The Path to Forgotten Freedom: Healing unresolved ancestral trauma

Catherine left Ireland during the Great Famine. Exhausted and hungry, she feared for the life of the child that she carried inside her. The cold autumn wind pierced her threadbare clothes as she stood unsheltered on the ship’s deck. What fate awaited her on the streets of Victorian London?

Standing behind each one of us is a line of ancestors with stories to tell. In Western culture where ancestors are forgotten and family secrets unspoken, many go unheard. They are waiting to be uncovered as we are carrying our ancestors’ wounds within us.

Alongside telling the story of her great-great-great-grandmother Catherine Riley, Nicola explains the impact that inherited ancestral trauma can have on us. She offers practical steps to enable this trauma to move through the body and psyche using techniques from Shamanism to wild therapy and dreamwork to genealogical research.

Themes that underpin the causes of many ancestral traumas include power, powerlessness, oppression and control. These are explored alongside reflections on how on our lives and the lives of those that came before us are affected. This book offers hopeful practical solutions to live in a different way and presents a path to reclaim the lost freedoms of our ancestors.