Jan. 10, 2021

Motherhood & Spirituality Episode 2: Adventures in Ancestral Veneration

Motherhood & Spirituality Episode 2: Adventures in Ancestral Veneration

In this episode of Motherhood and Spirituality I kick things off with a simple ritual. Then, I delve into my current spiritual practice and how Spirit has advised me to tone it down a bit. I also dive into how tackling my own personal trauma has changed my relationship with my ancestors. I swear the local Nature Spirits and My Ancestors has been coordinating these days :)

Be sure to check out the next episode where I'll be interviewing Sarah Marshall Neal-- a mother of four. We'll be talking about her journey to becoming a Priestess of Freya and how her spiritual practice has evolved over the years. We also get into keeping your kids spiritually empowered and the importance of discernment.

Enjoying this work? Slip me some change via paypal or subscribe to my newsletter where I offer New and Full Moon Ritual to support you and your family in working through each Full and New Moon.  

Immense Blessings, 
Jeannette 



Transcript
Me:

Peace and innumerable blessings. My name is Jeanette and welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the motherhood and spirituality, podcast. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening in this podcast. We're going to explore different ways of honoring your spiritual path, your spiritual gifts, your divine connection. While being a mother. My intention is to support you. And your spiritual path and your divine connection by sharing the wisdom and experiences of other mothers who are on the path, just like you. I come to this podcast as the mother of two boys ages four and six, a psychic, a root worker, a baby, hoodoo tree talker and a lay herbalist For this episode, we're going to be. Focusing on, ritual of the week. And then we're going to get into two segments what spirit taught me and I'm gonna talk more about my current spiritual practice. So let's get started The ritual of the week. So when I'm talking about ritual, I'm not necessarily always talking about you know calling in your ancestors and the wind. because if you have children and your children are a certain age that may not be your life. So I love offering like simple rituals to support you. So the simple, simple ritual of this week, is go connect with earth. Go connect with earth earth has medicine to support us in being grounded and present and healing throughout this time. Not only just healing throughout this time, but knowing that we have the strength, the stamina, all we need within us to make it. Divine mother earth is kind of like arranging people in places, and things to kind of create a more harmonious vibe because earth is really going through her Ascension process. So go visit the earth and like, you know, when I say go visit the earth, I mean, go chill with the earth. When you're walking on the earth, notice how your feet feel. And then come back. Notice how your body feels, notice how the wind feels on your face. Notice what you know, smells are in the air. Notice what the clouds are doing. Notice how the light feels on your skin. Notice if there are any animals around you saying, Hey, notice that there are like any plants calling out to you, be fully present and immersed. In mother Earth's presence, right? The presence of nature, don't just, you know, go out there. I'm walking, I'm being no be fully present when you're with the earth. And you know, walking may not be your thing. If you cannot walk, try to swim. Depending on where you are at, and if you cannot swim and you cannot walk, sit beside a houseplant, because houseplants are like, you know, the mini representatives of earth in your house, they're there to support you. Well, yeah, generally they help us out. There's a lot of things to help humans out and I feel like house plants are high on the list. So. Sit by your house plant and feel, feel it's vibe. Notice it in its pot. Just notice be present. Yes, that is the ritual of the week to connect what mother earth or one of her representatives and be fully present. And it's, it's simple. It's simple, but it's sometimes hard. Cause like it's easy to be like, Oh my God, I only have five minutes. I got to get dinner on. I gotta, you know, pay these bills. I gotta do the groceries. but like give yourself like just a few minutes just to be in your body and be with mother earth. If you want to take it like a little further you can leave an offering. Say thank you for mother earth leave Her, some milk and honey, leave her something sweet and good. That's cows milk, cows milk. And if you're not into cows milk, almond milk. If you're really stressed out about the state of almonds. Oh wow. Hazelnut is what wants to come out of my mouth. Hazel's not, No soy, a little bit of honey, if you don't do honey, um, go straight to sugar and it could be any type of sugar. The point is to pour some sweetness on the earth, to sweeten, your connection with the earth to sweeten it. And allow it to be like a sweet experience for you. All right. That's all that needs to be said about the ritual the week.. Next segment. We move in through, we move in through, uh, yeah. Okay. So the next segment is, yeah. What spirit taught me. What spirit taught me this week. Ooh, Jesus. Okay. So when we talk about spirit this week, we are talking about ancestors and I'm gonna talk about, um, my adventures and ancestral veneration Cause there's a lot, a lot of people are talking about, yeah, my ancestors, my ancestors, that, and we all have different experiences, the ancestors. So I'm about to kick mine. I'm about to share mine. I have this huge caveat. For you and for them. Cause I love my ancestors. I think about the fact that they made it through so much that I got to be here. I think about my ancestors who like were in life in the middle of their own lives and got plucked up from like various regions in Africa, made it through middle passage, made it through seasoning So my butt. Could be in France. I think ancestors who were like native American and had their ways of life trashed, have their connection disrespected kicked off their lands. But somehow I'm still here. I think about ancestors have Irish ancestors. Right. And I don't know a lot about them, but I know that like, you know, Hey, some, somebody was a womb or contributed some spur I got here. So like, I I'm thankful for all the lives that came before me, but I also recognize the more I get into an ancestor veneration and the more I work through the trauma, my own trauma that like, not all my ancestors can support me where I'm going and what I'm doing. Their ancestors who want me to do certain things that like I can not do. I can not do because it's not in me to do. It's just not in me to do. I want it to be in me. I want it, I want it, but I got to live my own life. And that is not for me. There are ancestors who are not, are not kind