Your ancestors are waiting for you to ask for their help and support.
They're waiting to hear their names called.
It's time to build and deepen a relationship with your ancestors.
Those who are here to offer their guidance and love.
It's time to remember and acknowledge the gifts you've inherited.
And face the harm, hurt, and pain that lives within your lineage and self.
It's time to find a sense of belonging.
Connecting with and tending to your roots.
Now is the time to weave yourself back into your ancestral story.
"Deep healing can only begin when we step fully into the truth of our individual and collective histories."
- Kimmy Johnson
What is Ancestral Connection + Healing?
Ancestral reverence is ancient. Regardless of our racial, ethnic, and cultural identity, all of us have ancestors who revered and tended to their ancestors. All of us have ancestors who lived in relationship to the natural world. We all have ancestors who valued reciprocity, community care, and ritual.
There was a break. A disconnection from practice, beliefs, land, and community.
There was famine, war, plague, religious persecution.
There was colonization, imperialism, displacement, enslavement.
For some of us, it was recent. For others, particularly those of European and Christian descent, like me, it's old. The pain and grief of that loss live within us. As do the beauty, love, and medicine of our ancestors.
Ancestral Connection & Healing is about connecting and building a relationship with our ancestors who are here to offer their support, love, and guidance. It's about remembering the practices, ways of being, and cultural identity of your people. It's about rooting into this well of love and support and exploring with honesty and compassion the pain, hurt, and harm that live within our lineages. It's about breaking cycles of harm. The cycles of harm that live within our lineages. The cycles of harm that shape our communities.
Rooting into who we are.
Choosing healing. Choosing repair.
For ourselves, for our ancestors, for the land, for the collective.
"You will find every possible story in your own family tree. So what you're afraid of encountering, it's there. And whatever you are praying you will encounter, it's there. I believe that every lineage holds points of pride. The fact is that if we go looking we will find their humanity. If you go looking in dreadful heritages you will find people to love and cherish."
- Aurora Levins Morales
SPIRAL l 5 sessions
Your ancestors will be the guides and I'll be there to facilitate and support.
Dreamwork and a sit spot practice will act as anchors as you deepen into relationships of reciprocity with your ancestors and the natural world.
You'll connect with your ancestors and guides through guided imagery, storytelling, and ritual.
You'll learn about and explore the practices of your ancestors such as ancestral plants, language, crafts, foods, etc.
Curated readings and podcasts will be offered as you deepen into this practice.
You'll be invited into a process of deep healing. For yourself, your ancestors, and for the collective.
The Details
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Five sessions, meeting either bi-weekly or monthly.
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Every session is 90 minutes long. Available via Zoom or in-person at Move It Studio in Lancaster, PA.
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The exchange is $850, 10% of all money received will be redistributed to BIPOC led organizations (receipts will be provided).
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Payment plans and sliding scale spots available.
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Single sessions available for returning clients at $200/session. Contact me directly to schedule.
What Folks are Saying...
"I had a truly amazing experience connecting with myself and my ancestors, starting a relationship to heal from generational trauma. Erin's knowledge and the practices we utilized in our sessions, along with exercises I worked on in between sessions, opened up a new channel of communication for myself. I have a more open ability to communicate, to ask for and give help, as well as thanks. I understand my family more, the challenges and choices that led to my immediate family's situation. I see more clearly how to heal, how to celebrate my people, and how to stay connected to my ancestors."
- Tierney
"Working with Erin is a joy- she is kind, grounded and insightful. At the end of my sessions with Erin I felt whole. I felt clarity about where I was going in my ancestral healing and the time/effort that it would take to get me there. I felt less alone. I am very grateful that when I decided to get support in my ancestral healing work, that it was Erin that I found and chose. I highly recommend!"
- Claire
My Healing Philosophy
My work with clients and students is always a collaboration. I am not an expert and our work dynamic is not a hierarchy. Every client and student I work with has something to teach. I trust that everyone knows what they need and that we are all capable of healing. My role is to hold space for inquiry. To ask questions and support folks on their journey. To always meet my clients and students where they are.
I believe healing is a process, not a destination. It's life-long and multi-generational. It is messy, non-linear, and scary. It's beautiful and expansive. It is all of the things. Ultimately, healing is the process that brings us closer to who we are and who we're meant to be. Disentangling ourselves from who we were taught to be and from who we had to be to survive. Healing is the journey of coming home to ourselves.
I believe healing is a radical act. I believe it's a powerful choice to seek connection rather than avoidance. I believe that when we look inward with honesty, accountability & compassion, we can bring healing to ourselves, our ancestors & show up rooted for collective liberation.
I bring a healing justice lens to my life and work. In her book, Liberated to the Bone, Susan Raffo defines healing justice as, "how the systems we seek to change outside of our bodies are also carried within our bodies." Systems like white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, settler colonialism and how they manifest in beliefs (both conscious and unconscious) like homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, racism, fatphobia, ableism, and so much more. I recognize that I've been socialized within these systems and they live within me. Part of my work as a healing practitioner is to do the work of uncovering and tending to the ways in which these systems of oppression live within my body and lineage, to understand myself in relationship to place, community, and history. I bring this lens to my work with clients by supporting and encouraging their inquiry into how these systems live within them, as well as, by recognizing that these systems impact us differently depending on the many intersections of our identity.
About Me
I was first introduced to my ancestors by my teachers Atava Garcia Swiecicki and Kimmy Johnson and my life was forever changed. Suddenly, I felt a deep, loving support and guidance in my life. I learned about the practices and belief systems of my Celtic and Germanic ancestors who lived in close relationship with the natural world. I began to understand myself as part of a bigger story, one that expands far beyond me. I received healing for wounds that were both personal and generational. I feel their support and love every single day and I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity to support people in building and deepening their sacred relationship with their ancestors.
My identity as white, European and Christian descended, American shape my own experience of this work and the ways I support others in this work. While I bring an antiracist and decolonial lens to this practice, I recognize my limitations and that I may not be the best fit for people who do not share in these aspects of my identity. I am always happy to discuss this with people who aren't quite sure and who feel called to my work. I'm also happy to provide recommendations for BIPOC and Jewish practitioners. Contact me for more information.
It would not be possible for me to do this work without the centuries-old efforts of Indigenous people and people of African descent to hold onto & maintain their cultural traditions despite cultural appropriation, colonization, genocide and enslavement. I have deep gratitude for the Indigenous elders who shared this wisdom and taught my teachers, Atava Garcia Swiecicki and Kimmy Johnson, how to connect & build relationship to their ancestors and to Dr. Apela Colorado for stewarding their learning environment.