Nobody likes to talk about money, but everyone likes to talk about money…
Most people I know have an interesting relationship with money. So many behaviors or beliefs are cultural or generational. How we talk about money, how we spend it, how we save it or if we save it, and of course, how we make it. I recognize the patterns perpetuated as being very reflective in my immediate family. It is funny, how I can see one person’s behavior, yet that same person judges another member of the family for behaving in the same manner with regards to money. These inter-generational traumas, create a lot of division and judgment, as if you can be contaminated by another person’s behavior, but looking underneath the behaviors, we are all connected to the same pattern links.
In our family we are spenders, when we have it, we spend it. On a good note, I say that we keep it flowing, but of course, the bad note is that if there is an emergency, there isn’t much to fall back on. In other parts of the family, I know we have savers and investors, so all the money patterns cannot be just ancestral trauma. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is due to poor personal choices and what are patterns of Ancestral Trauma Legacy. My personal perspective is to do the healing work and see if it creates a shift to allow me to address other issues that are masked by the trauma legacy.
Last night I was in an Apothecary Magic class and we were focusing on money magic. Because I have asked for the focus of my learning to inform my healing practice, I often get different messages and understanding. In the visioning work with the plant spirit Bay Berry she shared that of course opulence and richness is often just an illusion, but it is not always a negative one. That bringing the spirit of richness is a way to attract more of the same. That bumps up against my frugal family heritage of Mennonites. I was reminded of a time when those came into conflict and kept me from planning a trip to see my ex-husbands parents. We didn’t have the money to pay for it, so it would have been on their tab. In my family that was not acceptable behavior, if it was done, there was a price to pay in being judged unworthy. That spirit of unworthiness kept my ex-husband from seeing his mother for her last Christmas. This is a specific “Ancestral Legacy Trauma” that I was able to come home and work on directly. Because it was late when we got home, I did some simple prayers before I went to sleep. I will reflect on this, and if additional work with other modalities is needed, I can follow up with it.
This is a perfect point to illustrate that inter-generational Ancestral Trauma Legacy, informs and can cause the repeating patterns. This causes additional traumas that can affect other familial lines. In my ex-husbands family, there was a generosity of material wealth, a spirit of abundance and benevolence. There were other family traumas, but the ability to accept wealth was not one of them. Separation and division may have been their legacy trauma, and my unworthiness trauma perpetuated more separation trauma.
I might also reflect on those who covet, horde or amass more money than can be spent in multiple lifetimes to have some kind of Ancestral Legacy Trauma, that informs those behaviors. Many are born into those families, but even those “self-made”, might have wounds that perpetuate it. We often have no idea how these ancestral legacies intertwine, and what affect the work will have on these outer edges. The lack of money informs many communities, and poverty creates its own set of additional traumas. It’s a deep rabbit hole, when you peer into it.
I share this, to illustrate those ripples of trauma. It can also inform your practices, with the possibility of shifting those ripples to healing. May you find healing for any Ancestral Legacy Traumas with regards to money and find enough abundance to live a healthy and comfortable life.
Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog are reflective of my personal path and experience. They are not presented as ‘truth’ to anyone but myself. I hope that they might spur insights in your own life and practices, but each of us have our own journey.