demystifying "the underworld"

using lineage as a tool to know ourselves

My second cousin Marian recently texted me and told me she was going to see Michelle Obama speak for her new book tour. Marian is our family historian; she lives in a historic home in Delaware and has all of our family records. Marian knows that I love Michele Obama not only for her power but also for her poise; when I read “Becoming”, the part I enjoyed the most was her retelling of her childhood and her family history. She understood the value in knowing her roots. She knew what her grandparents sacrificed to move her to Chicago. She knew what her parents gave up to afford her success.

I like to think that who I am, in my cells, in my DNA, and in my neurobiology, is inherited. There is a reason that 23 and me and Ancestry.com are popular - it’s because the people before us, who overcame war, trauma, famine, and death, made us the people we are today. The better I can understand what came before me, the more meaning and purpose I can find in myself today.

For example, I have always wanted to start my own business. I have been “starting things” from a very young age (organizing plays and bake sales and charity events) and professionally I’ve been building businesses for other people my entire career. Despite saying the words, “I want to start my own business” for almost 15 years, I have yet to do so. I started to wonder - why was this so hard for me?

I started to gain another perspective about this when I went to a shamanic power animal class (a sentence I never thought I would type). In the class, which is a way for people to learn indigenous traditions of connecting to the underworld (more information here), we had to try to identify a power animal who could spiritually guide us into answering the questions we have of life. Recently, I’ve been researching ways indigenous people have used animals, nature, or their ancestors as a listening tool. It’s a way to help answer your “unanswerable” questions in life.

In the lineage of my family, there have never been any entrepreneurs that I am aware of. Most of the females in my family history worked until they got married and had children. My entire family history is tied to Philadelphia area; all four of my grandparents grew up in working class neighborhoods: Collingswood, Fishtown, North Philadelphia and Germantown. My grandmother was a “comptometrist” for an advertising firm before marrying my grandfather and having children and moving to the suburbs. Many of the women in my family took traditional roles in “helping” professions such as nurses, stay at home moms, or taking odd jobs to support the family financially while still having time to organize the household and raise the children.

As the oldest grandchild, in her second marriage, mid-thirties, career oriented and no children - I have known for some time that I do not “fit the mold” of my ancestors. What I am starting to realize is that my body is inclined to feel resistance because no one in my family has ever done what I am attempting to do.

By developing a relationship with “the underworld” - I can listen intently to the messages my ancestors are sending me. For example, I remember a last conversation I had with my paternal grandmother before she passed away. She was in hospice, and she looked at me so deeply and lovingly, and asked if I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything I’d like to do less than that: blood and sickness and hospitals scared me. Now, I’m wondering if she saw what I know now, that I was brought into this world to heal people.

I can listen to the quiet encouragement of my maternal grandmother, who advocated for my mother to go to college despite my grandfather refusing to pay for it. I hear support of my mom and dad, who selflessly sacrificed many of their own desires in order for me to go after my own. I feel the love of my aunts and uncles who went to every single one of my plays and basketball games and ballet recitals.

And above all, I listen to the laughter of my younger cousins, who are so smart, so beautiful, so loving, and have so many gifts to offer the world. My only hope for them is that they listen to themselves more intently than the generations before. I think of my own young adulthood; of the relationships I endured, the environments I put myself in, and the situations I tolerated simply because I was not listening to myself and did not have the tools to navigate the situations around me.

I have finally opened my own business in the spirituality and personal development industry. I like to believe that somewhere, someplace, my great grandmothers who swept the marble steps of their North Philadelphia row homes are smiling, my great uncle who drove his friend’s car across the country to California is sending me a note of encouragement, and my grandmother is giving me a big hug.