Is My Life Too Loud for the Ancestors?
I haven't been hearing them much lately.
One of the things I'm most excited about with the coming of the Autumn season is the chance to experience more quiet; and not an empty quiet, but one that's pregnant with old knowing and life force.
This Summer has been so loud with activity (much of it very beautiful) that I haven't felt particularly close to my ancestors. Of course they're always present, dwelling in our bones and the Earth itself, but I like to feel that aliveness of being in a regular conversation, and that just didn't happen very often this Summer.
While the ancestors never leave us, just like the land is always holding us, being in conversation with them is a subtle art. In my experience, they rarely shout at us or rush down the streets of our lives with sirens blaring. Not only do they communicate in more subtle ways, they also wait for us to call them, which we often forget to do.
When I'm feeling like my connection to the ancestral realm is running dry, I try to get out to a wild place, because it's there that I can become quiet and still enough to hear them–often through the presence of animals that come through, flashes of insight, or a symbol I find on the land.
I couldn't get out to the land alone much this Summer, but I've done two ceremonial walks in the hopes that I could fill my cup and sense that magic again. These times with wildness did fill my cup, but I didn't sense much magic.
What it felt like instead was coming into a quiet room after you've been in the front row of a rock concert. As I stepped into the forest, it was like the music was still reverberating off of me, and I needed an hour or more of that Tree/Fern/Raven quiet in order to settle into coherence again.
Part of me was hoping that after some settling, I'd have an epic experience like the ones I've had before–locking eyes with a Stag, or being guided by Eagle, for example–but the experiences were just ones of quiet. Rain falling on the river. Wind in the trees.
Two Banana Slugs embrace. The land offers a quiet magic no matter what. Photo by me, 2026.
When a lot of Water falls on dry soil, it can't soak in fast enough and flooding can occur. Our busy lives, so often pummeled by the loud noise of machinery, can dry out the soil within us so that when the ancestors do try to send hydrating messages, they just run off and we can't absorb them. This doesn't mean that anyone is doing anything wrong, just that something is imbalanced.
I know that I'll feel the ancestors close and experience their magic on the land again, but my sense is that I still need more time to become quiet enough to hear their whispering wisdom.
In case it gives you some ideas for how to rehydrate your own spiritual soil right now, here's what's helping me:
Recommitting to my practice of getting up early, before my kids awake, so that I can have some quiet time to meditate, journal, and ask the ancestors to hold us that day;
Scheduling time to go and be with the land, without high expectations, knowing that this is a period of recalibrating my nervous system and remembering how to hear the beings there;
Driving in silence rather than listening to music or a podcast;
Scheduling a retreat early in the Winter season so that I have some deeper, intentional quiet to look forward to.
The ancestors, the land, and our own souls are always open to engaging with us, and it's a lot to try and do that in the midst of planes flying overhead, the phone buzzing, and people needing our attention.
I hope that as we settle into the changing of the seasons, you find some windows of pregnant quiet that enable you to hear yourself, your mighty dead, and the vitality of the land again. Those connections are the life blood that animate everything I care about, and I wonder what could become possible for us if we turn toward them with greater commitment this Autumn and beyond.
If communicating with your ancestors is of interest to you or if you struggle with keeping that conversation consistent, I invite you to join me for Ancestor Speak, a class I'm teaching on September 16th and October 6th.
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