Recognizing the Calls from our Ancestors: Shouts and Whispers

Family legacy, like dreams themselves, can move forward and backwards in time.

Welcome all dreamers and seekers to the new year!

How do your ancestors get your attention – through shouts or through whispers? Over half of Americans (53%) report connection with their ancestors who have departed according to the Pew Research Center, most of them through their dreams.

They may seek our attention, or we may seek theirs, through our spontaneous dreams, through incubated dreams in which we have requested contact, synchronicities, and waking dream-like occurrences.  I have delineated and identified six ancestral calls you can pay attention to. There may be others, but this will give you a place to start your investigation.

They are:

1.)  “Hello, we are still here, you are not alone.”

 2.) “Take these gifts or blessings,”

3.) “Let us help and heal you”,

 4.) “Please, please help and heal me, I am still suffering”,

5.) “I am still seeking revenge, this grudge is not yet over”, and

6.) “Carry on my name and gifts to your children’s and their children’s children. Remember.”

Some dreams of our beloveds come through with the simple message of “Hello. We are still here” With these dreams, we can acknowledge them and greet them in return. This alone can be a great comfort.

Gifts or blessings can come in the form of an object, a gesture, in words or actions. For example, if your grandfather placed his hands on your head in a dream, this may be a blessing dream. Sometimes the gift or blessing may be clear, other times it may be less obvious or even come disguised as something chasing us that we are initially afraid of. Once we have created protection, we can stop and face the person or being who is pursuing us and see if in fact they are trying to offer a gift.

“Let us help you.” Where do you need advice or assistance in your life? How are you at asking for or receiving help when offered? Allowing ancestors from the other side to offer and then accept their help may aid with both the immediate issue or problem, but also help you to become better at asking for or receiving help of all kinds.

When there has been hurt and pain and trauma in our ancestors’ lives before they died, they may not have healed from it yet. Our work then becomes to protect ourselves, find a way to offer healing to our ancestors, and pass that healing on to the next generations so that the pain is no longer transmitted. Legacy burdens and intergenerational trauma can fall into this category of ancestor visitation.

If they died with unresolved anger or holding a grudge, they may be recurring in your dreams asking you to perpetuate it (think Hatfield’s and McCoy’s, or Capulets and Montagues). Our job then is not to continue to act out this family saga, but to find a way to recognize and balance the wrongs and hurts and send the ancestral spirits back to the light where they can finally rest and be healed.

Finally, the call to remember. We can honor our ancestors by remembering their names and their legacies and teaching them to our children. We can choose to use artifacts of theirs that come with a story, even as simple a one as “These candlesticks came from your Grandma Rose.” So, Grandma Rose is then remembered and honored every time we light those candles.

Stay tuned for more dreamwork with our ancestors during the next year as my new book on this topic reaches its finish line.

Blessings on your dreams, your ancestors, and your children in any form,

Linda Yael