Healing the weight of the ancestral line

The Ancestral Line

At this point, it is rare to find a person who is not somewhat aware of the impact that their ancestors have on their lives. The echo of the action of one individual can be felt for decades after their passing, thanks to the link that is created from generation to generation in a family line. Depending on the person, they would talk about a trade or a thing that they have inherited, a character or physical trait, a philosophical or political view, a specific sports team, or a genetic or energetic issue. No matter what, they are all talking about the same thing: the weight of the ancestral line can be easily recognized, no matter how light or heavy it can be perceived, if one bothers to pay attention.

The ancestors, Mulan would tell you, have a way of making themselves relevant even when you have no idea of how they are connected with that recurrent situation or feeling in your life that for some reason just doesn't go away, no matter how hard you try. And nowadays it might not only be getting serious but also tiresome. 

Because just in the way you can't run from yourself, you can't separate yourself from the people who came before you, those whose existence is proved by the fact that you are here, alive, and still going: your ancestral lines (and yes, this also applies to people who don't know anything about their family for whatever reason. But we'll talk more about that at another time.)

The Weight of the Ancestors

As we established before, the ancestral lines are the reason why we are alive. Your great-great-great-great grandmother decided to give birth to a child and that child lived enough to produce another child who created another child and so on until we get to you, the ultimate conclusion of many, many lives.

This great synchronicity of events, all of them charged with the energy of life itself, has an energetic impact that more often than not wants to keep the family expanding and growing. Whatever hard decision or suspicious act committed is for the greater good of the line, whatever it takes for it to carry on surviving. 

Sometimes these acts can be openly immoral from a social point of view (like, say, murder), and sometimes they can be extremely good (like helping others), nonetheless, every action and inaction carries the weight of a simple message: life must go on. And if heavy feelings, like fear of abandonment, for example, have done the trick for 4 generations straight no matter how traumatic that was, then that kind of energy is going to keep replicating itself until a descendant of the line either claims it or changes it or, paradoxically, until the line dies over too much stress from a kind of approach that just doesn't work in the modern world.

The energy propelling the ancestral line might have good intentions, the best intentions, even, but sometimes what gets passed over from generation to generation is the kind of weight that, because it has been there from the very beginning, feels familiar and safe... Until we realize that it's not, that it has been isolating us and hurting us for a long time; and not only that, it's not even our responsibility to deal with it in the first place because it didn't originate in us.

I can give you a practical (and fictional) example of this. A relatively famous one, even. Let's talk about Draco Malfoy and the heavy weight of his ancestral line.

Draco Malfoy

As you might know, Draco Malfoy is one of the first (and somewhat minor) antagonists that Harry Potter meets at the start of his journey of being a wizard. Draco, described with platinum hair, pale skin, and a nasty demeanor, is right from the beginning the kind of character that is made for the reader to reject and easily label as the spoiled one, the rotten one, the bad one. He is just that much of a foul character.

And yet... Still to this day, Draco Malfoy has a not-so-small garrison of people who defend him, who have seen way more deeply into his two-dimensional character and declared him to be just a child who didn't have that much of a choice, very similar to Harry in that regard.

Draco's supporters have read the same books as you and I, they know the full story and the severity of his actions once the war exploded in the wizardly world, but they have also tapped into their intuition, saw all of the clues, and arrived at an irrevocable conclusion: the blame is not entirely on Draco, it's in his family. The Malfoy.

The Ancestral Malfoy Weight

When we meet the Malfoy family in the book, we all know right away that they are rich, politically powerful, pureblood magicians and are also heavily involved in You-know-who's history of terror. We also know, although is not so explicitly said, that they are quite small in numbers, being a unit of 3 in contrast to a big family like the Weasleys. Their bond runs deep in tradition, power, and talent for the dark arts. And that is exactly the way Draco grows up perceiving the safe space that was his family: to belong to the Malfoy, you have to essentially be a bad guy.

Now, just as every villain thinks of themselves as the hero of their story, Draco doesn't really know the meaning and the heaviness that being part of the evil crew carries with it until later in the books when he's ordered to complete a task that is way beyond his capabilities as a way to fix one of his father's mistakes. At that point, it's already too late to escape and Draco finds himself trapped in a situation that started years before his birth, with no real allies and the weight of his family name and legacy on his young shoulders.

Suddenly and almost cruelly, Draco understands the real meaning of being a Malfoy: being a pawn in the Dark Lord's game set. And so, being the bad guy is no longer about bullying the unfortunate ones to be out of their social status; it's about something much more sinister.

The weight of the Malfoy ancestral line is strong, binding, and quite painful to imagine. And since it's the energy that has made the ancestral line survive all this time until Draco, who is the sole heir of the whole at this moment, he is the one feeling and living the full impact of it. 

In consequence, it's easy to spot what Draco's fans have been saying for years now: Draco is not inherently a bad guy, he was born into a family that (almost) left him no choice but to become one.

How Love Goes Down the Line

Just as Draco, and through him we as readers, could feel the heavy weight of his family legacy, it's also undeniable that the Malfoy, as bad as they are, are profoundly motivated by loyalty and love to each other.

All that the Malfoys were doing was defending a point of view that they believed was the right one (although it was so clearly flawed from the outside), the one philosophy that they thought would empower their line, their descendants, to grow strong. Draco's parents, Lucious and Narcissa, grew up with the same values, it was only logical that they raised their child the same way. Through the books, though, especially the last ones, all of their actions are rooted in a strong desire to allow the family to survive. Draco and Lucious go along with anything the Dark Lord says just so they can avoid any painful repercussions towards the other, and Narcissa betrays Voldermort at the end just so Draco can have a chance of surviving when things are looking particularly horrific.

Although it might get lost in between so many details, hurtful feelings, and uncomfortable scenes, love is there, especially the parental love that both Lucious and Narcissa feel for Draco. The Malfoys love their son enough to go against tradition, even more than they are afraid of the Dark Lord. What they really want is for their son to survive. They want the family line to carry on living.

Nothing else is as important as that. Their love is that strong.

What to do with the weight

At this point, you might be wondering how can a fictional character help you point out what is, exactly, the weight that you have been carrying your whole life. Hopefully, your situation is not as black and white as Draco's but still, it can be pretty confusing, irritating, and isolating.

Worry not, there's a solution. Actually, you have plenty of modalities that can help you discover, deal with, claim, and clean the heavy charge, good and bad, of the unresolved energy of your ancestral lines. One of them is by making an appointment to have a Family Constellation done.

In a Family Constellation session, you can see outside yourself the way several members of your family interact, and how the story and traditions of your family are affecting you; you can witness the legacy of your ancestors and their powerful will, at times misplaced, that wants you to survive and then to go and live the most out of your life.

You might not be a Malfoy, but the lines always want the same thing: to allow life to keep going. For you, their alive descendant, to live.

Breathwork, of course, it's another modality that can help you discover which energies belong completely to you, and which ones you are carrying for the line, waiting for you to resolve them. It's a more somatic approach and a really powerful one as well.

There's so much more to talk about the ancestral lines, not only the heavy weights (and what a healing moment is when that is released) but also the tremendous resources that are available through it. If you want to explore more about your own line and how it's affecting you, there's no better place than the HERE retreat to do so. 

Plenty of modalities (including Family Constellation and Breathwork) and opportunities to wade into your legacy in the company of experts that can support you in that moment. How wonderful does that sound?

See you there!

Harry Potter and all its characters belong to J.K. Rowlings and are being used here just as an example.