The Frequency of Ancestral Echoes: What We Carry, What We Release
In October 2020, I gave birth to my second daughter at home.
It was the middle of the pandemic, and I wanted to birth on my own terms, listening to my body and trusting its wisdom.
Throughout that experience, I thought about my grandmother, Maria Orbe.
She was all of 4'11", and she had given birth to nine children at home in Ecuador.
She had passed away seven years earlier, but I felt her strength with me. I had felt it while birthing both of my daughters.
I couldn't ask her what those births were like. I couldn't ask what she feared, what she learned, or what she told herself when things became difficult.
But I knew she had done it.
And somehow, knowing that mattered.
I reached backward for her strength while bringing something new forward.
The echoes we carry
This month at Luna Serenity, our frequency is Ancestral Echoes.
I've been thinking about the things we carry from the people who came before us.
Some are easy to recognize: food, music, traditions, language, spirituality, the stories repeated at family gatherings.
Others are quieter.
What we believe strength is supposed to look like.
How comfortable we are asking for help.
What we've learned about rest.
Whether we believe everyone else's needs should come before our own.
My mother and grandmother are from Ecuador, and my ancestry results show that much of my lineage traces to Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.
There are generations of people whose names and stories I will never know.
Over the last several years, cacao has become one of the ways I commune with that lineage.
It gives me space to become curious.
Who came before me?
What did they carry?
What brought them joy?
What did they survive because they had no choice?
And what might I be carrying now that I actually do have the choice to put down?
Not everything we inherit is ours to keep
There is one pattern I have heard from clients again and again this year:
I take care of everyone else first.
Their children. Their partners. Their parents. Their teams. Their communities.
There is always someone who needs something.
For many of us, caretaking is deeply connected to love. It can be part of our families, our cultures, and the ways we learned to belong.
But there can also come a point when caring for everyone else means continually leaving ourselves out of the equation.
We keep going.
We override exhaustion.
We ignore the signals asking us to slow down.
Until the body eventually asks to be heard.
This is why practices like sound, meditation, breath, gentle movement, and rest matter so much to me.
They aren't about escaping your life.
They're an opportunity to become present enough to notice how you are actually moving through it.
Listening differently
You may know that you deserve rest and still feel guilty when you stop.
You may know you don't have to solve everyone's problems and still feel your body tense when you say no.
This is where embodied practice becomes powerful.
We pause.
We breathe.
We notice.
We give ourselves an opportunity to respond differently.
Nervous system regulation isn't about being calm all the time. It's about building greater capacity to notice where you are and support yourself as you move through stress, activation, connection, and rest.
Sometimes that begins with something very small.
Taking one deeper breath before answering.
Allowing someone else to help.
Resting before everything is finished.
Listening when your body whispers instead of waiting until it screams.
Release can also be an act of honoring
Sometimes we're afraid that changing a pattern means rejecting the people who came before us.
I don't believe it does.
We can honor what someone survived without believing we have to survive in the same way.
We can appreciate what our families taught us while choosing something different where we need to.
Not everything we inherit is ours to keep.
Some things are ours to honor.
Some things are ours to question.
Some things are ours to release.
When I think about my grandmother, I don't only think about how strong she must have been.
I wonder what softness looked like for her.
I wonder when she rested.
I wonder who cared for her.
Those are questions I may never have answers to.
But I get to decide how I answer them in my own life.
And perhaps that is part of honoring our ancestors too.
An October reflection
As you move through this month, sit with these questions:
What have I inherited that I am grateful to carry?
What pattern may have served someone before me but no longer serves me in the same way?
Where have I confused caring for others with abandoning myself?
What do I want the people who come after me to inherit from the way I live now?
You don't need to force an answer.
Get curious.
Listen.
Notice what rises.
Practice with me inside Serenity Studio
We'll continue exploring Ancestral Echoes throughout October inside Serenity Studio through gentle movement, meditation, nervous system regulation, sound, reflection, and intentional rest.
The invitation is simple:
Create small, consistent spaces where you are included in your own care.
You spend so much time holding everything else.
Let there be a place where you are allowed to soften, listen, and receive.
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