Overwhelm and the Art of Procrastination
How are you holding up lately? With sincerity, I hope that you are healthy, occasionally seeing friends and family in person, and able to pull off most of the tasks at work and home that are required of you. I (Sarah here) feel like I am riding the wave of stop and go with some finesse. I can never know when my child might be home for a surprise week off of school which can cause me to cancel all of my work. When we drop back into the rhythm of school, I witness a lack of “get ‘er done abilities” and make poor use of the window of “free” time. I am full of good intentions to accomplish my long list of tasks, but overwhelm and ADD kick in and I basically walk in circles. I feel like I might not be alone in this, so I will share what helps me to not feel like I am letting down my team in the other realms.
Ancestral Clearing
There are many gifts that come through a Dagara stick divination, but for the majority of my clients, I would say that the most important part is finding a connection to one’s ancestors. The majority of us are of mixed heritages. We barely know the stories of those who came before us, their triumphs, their hardships. What remains even more hidden, are the medicine or craft traditions. These gifts either went underground due to persecution, or were completely shut down so that the ancestors could fit in to new lands and new communities.
This is the season for the Remembering. Samhain time. The Day of the Dead. Why, you may ask, do we need to honor the ancestors? To live this life in balance in this world, we must be in gratitude. We would not be here if it were not for our parents, grandparents and the greats before them. Many people are challenged with this concept of gratitude when there is a history of abuse or negative patterns in the lineage. Rightly so. It is a difficult journey to find gratitude towards an oppressive character. But much healing can come from the clearing work involved in discovering gratitude. If we do the work of healing a lineage, we can clear it forwards for our children, laterally for our siblings and cousins, and even backwards for the ancestors themselves. We hold the energetics in our bodies of the traumas that affected our ancestors or were afflicted by our ancestors. The memory persists until it is acknowledged and transmuted. So how do we transmute ancestral trauma? With offerings.
Ritual for the Crone- Activating the Silver Crown
This is a ceremony to honor a woman who has moved beyond the years of menstruation.
What you will need:
Candle
½ cup of olive oil
Paper and pens for each guest
2 or 3 large Leaves ex. Banana leaf, or flax- and either plant cordage or string
Red rose
Sun tea- women- white sage, elderberry fresh (when gathering ask the ancestors to reweave their web of support.) dried elderberry, dandelion, red rose, mint.
Sun tea if men are present (just for men)- white sage, oregano, thyme, mint, fresh fennel, dried and fresh elderberry.
Bucket or tub for a foot bath
Sesame oil
Finding a Connection to Bear
One of the amazing gifts of tending to the Dagara lineage is that its tools and listening technologies are allowing our community to tap into the wisdom of this land that we live on. This land in California is vastly different from Africa, so it would make sense that a new language might develop along with some different shrines to the beings of this land. We have been nudged, ever onward by our guides to begin the journey of connecting to a spirit elder of the First people of the land here.
How to Recognize When a Spirit Ally Wants Your Attention
Have you wondered what it might be like to talk to a tree, or a waterway and have it talk back. There is a pretty good chance that if you frequently visit nature, that an ally in the outdoors might be trying to get you to notice it. Here are some common signs that you are getting a nudge from spirit.