Indigenous Trauma

Welcome and setting intentions 0:00

I am so delighted you are here. Joining us again today. Is it a privilege to be part of this community of learning, community of healing, community art, connection that we're building here? And I know that by making yourself part of this community, by opening your mind and your heart, your energy field, to all of the ideas, all of the gifts of this group of people, this group of teachers, that it has the potential to shift you profoundly. And also, it is your declaration to yourself of being willing to move in this healing space.

Many of us feel stuck in our traumas, feel stuck in our ways, feel stuck in our worldviews, and we're going to see about shifting in the course of each day. I want us to be listening. I want you to be journaling. Make sure you have a pen and paper or a device close by to make notes, and record some of the wisdom you'll get here, and then develop an action plan with each interview. Have a set of things you'll do to apply what you learned in your life. It's only as we apply these things that they take root in our behavior, and they have a chance to really help us transform a deep level.

So I'm so glad you're here. By being here, you're raising your hand and saying, I'm ready. I'm ready for joy. I'm ready to release all the things that have held me back. I'm ready to be present. I am ready to. To find my transcendence, find my bliss and be in that space of. Of oneness being that space of consciousness, being the space of awareness and live a life that is present and fulfilling. Right here, right now. So I'm grateful you are with us today, and you are going to be so jazzed to share with my next guest.

I've been so excited about connecting with her. And her name is Grace Sesma. She is Yaqui Indian and Mexican with roots in Sonora and Baja California, which means Lower California in Spanish. Like many Mexican families, she grew up seeing her mother and her US use cultural and herbal remedies to help people, people around them, helping. She's contributed a several books, including voice for the Ancestors and Meditations for Inter Spiritual Practice. Grace serves on the Yankees of Southern California Tribal Council.

She's also presented at many universities and professional conferences on the indigenous healing traditions and methods of North America. She encourages a blending of traditional indigenous healing with holistic practices and conventional medicine. Her website is curanderismo.org all spelled out for you. Make sure you get it right. curanderismo.org. Grace I'm so excited to be connecting in this way today. Thanks for being here. Thank you for inviting me to be here with you, and to share a little bit about my perspectives on the topic and some of our cultural practices that will hopefully help our viewers.

And you grew up immersed in this. So this is not a world which most people who are listening today did, grew up immersed in. But you grew up seeing your mother, your father, your, your relatives around you all using these methods. Absolutely. And that's really not that unusual for those of us with, indigenous roots, even those of us who have, had to leave our traditional communities, our grandparents, our parents usually continue.

Grace Sesmau2019s background and ancestral calling 4:06

They bring those practices wherever they've gone. and so if somebody is here with us who perhaps is, indigenous ancestry from Mexico, they probably grew up with some of these practices. It's not that unusual. what is unusual for me, in a sense, is that my, what I observed in my childhood, what I experienced in my childhood, became a calling from the spirits, from what I call the grandmothers and grandfathers in the mean time. So that's a little bit different. But a lot of Mexican communities, this is just part of our everyday life.

you know, the herbal remedies, the, the prayer, the the, the smoke cleansing that we do. oftentimes the grandmothers will cleanse the grandchild, you know, with, with Gopal and, and bless them before they go to school or perhaps when they're going on a journey. So I want to, you know, I want to make sure that I, acknowledge all the the healers in our different communities, even those who don't have a social media presence because they are equally skillful and sometimes even more so than many of us who have a a larger presence.

And then you, of course, had that calling to become one of those people that was learning these methods and sharing them and working with other people. I'm intrigued by your story of how that's happened, and I'd love to have you share that story of finding that as a calling for you. Oh, yes. Thank you. My calling. Now that I look back on my life, I'm, you know, 67 now. So it's a it's a time in my life that there's a lot of reflection and, and looking back and seeing how my path was rather serpentine, but brought me exactly to where I needed to be.

And for me, I was looking back. It started not only by being in in my family of. People who didn't consider themselves cultural practitioners because they didn't serve the wider community. But I did have an out on my father's side, my paternal aunt, and she was the one that the community actually acknowledged as equal there. She is who the our neighbors went to for help with spiritual illnesses that were not, treatable by physicians. And also, I come from my very humble beginnings. I was born in Mexico, California, which is part of Kumeyaay land also, and in one of the the poorest barrios of Mexicali.

So for many people, being, and I won't say poverty because it wasn't poverty, it was humility. It was not having, financial resources, but we were very rich in community, in connection, in our spiritual practices. So going back to my auntie, she, was the one who they considered as Curandera. And so I got an opportunity to see her sometimes when she was working. But oftentimes, as it is in some communities, my parents didn't want me to to get too close to her because they were concerned that I would follow in her footsteps.

you also, the joke is on them. so, yeah. And for me, I never looked at it as something that I was learning. It's not like going to school. It's just part of what you are experiencing. And so you learn by watching even when you don't know that you are learning. Right? However, in the time, yeah, I was 6 or 7 when I was sleeping one night and I was in a cot that I that I shared with my with my younger sister at the time we were, we had just I think we had just moved to Calexico, California, and, we were sharing this little cot and this beautiful woman walks into the room.

