Breaking the Cycle: Understanding Illness Beyond the Individual
The Myth of Personal Failure
Do you ever feel blame, shame, guilt or fear towards your illness, pain or diagnoses?
In our individualistic society, we're conditioned to view illness as a personal shortcoming. We ask ourselves:
What did I do wrong?
Why can't I just get better?
What's wrong with me?
But what if illness is not a personal failure, but a complex narrative of inherited experiences?
Ancestral Threads of Healing
Your health is not just your own. It's a tapestry woven from:
Intergenerational Trauma
Unprocessed emotional wounds
Survival mechanisms passed down through generations
Unconscious coping strategies embedded in your DNA
Cultural Conditioning
Your illness is deeply influenced by:
Societal expectations
Cultural work patterns
Economic pressures
Community dynamics
Ecological Illness
Both the decline of biodiversity and degradation of earth’s living biosphere as well as human’s disconnection from the natural world creates:
Toxic build up in the body
Decreased Immunity
Nervous system degredation
Lack of vital life force energy
Breaking the Cycle of Blame
Recognize the Broader Context
Your symptoms are not just personal - but they are your guideposts. The paradox is: “It’s not your fault, but you are responsible.” Even though your current situation contains so many influcences beyond your control, your current situation is what you have to work with. Taking responsibility for our “work” without blaming ourselves (or our ancestors or culture), we can take our power back. This power is absolutely necessary for healing. And, thankfully, even though ancestral and cultural factors that play into your health challenges, that seem “out of your control”, are a lot more accessable than you think.
They're a conversation with your ancestors. Ancestral and intergenerational pattern breaking is the secret sauce to truly transform your life. Learning from traditional medicine lineages and contemporary ancestral healing methodologies, this is not only possible, it puts the potency in the tincture that is healing. Healing comes from wholeness and when we reach for our wholeness, we embrace the generations who have come before us. This conscious relating, weaves a tighter fabric of interconnection, the backbone of support we need to thrive.
They're a response to cultural stress. Doctors prescribe diet changes and exercise. You need to do this or this or that or get surgery or take this pill. But the thruth is, we are often living out a lifesytle either because it’s a) habit, i.e. what we have been exposed to and are mimicking, or b) compulsion, addiction, obsession, attachment or coping mechanism - a way that we deal with life and/or the underlying emotions we feel. The culture we live in is inherently stressful, but we can’t just change our habits or lifestyle addictions, we must also address the underlying emotions that exist as present stessors, but most often in cahoots with past undigested emotional material.
They’re a result of declining ecosystems and disconnection from the natural world. Finding our way back to reciprocity and rhtyhm with the Earth will support our health on all levels. As we see ecosystems and the other non-human beings struggle or disappear, we are likewise losing parts of ourselves. The earth’s health is directly linked to our personal health, and vice versa.
Holistic Healing Approaches
Ancestral Work: Acknowledge family patterns, break the cycle, attune and communicate with your Bright and Well Ancestors, epigenetic transmutation.
Cultural Awareness & Neurodecolonization: Understand systemic stressors, move away from cultural norms, get help in recovery from “western civilization”, begin integrating neurodecolonization practices like meditation, nature communication, mystical embodiment, re-evaluate value system.
Compassionate Self-View: Replace guilt with self-compassion, replace blame with the power you can take back to heal yourself and your lineages, replace fear with curiosity, replace shame by healing the underlying trauma (personal, familial, ancestral, cultural).
Integration of Earth medicine: Natural medicine including returning to meaningful relationship with the Earth, as well as doing what we can to protect our lands, waters, and fellow creatures.
The American Lifestyle: A Health Challenge
The standard American lifestyle is not designed for wellness:
Constant productivity
Minimal rest
Disconnection from community
Processed foods
High stress environments
Your body is not failing you. It's communicating.
Empowerment Through Context
By broadening your understanding of illness, you can:
Release personal shame and the “fixing” mentality
Connect to a larger healing narrative
Reclaim your agency
Understand health as a collective journey
Your Healing Path
Healing is not about fixing something "broken" in you. It's about listening, understanding, and transforming.
You are not alone. Your body holds wisdom. Your ancestors walk with you. The Earth is medicine.