people. They're not going to be kind people they're not going to be, and they're not trying to be. They just, ain't trying to be, they got the ruckus in their spirit and you know, the record, babe. They happy what they ruckus and that's, you know, that's okay. And then there's answers. There's like, girl, I love you. Let's get it together. This is what you need to do this. And, you know, get these herbs and mix them together and pray under them. Like there are other ancestors who are like, do everything they can to make sure that I have what I need and that I survive. So I would like to say the more I worked through my trauma, the more I'm able to connect with ancestors are actually supportive of me. The more I worked through my trauma, the more I'm able to appreciate. The sacrifices that my ancestors made and the roughness that the hell that they went through that to make my life good. And the more that I process and work through my trauma, the more I'm able to set, um, adequate boundaries so that I don't allow ancestors who bring ruckus up into my space and I'm able to have more discernment and more compassion. Am able to say like, Hey, we ain't doing that up in here Y'all did that. I see the results, the fruits of that root And you are not coming here. You should not pass. We're not doing this no more on this line. And here are the actions, the spiritual actions I am taking to ensure that we are not doing that on this line anymore. And I'm going to pray for your healing. You don't want the healing. Well, I'm going to pray for it because you know, you, you ain't in peace. If you were not, if you were in peace, you would not be acting this way up in this bedroom tonight. So I want to say ancestor veneration has been talked a lot about, but it's not necessarily, it's not cute. It's not cute. You got to pray for your ancestors and you got to give, but also you got to work through your stuff because as you work through your stuff, you're, you're supporting their healing and lightening the line. But you also kind of need to realize when things are coming through you that are not helpful and be willing to let that go and also be okay that some of your ancestors. Ain't going to be able to help you because not all of them want to heal. Not all of them want to move forward. Not all of them about that are about that. Good. juicy life for you and that's okay. That's that's okay. Um, but as you know, I don't know what your practice is, but if you're a person like, you know, exploring ancestral veneration, I also say to you make sure that you're supporting yourself and your own personal healing, your own personal development and your own evolution and, and pray, pray, pray, pray for, for healing, for, yeah. Pray for their healing and their, their evolution and their upliftment as much as possible. Because there's more dead than there are alive. And, uh, like are dead deserve that no matter what, no matter where you're from the dead deserve their peace and they deserve to heal. And as they heal, we heal too. It's kind of like, it's a circle. So that's that, that's what my ancestors have put on me to say today about that. So let's go on to the next segment The final segment is what my practice is like this week. Right? So, my practice also changes as, as I heal as I come to have a. Deeper understanding of myself. And also as like the children get older, like full I guess, disclosure, we are homeschooling, we are homeschooling because of COVID and, and like the things that I normally would be doing, or I got to do last year when the kids are in, was it last year? At the beginning of last year when the kids were in school versus what I do now. Yeah. Very different. Oh, the luxury of time. And energy. So my practice was already like once COVID, once we started homeschooling good Lord. When did we start? Like March last year, my practice had already kind of like taken a hit because like, you know, you can do stuff with kids, but it's more challenging. So what I realized about my own spiritual practice in my own practice of like ritual was that I was trying way. Too hard and doing way too much. Like I would go and visit the nature spirits and they would be like, you know what? You don't need to give us that you don't need to do that. We just want to connect with you. We just want you to be with us. Can you be with us? Like you don't have to like be doing this all the time. The, the offering is your presence. Which touched me in my heart, but, you know, I poured out that milk don't, you know, I was like, here's milk. I'm gonna sit here and pour out this milk. And like these spirits be like, you, you give too much and you attract someone hurtful things cause you give too much. So my practice has been like. Reigned in and rained pulled back. So, um, it's kinda hard and weird to say, but like it's, it's become much more around prayer. My practice has been more about prayer and more about saying thank you. And like, um, I still do my offerings because I like to be generous what I got because I feel very blessed. So. Um, when I have it, I give and plus like, when I like working with nature spirits, it's not like I have to bring them rubies or anything. It's like bread and milk. And like, we have that that's, that's not the problem. It's not the problem. So my practices become something that's much more about connecting and being present and simplicity, simplicity. Anyway, so that is what my spiritual practice looks like at the present moment. It looks more like prayer, it looks like presence and that's that because the presence is the gift and that creates the space for connection. And that's ideally what it's all about. Right? It's about connecting to whatever spirits build in that relationship. Expanding your community in your mind, because there is so much more in this realm and this space and this time than just humans there's so much more, it's just this, this abundance of love and beauty and wisdom. That's just outside of just being human and it surrounds us and it takes care of us and it supports us. And we need to figure out like receiving that love and that support, but also we need to figure out like, you know, supporting it as well. I think we support it by healing and stop being such, you know, no farting in the elevator that is mother earth. all right. that's the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening. if you enjoyed this content, if you enjoyed this episode, please, subscribe it to wherever you're listening, please share with your friends, share with your friends, share with your friends, please leave a nice review. And if you if you got it like that, feel free to slip me some change by PayPal. I PayPal me ritual mama. That's me. It's in the show notes. You can also subscribe to simple weekly ritual, which is my newsletter and that's that I can not wait to, to be in your ear again soon. Stay blessed and take precious care yourself and each other. Bye.