She's wearing a long, flowing dress, and she has a reversal, one of the our traditional Mexican indigenous shawls over her head. And she reaches down her hand to me and she said, Nikita is my little daughter in Spanish. Nikita, Will you come with me? And so I reached out and took her hand, and she lifted me out of the cot, and we walked out of our our house, and we entered into what seemed to me to be a, some type of vehicle carriage, something like that. And when I say that, she reached down to me and lifted me, I meant that she lifted what we call me or through your my other self.

my spirit body. And as I sat next to her and she was speaking to me, even now, when I share this story, it is my heart just becomes so radiant because I can still feel her and and see the beauty of her, of her dark skin and her gentle voice, and watching her the way that, the dark olive also that she was wearing. It was the color of a dark night sky, like a very deep, dark blue. And there were stars. Look. They look like lights to me. They looked like little pinpricks of a light that were moving in front of also.

And so now I think it was the stars that she was. She was wearing the night sky. And, I don't recall everything she, she said to me, I do remember the, the sense even now of agreeing to something. And after our, our conversations, she took me back to my cot. She laid me down and she stroked my hair and she left. She just disappeared. I, I didn't think that at that time. Obviously, I was a little girl. What? Profound meaning and influence it had on me and would have on my life. It was many years later, after I was married at 16, divorced in 19.

I had two daughters and, that who I call the grandmothers spirit started coming to me in dreams. and they, they were a group of about 13 women. And I could not identify at the time what tribe they were from, but I could tell they were from different nations because they all wore different tribal clothing. And they gave me some teachings. They talked to me about medicine, but the most that thing that they were really adamant about was that I return to the medicine of my ancestors. And let me tell you, I did my best to avoid this because I grew up, you know, watching my body, and watching other, good Underoath in our communities in Mexicali and other places.

And they lived a very humble yet, giving life, a very unselfish life. And being a selfish person, I didn't want to do that. I had two daughters that I had to raise. I, had to return to school to get my de, and I was finally at a place in my life that I have been able to buy a, a car and a home for us. So I really avoided that and avoided wanting to avoid the huge responsibility that comes with this path. So I kept trying to negotiate with them and say, you know, I can't do this because I'm working.

I can't do it right now because when my children are young and, you know, I have to wait until they're out of high school at least. And and so this went on for a number of years. And finally, one, one night they came to me and they said, look, the time is coming when all women are going to have to step forward and do their best to bring balance to this unbalanced world. And you are one of those women, and you have to learn the healing, this healing path. So by then I want to go back a little bit.

So part of my negotiations and trying to be sneaky a little bit about that, I decided I would take Reiki class and that would suffice, you know, trying to get me there to, to this path. And they were clearly and sternly said, no, that is not your path. you need to return to native ways. And then I had an uncle who passed on. He was the chief of the fire department into and out of California for something like 40 years, and it passed on. I loved him dearly. So he comes to me, a couple of nights later after the grandmothers told me this.

And he had always taught me that when you want to get someone's attention, you always speak and use their full name. So of course, he came and said to me that he sent the unvarnished Cessna my full name. And in that voice that he used for for his men. And, I knew then that I probably needed to do this, but I still again, I still was trying, you know, to avoid it. And they came to me a couple of weeks later, the grandmothers again and said that if I didn't do this, everything would be taken from me,

Childhood healing memories and the grandmother spirits 15:00

and I still didn't believe it. So I continued doing what I was doing. At that time, I had, become the administrator for a psychiatric partial hospitalization program, so I was doing quite well. And, within, I would say three weeks of that last week where they gave me this warning. the news came that, the, the company was closing all the eyes, and, I was out of work and in the community that I was living at the time. it's got the the good opportunities were very late with it. So, I was unemployed for a number of months.

And one morning I got up and, my car was gone. Had somebody came during the night and repossessed my car. And, of course, you know, I had to give up my house that I had, that I had saved for so much that meant so much to me and my children. It was a really, you can tell. And and now I think about the stress in the trauma, not just in me, but my children. And, if it wasn't for my children and for a couple of friends who came to me and supported me, I don't know what would have happened. It was, even the retelling doesn't begin.

It doesn't begin to really, tell you what that felt like unless you have experienced it. It wasn't one morning when I was praying in bed, and I was really I was sort of in a very bad space. the grandmothers came back and they brought somebody else with him that I hadn't seen, and I could see them clearly. This is my first and my dream time, and then my awake and time. And they said, look, all this is happening to you because you need to follow the calling. On this path of ancestral medicine. This is happening so that you continue to do the work in a way that will help those who come to you with similar experiences.

