Our modern world is becoming more aware of the importance of acknowledging, connecting with, and honoring our ancestors. We are also reconnecting with unique wisdom that can be gained by attending to and working with our dreams. Indigenous and traditional cultures have long maintained connections across generations, showing great respect for their elders and visionary dreamers (who are often the leaders and seers of the group).

We all carry our family history within and around us. Part of honoring our own family line and history and ensuring that their stories don't go unseen or unknown, is to attend to our ancestors and departed relatives in the various ways they present themselves to us. We can do this by making a family tree, by recognizing and attending to them as they show up in our dreams, our dream-adjacent waking life signs (such as synchronicities and deja-vu, and our visitations.

Dream visitations are qualitatively different then a dream about a departed relative. In a visit, we have a felt sense of a presence, a shiver, an embodied encounter with our mom or uncle. We hear their voice, feel their touch, smell their aftershave or perfume as if they were right with us in the room and dreamscape. Examples of visitations would be, "Molly said that she could feel her cat purring on her chest in a dream/visit," and "Jon said that he could feel his wife kiss his cheek and smell her shampoo."

What Is a Dream?
The word "dream" itself is one of the most versatile words in the English language—almost as versatile as our nighttime dream journeys and adventures. We use it to refer not only to the journeys that we take at night while asleep, but also for "daydreaming," that here-but-not-here state when our body is in one place but our mind is in another. We also use the word vernacularly to refer to a wish, a hope, a goal, a desire to make manifest: "I have a dream!" said M.L. King, Jr. Barack Obama titled his first book Dreams of My Father. We can be "Dreaming of a white Christmas" and we all know, along with Dorothy, that, "Somewhere over the rainbow, dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."

Our nocturnal dreams are influenced by our daily life, our personal near and far distant past, what is going on in our immediate neighborhood, and our larger world. We can dream for ourselves, for our family, our communities, our world, and for the land itself that we live or our families lived on. Dream meanings or guidance frequently come disguised in symbol or metaphor; we need to unpack their meanings at multiple levels to get the messages we are meant to get and put the dream-guided action into our lives. A gift for doing dreamwork is a gift in association.

Other times, we get an instant replay of life events; they show up in our nightly dreams just as they happened in life, or with very little shift or adjustment. This can be a delight if we are replaying the evening that we got that award, or terrifying if our nightmares are replaying traumatic events, whether they have occurred recently, years, decades, or generations ago. These nightmares can have the same power and effect on us that the original events did, and our emotional response can be the same terror or dread today as it was when we were a child, or even before we were born—and even more so if the dreams or dream themes or images are repetitive.

Dreams and Our Ancestors
So, a dream can be many things at different times. Our ancestors had dreams of their past and dreams of their future; some of better times, some replaying their persecution or pain. We are the dreams of our ancestors. We carry their lives within our DNA and within our energy bodies, within our physical stem cells and as genetic inheritance, and as a function of how we were parented, of our environment.

As I state in Ancestral Dreaming: "Deep in your history, your ancestors—your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, as far back as you can imagine and then some—had a dream, an image, a vision of what they hoped for the lives of their descendants… The very fact that your ancestors survived, sometimes against all odds, is testament to the power of your ancestral dreams. You are that dream, the time-traveled embodiment of their hopes and visions."

But you and your ancestors have been through healing and redemption as well as wounding and trauma. Psychologist Diana Fosha tells us that we are all hard-wired for healing. So, the trajectory is ultimately that of attaching and connecting, moving forward, repairing, and blessing. When our ancestors died with unresolved pain or trauma, we can still offer and effect healing for them, and thus for ourselves and for our descendants and students through active dreamwork and healing practices.

Intergenerational trauma is also called ancestral trauma or legacy burdens in different therapeutic methods and formats. Attending to your dreams and your ancestors allows you to heal any intergenerational wounds you may have inherited, to receive the intergenerational blessings and wisdom gifted to you, and to pass on these healed and whole legacies to your children and your children's children.

Epigenetics
The relatively new science of epigenetics, which is the study of how behavior and environment affect our genes, teaches us that in addition to our genetic inheritances of eye color or height, we inherit traits, preferences, emotional expression, parenting styles, and more from not only our parents, but our grandparents, our great grandparents and even more distant ancestors. It is not nature or nurture that affects us, but both. Through a process known as methylation, or changes in the genes, what happened in the lives of our ancestors can still be affecting us today.

Gene function can change in response to environmental cues and stress, and these changes can then be passed along to the next generation. The good news is that these types of genetic inheritances are malleable, and with conscious attention they can be changed and healed. When the past contains unspoken secrets, the painful memories stay buried, as in a crypt. Awareness and open attention to our dream hints and waking life cues Noticing patterns is a good first step.

The Six Calls
I have created a system for work with dreams and ancestors comprised of six calls described in detail in Ancestral Dreaming. It helps us to unpack the ways in which our ancestors may be calling out to us. Each call, be it in a shout or a whisper, needs a different response from us. Some of these calls are gifts or blessings; others are cries and pleas for help and healing. It is advisable to create a protective bubble around yourself before interacting with these ancestors and visitors, and Ancestral Dreaming shows you how to invoke the ancient Sapphire-Blue container of Light for protection when doing so.

Then six calls are:
1. "I am still here, and you are not alone."
Here we are reminded by the visit that connection with our beloved doesn't have to end with death; they can remain with us in spirit and dreamtime and accompany us in our lives.

2. "Take these gifts, blessings, or apologies."
From the other side of the veil, they may be offering you gifts of wisdom, advice, and blessings, and sometimes an apology that wasn't able to be spoken while they were alive.

3. "Let me help, heal, or warn you."
Here, your ancestors may be trying to get a message to you—you need some help, and they can offer it, or watch out, pay attention to signs in your life to avoid a problem.

4. "Please, please help and heal me; I am still suffering."
Sometimes our ancestors died in pain and with unresolved wounds and trauma. They are thus stuck in between, not able to finish their journey to the other side in peace. They are asking for your help now, and you have the capacity to help and heal them, as well as pass down the healing rather than the wounding to the next generations.

5. "Watch out: This old grudge has not yet been resolved."
This call is often an old revenge that has not been settled or resolved, and can still be haunting them, you, and your children. In this case, you must create extra protection for yourself and send these spirits all the way to the Light to release the grudges, stop the revenge cycle, and finally rest and be healed. (Think of the Montagues and Capulets, or the Hatfields and the McCoys, to recall some famous revenge cycles.)

6. "Carry on my name and gifts to your children and your children's children. Remember."
Tell your children and grandchildren of their family stories (both of a birth and adoptive family if adoption in in your family constellation), use their dishes and recipes, light a remembrance candle. Pass on the light and the history, and may their memory be for a blessing.

Looking to learn more about ancestors and dreamwork? Explore more with Ancestral Dreaming: Heal Generational Wounds Through Dreamwork.