People on the other side can be helpful in ways that living people cannot. People on the other side are available to support us, and their love is an energy that flows to us as much as we want. One of the main ways I sustain my mental health is by asking my mom, her mom, and other ancestors for help.
I want to say that living people are busy and distracted, while the people on the other side aren’t busy. But that actually isn’t true.
In my mythology, people on the other side are busy keeping things going. My mom and her mom are part of a huge mass of Shakti energy, vibrating red and powerful somewhere in space. They are fueling us with energetic love. But that’s a continual process, and there are no deadlines or challenges. My mom, her mom, and other ancestors hear my cry and listen to me, and send their blessings to me to help me get through whatever is hurting.
My ancestors are invested in me. They know everything now–there’s nothing they fear. They handed me their gifts: there’s work I’m here on earth to do. Who else is going to do it? I think they just like me.
But also I am their hope. I’m the culmination of their hard work. They handed me the baton, and I won’t drop it.
hard work
That means
- healing
- justice work
- community
- all the art I make
- the truth I tell
- the depths to which I cherish my loved ones
- my reverence for Parent Earth
- the respect I pay to all beings
- my witchery
- my trans queer joy
- fat dancing
- radical mental health
- disability justice
- pleasure
- the dreams I dream
It’s a responsibility, but a sweet responsibility, not the drudgery kind. This work keeps me alive. I’m blessed with life for hopefully another few decades; it’s my turn to carry this work forward.
No one pays me for my hard work. Or I am paid in integrity. Knowing I’ve done what I can to improve the world by being who I am, feeling how I feel 24-7 is how I get paid.
My life hums with meaning, which also comes from interdepending with Ming, supporting my queer chosen family, and a groundedness in where I am here in Oregon while knowing where I come from.
if I’m wrong
A lot of people think that when we’re dead, we’re just dead. There is no afterlife. I truly believe they are mistaken based on countless personal experiences of the other side, religious visions, how I make art by pulling it from the other side, when God has spoken to me, and when I almost died and Jaguar came to save me in the rainforest.
But what if I’m wrong and there are no people on the other side loving me into persistence?
If the nay sayers are right, my ancestors are with me anyway, supporting me in my very cells.
- the mitochondria from my foremothers
- my genetics
- the sound of my voice
- silly phrases my parents used that I still use today
- how I cook
- my height
- the shape of my body
- health risks I inherited
- values like how important family is
I received traits from my ancestors that are so much a part of me that I probably can’t even see them, like the fish doesn’t understand what water is.
I can call on my ancestors by bringing them to mind and comprehending the vastness of their contributions. It could be an entirely spirit-free world, and the loving support of my ancestors would still be real because they made me physically and culturally.
held
But the truth is, I did a very difficult thing about a month ago, and that night I was freaking out. Ming comforted me as best they could and lit the Virgin of Guadalupe prayer candle on my altar. I went to bed. Ming agreed to come blow the candle out in half an hour.
I lay crying in bed, feeling gutted by vulnerability and fear. In the flickering candle light, my mom, her mom, and her mom were with me. They came into my room and held me emotionally in some kind of vigil, crouching by the wall. Throughout time for thousands of years, brave genderfucking enbies like me have been taking risks with big love, defying their cultural programming to step outside the bounds of convention and be who we truly are. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do in the world.
My ancestors were there for me, and I cried until I was able to sleep. I never need to be alone if I don’t want to.
This same is available to you. If not your literal blood ancestors, people on the other side want to love you. They could be your queer ancestors or transcestors, your art ancestors for whatever art you make that matters to you, some neighbor friend of your mom who took care of you sometimes and cooked you delicious foods you don’t even remember. Maybe if you and I are close, you could even get love from my mom and hers, as they love me so much, there are leftovers. They would love you too.
lonely
A good friend of mine is missing, and I don’t know if they have died. I believe that if they have died, they’ve joined their mom now on the other side, and possibly they are joined my ancestors also. Just because we were close, and why not? There’s so much love to go around.
If you’re ever having a hard time and suffer from loneliness, you could let your ancestors hold you. There are many ways to honor them and invite them in.
- remember the ones you knew
- smile at the good times
- take their names as your own
- learn about your family history
- hold an object they passed down to you
- ritual to connect
- pray to them, asking for their guidance and protection
- thank God for them
- Day of the Dead ofrendas
- play the music they liked
- put the kind of flowers they liked best on your altar
- cook their favorite foods
- sort which of their values you want to keep, and which were mistaken
- hold hands with them in your imagination until it’s more real than imagination
Previously I mentioned my mental health. In the perspective of some psychiatrists, what I’m saying is make believe or crazy. But if this is crazy, sign me up. My experience and knowledge predate psychiatrists. They can go fly a kite.
I hope it’s a beautiful rainbow kite on the beach, and they quit their jobs to become full time kite fliers. I told my dear friend the other day, I only love people who are crazy. Luckily we’re all crazy somehow.
Somebody gotta do it!
