowing more of Self.
As I adventured into knowing my twelve siblings and
birth mother, I began to find and hear stories of extended relations. As I got to know each sibling better, I began
to see incredible commonalities. For
instance, something as incredible as the fact we ALL crave dill pickle
juice. When I hit some trauma in my
life, I went around the isolated fly-in community I was living in and begged
for their left over dill pickle juice. We
are all salt lovers ( all popcorn addicts).
We have a sense of only liking certain kinds of sweetnesses. And, so many of us do not like the different
tastes of water. I always knew I hated
water. I could taste differences.
It was not until my fifth child was born that I came to know that he was
intolerant of minerals in water. He
nearly died. He was hemorrhaging in his
gut. It took several months for them to figure that out. He was also allergic to milk of any kind
except goats milk (thank god). I knew
that my earliest adoptive history that I was allergic to milk and, at six
months, had rickets and was malnourished.
If I wanted to get out of going
to school, all I had to do was drink a big glass of water when I got up. I would immediately hurl across the room. They would keep me home. As well, when I met my full brother, come to
find out, my birth mother had had to feed him clabbered milk because he could
not drink regular milk. So many other
inheritances that the immediately obvious.
Some things, right down to anger management is in all of us; things like decision-making in relationships
were very common; things like strength
and being workaholics; things like that
we are all driven people; type A
personalities; and the list goes on. Imagine what else we inherited, what else has
trickled down in our lives; how do the ancient ancestors abide in our very
souls?
We know that knowing the lifespan of our ancestors
says something about our life span. My
birthmother, aunties, grandmother, and great aunts, that we know the history
of, all lived into their mid-nineties.
This gives a clue as to longevity in my life. I have witness to special behaviors, talents,
likes and dislikes that come down the lines (peppermints).
Once, ancestry was very important in most cultures. We knew who our warriors were and what
families to tie ourselves to. We knew,
in ancient times, how to choose husbands and fathers of our children by
birthrights and traits. The ancients
were very tied to healthy genes, birthing patterns of ancestors, etc. It was, once, important to know if family
traits included faith, love, charity, respect and pride. Knowledge was passed down. We do not know how ancestors can be a source
of inspiration, a source of protection, and many hidden virtues and
values. We, as a modern culture, ever
changing, and changing quickly, have lost the sacred traditions of our
ancestors. How do we reconnect? If we have physical, intellectual, emotional
shared traits, do we not have shared spiritual traits as well?
One important ancestral inheritance, that most of us
have lost, is connection to our birthright language. We absolutely know that losing one's ancient language
is to lose connection to the intellectual, emotional and spiritual connections
to our beginnings. A generation or two
or three ago, Native Americans were being forced to forget their language and
we know how desperately they are trying to reinsert that in their education
today. Language is the way of expression
as deep as soul expression. If we trace,
or do DNA testing to find out where we come from, then we can actually begin to
revive the soul of who we are. I am of
the opinion that we receive messages from our ancients. How can we interpret those ancestral messages
if we do not know the language? The
bonds of love tie us to our ancestors and we will know, if we are of many mixed
heritages, what ones we are most tied to.
It is like loving one parent jsut a little bit more than another, of
loving a grandmother on one side more than another, of having connections and
knowing/sensing the strength of connections.
You will know what language you are drawn to. Even bugs have ways of messaging each
other. Consider bees who communicate
where to get pollen and nectar, they share that information and follow one
another through messages, to where they need to be. Ants have ways of communicating; even geese
honk to support the leaders of the Vee.
There are certain kinds of song and dance and music
that we are drawn to, if we are in tune.
Usually these things are passed down from parent to child, grandparents
to grandchildren. I have many passed
down poems and songs and recipes and nuances passed down from my adoptive
parents. Imagine how it feels to
reconnect to bone and blood songs, dances, music, etc. To know and then research such things in your
ancestry, it will, as a matter of fact, open you up to more deeply embedded
soul memories.
I have a sense that one day we will stand together
with our birthed ancestry. Would they be
disappointed that we were not delving into those things that make an ancestry
ancestry? Might it be that some of the,
what we might call Karma, comes back to us both positively and negatively? IMHO yes!!!!
Out of love and respect do we seek out our ancestry. Out of love and respect did I develop these
two pages about the Celtic goddesses and my connections to them. One, wayyyyy back, were my Celtic
ancestors. How can I know them if I do
not know their beginnings? I choose to
know the goddesses of my ancestry because it helps me connection, more, to my
very soul. I connect to lean on them
when I am tired of body, mind, and soul.
Of course, some might have some dark areas in/of their lives, or some
lives. Of course, they were tested in their
time the same as I might be tested in mine.
I so, encourage you to seek out as far back as you
can. Seek the culture, the languages,
the beliefs, hopes, dreams, music, ways of being. Follow your soul's yearning as you do
so. This is not worshipping of
anything. This is to fill in voids that
we might not even be aware of. Seek your
ethnicity and then seek out, if you choose, what ancient goddess they followed
and asked for knowledge of, and asked for protection of.
We are the product of our ancestors. We are the answer to some ancestor's
prayers. We can know how our past
becomes our present. We can come to understand
where our strengths and weaknesses come from.
I swear to you, it gives you a sense of purpose, of acknowledgement, of
affirmation.
When I did these two pages, I chose to use a coloring
book image and colored it. I cut it out
and used it. I painted a face on the
page. Then I added every bit of what I
knew to be Celtic goddesses and a Celtic prayer was made on a sheet of notepad
and added.
The second page has a painting I painted, a frame of
washi tape around it. I used sticky
lettering for Celtic. I used string art
to border the right side of the second page.
String art is wicked easy to do and so beautiful when done.
reference to string art and it will lead you to
others sharing how they did it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hgK1MR_nxU
©Carol Desjarlais 11.13.18
Found a cousin Issacs in Edmonton He is Metis through my gr grandmother . On an adventure .
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