When the Ancestors Whisper: My Search for Spiritual Validation in a Family's Silent Past

In 2024, feeling heartbroken at the political turn of events and realization of the deeply polarized people of the US, I found myself drawn toward reaching out to the spirit of my great-grandmother.

Anna was born in and survived political turmoil in southeastern Ukraine before being dehumanized and imprisoned by Nazis in one of Germany’s concentration camps. She would be liberated from that camp and–along with the rest of the living members of the family–fled to the USA as “Polish” immigrants to seek safety from further death and dehumanization that awaited many Slavic peoples post-WWII.

How did she survive? How did she move on from all of that? What ancestral lessons were learned that I could draw on now to protect my son and other loved ones as authoritarianism (with an undeniable fascist flair) takes power in the US and threatens the Constitution that I swore an oath to defend and uphold?

Following the Paper Trail

First came my father’s side of the family. As I built a tree using free online tools, several generations of the family auto-filled from the work already done by unknown distant relatives. I could see the Irish side of the family that fit neatly into the narratives passed down about coming to the US at the turn of the 20th century. But I also got to see the branches with deep roots in the early immigrations to “The New World” long before the US was dreamed of. My love for the state of Delaware is in my blood and bones.

Building my mother’s side of the family proved about as difficult as I thought it would. I was so excited to learn that the records we were mistakenly led to believe were destroyed by the Nazis and others weren’t so destroyed after all. Church records in Ukraine could help with birth details needed to determine who was where and when. However, these same records are hand-written in Cyrillic.

Having been slowly learning Ukrainian for a few months, I could recognize and vaguely understand some of what I was looking at. The work of transcribers who’ve translated the Cyrillic into English also helped. Yet, I was struggling to find the names as we learned them.

Many of the immigration records showed multiple spellings of the same surnames. My great-great-grandmother’s headstone reads differently than how she put her first name on US documents. Those relatives she traveled to the US with would go on to spell the same surname the way the itinerary did, while she and Anna would spell it notably differently.

Getting into my great-grandfather’s surname was even more daunting as there was no consistency at all. Even on his social security applications he listed his father’s surname differently than his own despite both likely having been the same when written in Cyrillic. Digging through the prisoner records of Nazi Germany concentration camps, the “Ost-” prefix often posed a challenge for the scribes who had to try Romanticizing the Cyrillic names into German. They would often write the name, cross out the prefix and try to rewrite it, then cross the whole thing out and rewrite an entirely different spelling above it.

The Work We Inherit

As I took these experiences with me into the spiritual work of Samhain season, I felt the undeniable call of the ancestors to understand that every single person along the way–for better or worse–crafted parts of the stories that lead to us and that it’s then up to us to carry this tapestry forward to craft our own stories. The generations that come after will continue our work from there.

Whether we inherit trauma or sweet nurturance, we all have work to do that will become a part of someone else’s story.

What records have you inherited? There will always be parts of our family stories that we can’t prove. So we can look, instead, to intuitive knowledge, reflecting on behavioral patterns and the emotional echoes that have been passed down generation after generation.

No matter how much or how little you know of your ancestors, what wisdom do you feel calling out to you? What ancestral stories, traumas, or strengths whisper to you from your own past? How can you honor these echoes without being bound by them?

This journey taught me that spiritual clarity often comes from acknowledging the whispers of the past, not just the proven facts. It's a powerful form of self-reflection that can illuminate our present path.

Listen for the Whispers: A Reflective Practice

I invite you to explore your own journey of following the whispers down the rabbit hole. Set aside some time over the next couple weeks to reflect and record:

• Ask: What is one family story, pattern, or "echo" you feel you've inherited, even without concrete proof?

• Feel: What emotions arise when you consider this? (Grief, strength, curiosity, fear?)

• Reclaim: What one quality—resilience, caution, creativity—did this lineage need to survive? How can you consciously embody that quality in your life today in an empowering way?

This journey has solidified my passion for helping others listen to their own inner whispers. While I explore the best way to bring this work into a guided format, you can continue exploring with me by signing up for my newsletter, The Starlight Circle, where I share insights on reflection, intuition, and personal history.

In Light & Love, Evylyn