Everything that you and your family has experienced is part of the path that you can then use to help heal others. And part of that reference is also because I think now, when I was, 10 or 11, my older sister at the age of 19 was kidnaped and she was missing for several months. And they found her, tortured and, and, violated and, murdered in the hills of, where there's colorful murals and you're one of Baja California. And so that was very traumatizing for our family, for myself. And I know that that's what part of what they were referring to.

And they said, yeah, they told me that if I really wanted to leave this world, that they would show me a method of breathing that would allow me to release my spirit. But if I agreed to stay and to really learn and and offer this, this work. That I would always be taking care of. You know, I'm going to, ask everyone listening as you are sharing and being so moved as I am by grace, a story of hearing the call, being clear what the call meant, and yet having this resistance, as we often do, we want our lives to look a certain way.

And when we hear the call, whether it is intuition, hunches, signs, dreams, we often have a very difficult time. The big struggle to let go of our vision of how we think our life should be and, surrender to Spirit's vision for our life. And I Want You right Now is listed two ways. The story I want you to think about a time that you struggled with listening to Spirit's calling. Maybe you're struggling right now. Maybe you're here with us, and it's because Spirit's knocking at your door in some way that maybe through dreams, it may be through intuition and maybe through signs.

It might be through external circumstances. You're going through. It might be through illness. It might be through tragedy. And you know, there's a higher calling for your life. And maybe, like many of us, you're resisting. You want your life to look like a conventional life, like Grace wanted her, the car and the prestigious job and the house. and so you're pushing in the opposite direction. Think about that and just spend a moment now and reflect on this journal about it over the course of the next day or two, and really do some self exploration here.

What is spirit try to say to you now? What higher calling is there for you now that perhaps you haven't making room for? Maybe been pushing away, that you haven't been surrendering? Too many of us have those times in our lives when that's true, and that clinging to the old self, clinging to the old ego, clinging to the old way, we see ourselves as being. Often that just traps us in really unsatisfying old patterns. So I'd like you to, as you hear this remarkable, powerful story that Grace is sharing with us, I want you to do some deep reflection on how you apply it to your life.

What is your story of your nudges coming to you that you were ignoring or are ignoring right now? And we won't let you ignore all we have to keep on making sure we know that your door, and you can bet that life will keep on knocking at your door till you wake up and pay attention. You may as well do it without struggle and stress. Most of us. oh, he did after quite a lot of struggle and stress, but it's much easier if you just surrender and open yourself to the magic that life wants to bring forth through through you.

So, Grace, back to this whole calling and also the, examples you saw when you were growing up with your aunt and others. what what is it? Karen, this Mo session looked like. Like what was the one healing you saw as a child that really struck you? That was dramatic. That, made you realize the potential, this kind of indigenous healing work, Well, again, remember that I was just a child. so, it is not something that at the time, I looked at in that way. however, one one moment that my sister and I still talk about even today was, one morning when she and I went because all of my aunts, we all lived within a block or two.

All of our big family lived within a block or two. So I was one of those, blessed children that could just get out of the house and walk to any one of my aunt's house, and I'd be fed and and I could hang out with the, you know, with my, my cousins. so we walked over to my aunt's house and, she had just finished with one of her clients and her her little home smelled like Gopalan. There was a lot of smoke, and she was putting alcohol on herself, and, She was. There was just something interesting about the energy of her space.

And she turned to us and she said, this is part of the work that we have to do sometimes that person who just left was, being harmed by another person because of of envy, jealousy. It's a that we call her Saint Envy. Nvidia. She said. So part of my job and I'm paraphrasing obviously now part of my job is to protect people, to help them feel better because this person had been sick for a long time. And she lifted her her blouse and she said, this is part of what happens that we do this work. And she had bruises from when she said that she had, Gone into the person's dream time to protect them from the attacks that they were receiving.

So she actually had some small, scratches and bruising on, on her body and that she showed us what he after her session with him that he had coughed up. Not sure what it was, but he was like a little ball like it. And to me, I feel it now is sort of like a with a cat, you know, has a hairball and they cough it up. That was something similar. So to me that has always stayed with me, stayed with me in the sense of the power, the compassion, the the protectiveness of her medicine that she carried. And that means that I carried that medicine and that that is part of our responsibility as healers.

Too many people today like to say that all healing is love and light, and that is just simply not the case. However your language might be. We all have different language to, convey some of these concepts. Some of these experiences. But to me, all of this is part of the work that I do. And so yes, I am protective of my clients, because of the experiences that I've had with my older sister being missing and murdered, I have a special. Connection to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women's, movement, an epidemic that has been happening across Canada, United States, Mexico and other countries.

