My spirit was upside-down on my grandfather’s shoulders, suspended above the world I live in, entangled in an old lineage knot. This was the vision a Huni Kuin medicine woman shared with me during a healing session in Brazil in early 2025.
The image landed in me like a stone: how much of my life had been shaped by a situation I hadn’t even known was affecting me?
Perhaps you too have been affected by something you couldn’t name — a story from your lineage that lived in you without your consent.
My grandfather died when I was still a child. We were not close, and my parents rarely spoke about him. For most of my life, he felt like a black hole — inaccessible, unspoken, wrapped in shame. What I did know was that he had directed a factory, and that the nearby lake where my father grew up was polluted and smelly. My father responded by becoming a strong environmental activist alongside his diplomatic career. I later followed in his footsteps, carrying that same drive to resist, to critique capitalism and industrialization, and to try to repair what had been broken. His quiet determination to protect the earth became part of my inheritance, just as much as the silence that surrounded my grandfather’s story.
My grandfather was also a passionate gardener, tending a greenhouse filled with exotic plants. I imagine there must have been a soft, caring side in him that found pleasure in beauty and in nurturing life. Yet in my inner world, that image was drowned out by family stories about his emotional coldness, his alcoholism, and the failures of his career. For most of my life I had no living sense of him. He was more like a shadow in my psyche — not a person I could connect with, only a weight of fear and shame that lingered in the silence.
Reclaiming my relationship with my Grandfather
After the Huni Kuin healing session, something shifted. When the medicine woman guided my spirit back, for the first time in my life I felt I could even think about my grandfather. The curtain lifted. He became a person I could approach.
A few months later, while journeying in an online programme that explored unconscious beliefs around money and leadership, I realized I needed to confront the shadow of my family history if I wanted to step beyond my own fears and unconscious blocks. It was during this time that I began to search more into what happened at the factory my grandfather had led. A Google search revealed that the factory directors had falsified discharge data to make the factory appear compliant. Eventually the plant was closed down. No names were disclosed to protect the directors. This discovery brought with it an added layer of shame that I hadn’t been aware of.
The healing for me was not just in uncovering facts — it was in feeling what no one had dared to feel before me. I wept and wept, as if I was crying my grandfather’s shame and loneliness, my family’s shame, and perhaps even my own. It was raw, tender and unforgettable. And it opened a door. For the first time, I felt compassion toward my grandfather.
After that, new visions began opening up to me. I began to see that my grandfather had not only caused harm but had also contributed in ways I had never before allowed myself to acknowledge: he had created a school in the factory town, offered jobs to local people, and shaped community life in ways that mattered. His story was not one-dimensional after all. Both his shadows and his gifts belonged in the picture — and for the first time, I felt I could embrace it all. I could learn from his mistakes, be resourced by his gifts, and step into a clearer relationship with him.
Broken relationships keep us stuck
As I moved through this process with my grandfather, I began to see how much of our suffering comes not only from our lived experiences or what our ancestors did or did not do — but from the broken relationships we hold with them. I’ve come to realise that it is not the ancestors themselves who keep us bound, but the way we carry and relate to them.
We inherit stories and silences, carrying unseen grief, rage, and shame. Sometimes we even cut off parts of our lineage because they feel too painful, and in doing so, we cut off parts of ourselves. I know this feeling well: when I am entangled, my body feels heavy and restless, as if something that is not mine is pulling me down. Healing, for me, has meant learning to look honestly at what was harmful, to give thanks for what was supportive, and to create healthy boundaries so that I am not unconsciously driven by what belongs to others.
Healthy boundaries with our ancestors, as with the living, mean knowing how to be in relationship without being consumed. It means learning how to ask for protection, support, and guidance when we wish — and also how to let go of stories that are not ours to carry. This is how relationship becomes clear instead of broken: neither idolizing nor rejecting, but finding a way of walking together in dignity.
