Have you ever felt an ache you couldn't explain? Not grief for anyone in particular. Not sadness about anything you could name. Just a kind of homesickness for a place you've never been, or a longing that rises when you stand near old stone, or the sea, or a candle in a dark church.
I've felt it all my life. For a long time I thought something was wrong with me. Now I think it's memory. Not my memory, exactly. Something older, carried down a long line.
Lineage grief
For most of recorded history, the sacred had a feminine face. She was carved, sung to, named in morning prayers. Then, over a few centuries in many parts of the world, those names went quiet. The temples closed. The songs stopped being sung.
The people who set her aside were our ancestors. They didn't forget her all at once, and they didn't forget her lightly. They let go of her one practice at a time, until their grandchildren didn't know there had been anything to let go of.
Their forgetting
is the ache we carry now.
Why it was set aside
It's tempting to be angry at those who came before us for giving her up. But I don't think it was weakness. I think it was survival.
In many times and places, keeping the old ways could cost you your safety, your standing, your marriage, your life. The herbs went back in the drawer. The prayers became nursery rhymes. The goddess became a saint, or a witch in a story, or nothing at all. People did what they had to do to stay alive and keep their children alive. That is its own kind of devotion.
How she arrives
She rarely arrives as a vision. More often, she comes sideways. A name in a book that won't leave you alone. The same flower, or bird, or number, turning up three times in a week. A dream you can't shake. A sudden pull toward a stone, a scent, a piece of music you've never heard before but somehow know.
None of it proves anything. That's the point. She has always spoken in the language of coincidence, because for a very long time it was the only language that was safe.
The doubt
The most common thing people tell me, when they first start to feel her, is: I'm afraid I'm making this up.
I understand that fear. But I've come to see it as an inherited wound too. Generations were taught to distrust exactly this kind of knowing. Of course it feels suspect. It was made to.
And if the goddess calling you comes from outside your own ancestry, come to her as a respectful guest. Read writers from her tradition. Support the living communities who still honor her. The remembering is for everyone. Taking is not.
A lineage practice
- Hold something that belonged to your family. A ring, a recipe card, a photograph, a button. If you have nothing, hold your own hand.
- Name the ancestors you know, out loud, as far back as you can go. Then say, and all of you whose names I don't know.
- Sit in silence for five minutes. Don't ask for anything. Just keep them company.
- For one month, collect the signs. Write down anything that repeats: a symbol, a name, an animal, a dream.
- At the end of the month, read your list and look for a thread. You're not looking for proof. You're looking for a pattern worth following.
What I want you to know
It isn't too late. It's never too late. You don't need the right ancestry, the right training, or the right altar.
She is not waiting for the perfect candidate.
She is waiting for the open door.
For your journal
- When have you felt the ache, and what was around you when it came?
- What symbols, names or images keep finding you lately?
- If you could ask one question of an ancestor who still remembered her, what would it be?
In the long thread, Kelli