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How the Pandemic Connected Me With My Ancestors
I’ve been connecting with my ancestors for a very long time. As a memoirist, their stories have given me much to ponder and write about. In the writing workshops I teach, when I mention connecting with ancestors, some of my students have shared how they too connect with their ancestors and receive messages in different forms such as animals, pictures, and music.
While I’ve had some of these occurrences as well, something more powerful happened to me starting early in the coronavirus pandemic. I think pandemic living has made us all pay more attention to the little details in our lives. The time alone has led to much contemplation. I found myself craving nature and more often glancing out the window of my writing studio window where there is a fountain, writing table, and lots of red flowering plants.
A hummingbird would visit often. She didn’t arrive at a particular time of the day but rather while I was engaged in deep writing. When it arrived, I felt this renewed sense of hope and ability to see life’s larger picture. This was very helpful for my writing. Her arrival also had such a calming influence on me. I loved how I felt in her presence. Her energy seemed to be relaying positive messages, like telling me that everything happens for a reason and all will be okay. Having hope is important, especially when dealing with the challenge of living through a pandemic, and also the belief that my cancer will remain in remission.
When the hummingbird visits the garden outside my writing studio, she hovers in the center of a red trumpet vine for a few seconds, levitates, then moves on to the next. I’m quite sure that my grandmother Regina, who was also my caretaker, died in 1964, frequently visits me in the form of a hummingbird. She also lived through a pandemic, back in the early 1900s while living in Poland. She sends messages of love, offering me ongoing protection and reminds me to rise above the everyday rudimentary concerns of life to look at the larger picture. The stories and energies of our ancestral loved ones can help us navigate our own challenging times.
It’s been said that those who were close to you before they died commonly send messages in the form of bird spirit guides. Hummingbirds in particular resonate at a very high vibration, which lends itself to a more spiritual connectivity…
