I feel their warm breath climbing up my throat, smelling of roots, worms, and underground things. The breath of my ancestors, stirring in half-slumber through my veins. The ones who lived once want to live again, and struggle to possess this spirit-flesh I call “I”.
These cries of grief for unlived life, how am I to bring them rest? Is it for this they gave me life - so they may live in my stead?
The branch feeds its roots by reaching for the heavens, not by slumping to the ground. By drinking sun, wind, and water, by casting shade for tired wanderers, and by bearing fruit.
If the choir of the dead echoes in my voice - that is not my voice! And my ancestors find no rest. But if my voice is a reply to their famished murmur - then it is my voice, and I earn their hurt and hope. When I echo the past, I deaden the present. But when I reply to the past, I breathe it life, and set us both free. Roots and branches become tree.
May our voices not echo, but reply,
Simeon
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
— The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 70
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Hurt is not ours alone. This piece traces how grief, memory, and longing live through us, until we learn to give them voice. Ancestral hurt can be a lonely weight to carry, but it can also be a call to transformation.
Suggested Reading
It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn
What if the strings that tug at your heart were woven before you were born? In It Didn’t Start with You, Wolynn brings psychological clarity to the spiritual intuition that we carry ancestral burdens we never consciously chose. Wolynn offers tools to trace hidden family patterns and give voice to the unspoken, helping us live freely rather than acting as conduits of past hurts.
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