Moving Backward

Fast forward to 2023. Bandwidth and place opened the door for a project that has been in the line-up for years. I am writing a book. Based on ancestors, a generation that experienced the suicide of a 14 year old girl, the death by drowning of her father and the trauma that turned a the little brother’s life into a drunken trainwreck.

Moving Backward facing the German ancestry of my maternal line that I have always denied, the pathway to who I am today is clear. Marvelous discoveries of highly intelligent, creative people and scenes of dysfunctional abuse are augmented by my own musings of what may have been the workings of these three tragedies.

Bearing witness as a bhakta, shining loving compassionate eyes on this story, I lean into the idea that to share secrets, the skeletons, is to heal. Lancing wounds that have been forgotten, getting to the bones of the family disease of substance abuse and trauma, I am trying to understand what it means to heal my ancestors, to be whole in myself.

Let’s see how this goes….