In Finland, I see how many family lines are tangled with unspoken history: wars, divided loyalties, forbidden rage and grief. You can feel it in the silences at the table, in the weight that lingers in a room, in the way certain stories are carefully avoided. And just as often, it shows up not as silence but as judgment: harsh criticism, resentment, envy, even a heavy sense of victimization that spills into daily life. Spirits never honored, grief never spoken, pain and blame carried forward instead of released.
During the years when I participated in Family Constellation work, I witnessed echoes of this truth again and again: when one member is rejected, judged, or shamed, the whole family feels the weight — often many generations on. We carry what is unresolved until someone dares to face it. And when that happens, something begins to loosen, allowing wholeness to return to the lineage.
Learning to honor those who came before us
Where in Finland I have often seen silence, judgment, and entanglement, among the Huni Kuin I have witnessed something very different. When someone passes away, grief is given full permission to move. People wail, weep and pray — the sorrow is not hidden but expressed, allowing it to flow through the body and the community until it naturally subsides. Prayers and rituals support the spirit’s transition, helping it to find its new role and place in relation to the living.
The respect for elders and ancestors is not abstract — it is embodied. Until just a few generations ago, it was common for the Huni Kuin to consume the flesh of their deceased relatives, a way of receiving their knowledge, energy, and spirit directly into the living body. Even today, those who have passed are regularly invoked in prayer, called upon for protection, channeled in rituals by shamans to heal the living and honored as active participants in community life. This continuity is also reflected in how the first grandchild is traditionally given the name of the grandparent, so that the spirit of the ancestor continues alive in the family line.
The Huni Kuin teach us how to honor the dead without letting them disturb the living. They remind us to give thanks, to release, and to invite only the support that is beneficial.
Another lesson they offer is that the past is not a place to get stuck. It is a place to learn from, and from there, to walk differently. My husband Rua Inu Huni Kuin often reminds me that no one is born knowing how to do everything — we learn through our mistakes, just as our parents and ancestors did. Mistakes are quickly forgotten and grudges released. This perspective has helped me soften toward my grandfather, my parents, others and even myself. To accept and forgive with greater ease, and to receive the lessons of the past rather than be weighed down by them.
Sacred Transition Prayer
Not long ago, someone important in my husband’s village passed away. I was able to witness the way his community walked with the spirit through this transition — with prayers, rituals, and the presence of family. And just this week, I also attended a funeral here in Finland, which was beautiful in its own way.
In these moments I am reminded of how every culture has its ways of helping the living let go and guiding the dead onward. None is better or worse; each carries its own wisdom. But I also feel how many people today do not feel fully met by the traditions available to them. In some church traditions, the language of sin and judgment can make it hard to truly release. For others, the church still offers deep comfort. Each person’s path is unique.
What I have come to see is that no prayer on its own — whether in church or in another tradition — can untangle everything for us. The work also happens in our own bodies, in our willingness to feel, to grieve, to forgive, and to release what has been carried for generations. Sharing my own story here is part of that process: to show how facing shame and silence can open into compassion and clearer relationship.
In my own service, I feel called to support our community in stepping out of victimhood and into freedom and sovereignty. The Sacred Transition Prayer is a resource that can accompany us on that journey. Offered by my husband, Rua Inu Huni Kuin, and rooted in his lineage, it is a prayer of dignity and release — for the departed, and for those of us still living who carry their stories within us.
For me, this kind of prayer has been like a key — unlocking doors that silence and shame had kept closed, and giving me access to hidden parts of myself and my lineage. It has reminded me that healing is not about rejecting or idolizing our ancestors, but about entering into clearer, healthier relationship with them. For those who feel called, the Sacred Transition Prayer is one way of supporting that process, alongside your own inner work of feeling, grieving, and choosing differently.
You can read more about the Sacred Transition Prayer and how to receive support here: https://www.enchantedboa.love/shop/#transition. And if this prayer is not for you right now, but you wish to stay connected, I invite you to subscribe to my blog or newsletter below.
May we learn to walk with our ancestors in clarity — honoring what they gave, releasing what is not ours to carry, and stepping forward with integrity, freedom, and wholeness.