My Grandmother’s Flowers

Honoring Ancestors

I do not have a green thumb, but I try to grow some plants and trees in the lazy not-really-a-gardener way and sometimes it does work out.

When I work with clients, so often there are family heirlooms or passed down objects weighing them down in some way.

Many have a reverence or love for their past family members and want to honor them, but don’t know how.

One way you can do this is to transplant a flower or tree from their garden, if possible. Another way is to simply gather some of the soil from their land and bring it to yours.

This differs from an object inherited as you are bringing life to their memory and nourishing the good parts of them you admired, the parts they cultivated in their own lives and passed down to you literally or energetically.

You can do this with anyone you’ve loved, it doesn’t have to be family. That being said, you can still access your ancestral lineage in a healing way even if you never new them or had the relationship you desired, or needed.

Even if you don’t have a living grandparent where you can do this now, you can bring this practice forward in other ways, such as:

- Planting your grandmother’s (or whomever you’re honoring) favorite flower

- Planting their favorite tree

- Painting a picture

- Using a flower essence

- Making a recipe that your grandparents made with herbs, fruits, nuts, and/or vegetables from their garden

These flowers, now growing at my house, are from my grandmother’s garden and she passed many years ago.

Each time they bloom, my heart lights up with memories of her. The flower seems so resilient as if to smile and say, I’m always here, I’ll always come back, no matter what… no matter how bad I am about pruning or mulching or whatever I’m supposed to be doing in that regard…no matter how much of a black thumb I have…something else is happening…. something magical.

We often blame our ancestors and point out all their mistakes but bringing them to life transmutes the mistakes of the past into a supportive future ready to sprout a new way of being…of seeing….forging…forgiving…loving…remembering.

When I work with clients, we look at the ancestral influence and seek to see where and how it’s presenting towards daily choices, familiar & familiar patterns holding us back…. or an opportunity to re-write the story and pull out the useful parts, the good stuff and create new ones….new petals await discovery, new stems are always ready to sprout.

Planting flowers from the past in your garden (or in whatever way is available to you) helps change those patterns by growing them inside a new landscape while simultaneously honoring the wisdom carried forth.

These are my grandmother’s flowers….and now they bloom outside my window and greet me in a new time, a new way, in vibrant hues, an invitation to hear the voices of the past as if they whisper it’s ok to shine….to bloom….to become YOU.

Sometimes the support we need is on the earth beneath our feet.

Can you smell the flowers? Can you see the beauty? Can you feel the support of those you never knew, those elders fading from us, those that without their being….we would not be…can you let life carry you into a new landscape? Can the past be a living remembrance to a new future? Can you cultivate a garden of your own while letting the wisdom of the grandmother whisper through flowery notes that sing a song bridging the gaps of time?

In bursts of orange, sunny blooms and hues of love,

Angela