That is all part of what has influenced me in my work. So that is that is to me, that is really an extraordinary, moment in my young life. And it is something that I have seen. And as I grew older with other older elders, from Mexico, that they get some pretty remarkable healing. And what we see sometimes is extraordinary. And that healing can have that fiercely protective element to it. It is noise, just love and light. Just talk about those, missing indigenous women and the, the various places they, they are in North America.

Because for people who don't know that whole story and about that whole phenomenon, what what are you referring to there? What I'm referring to is what, relatives, in Canada. I think it started there, with what they call the, the the Highway of Tears. And this is a highway that for decades has been the site of. Hundreds, if not thousands, probably more and more like thousands of native women. Can it native Canadian women found on this highway, you know, on the, along the, like, the ditches or, being buried.

And they go missing their family, has a hard time locating their, their missing relatives because there is no attention given to them. And because there is a suspicion that there's also law enforcement, the the racist element of law enforcement that is part of the problem.

Missing and murdered Indigenous women 28:30

I've worked with families whose daughters and sons sons also, but it's primarily women, who have gone missing. And it just it is heartbreaking for me because I feel overwhelmed with the need and and feeling that I can't do enough. They have come to my, to when I've been in Canada at, some First Nations lodges with photographs asking me if I can somehow locate them in a spiritual way to help them, or if they have found their, their, their daughters or their sisters or aunties body. How can I help the family heal?

Because as a result, like I saw in my own family when they when they tortured and murdered my sister, they tortured and murdered my family members emotionally, spiritually, mentally they caused illnesses. My father died a few years later from cancer, and I believe that he died because he, as a father, felt such deep grief and guilt, probably that he had not been there to protect her. So when this happens, this is happened just to the the woman who is kidnaped and murdered and tortured. It happens and ripples out.

Those effects ripple out to the families and then to the larger, the wider native community. There's so much I could say about this. Please look it up. Missing and murdered indigenous women. Missing and murdered indigenous women go missing at a far greater rate than any other, ethnicity in the Americas, on the border of Mexico and the United States. This has been happening in Juarez, Texas for decades, but you don't see people on the view talking, having a substantive conversation about this. You don't see our native women being featured every day on the morning news saying, today, this is a feather alert.

That's what they're calling them. In some communities, there's a feather alert because so-and-so has been missing. None of that happens when a native child goes missing. We don't see that nationwide media blitz that we see with other ethnicities, and that is all part of what is affecting all of our communities, including the Mexican community, who are descendants of the original peoples of this continent. It is that intergenerational trauma that has continued since the very first, child was taken, for example, you know, everybody loves the Disney movie Pocahontas.

To many of us, she was the first missing and murdered indigenous child because she was only 13. No. Excuse me, she was ten. And, you know, the what is the the the the man who they everybody claims to be. John Smith, I think. Yeah. Thank you. I went blank. I don't want to remember him. I guess, but he was like 30. So how can you romanticize a 30 year old man kidnaping and raping, assaulting a child? All of that is part of our history. And it's not just native history. It's your history. It's everyone's history.

And so what do we do? Know that you've heard a little bit about this. What is your responsibility as someone who is, wanting to be an ally, wanting to be a good human being? Well, where is your compassion and your desire to bring equity to how our communities are are treated? So let's make that another reflection exercise right now, as you're hearing about this, maybe a shaft, maybe your uphold, maybe your surprise, maybe this issue has been off your radar, maybe it has been on your radar. But to touch your body for a moment.

So as we've talked about that highway of tears, as we've talked about these abducted and missing women, what do you feel in your body? What's going on there? And the chest sore? Your body is saying something to you. We know the body keeps the score well. We're not always aware of is the body is keeping the collective score as well, not just the score. my individual traumas and my individual upsets, issues, disappointments, wounds and my personal life is carrying a record of that for all of us. And so you may be feeling stirrings in your body right now.

I know as I'm sitting here, Grace, I'm feeling this lot, a lot of energy moving right on both sides of my body my left, my right side, my my legs, my sides. I don't know what that is necessarily, but I know that it's stirring this intense energy in me. And so what? What, What grace. Like, I hope you are able to do in the course of healing. This is simply become aware of that. Ancestral intergenerational trauma in your body and how it affects you. Just tune into it. Just be aware of it. Just being mindful of it is the first step.

So we often want to rush to fixing and healing and what we're going to stay with right now for a moment is simply experiencing. So just feel whatever this is brought up in your body. And we're so used to dismissing those body feelings and moving on. And let's not do that now. Let's actually feel that fully and in our body. Is that from Pocahontas in 1500s onward? think about just how the the emotional impact of us to settle into you, your energy field, your body for a few moments and just be mindful of it.

Again, we're not trying to repair anything at the moment. We're just starting to be aware, these issues. And as you can tell, I'm really, emotional grace is really emotional. And we have a collective human emotional body over here that is, participating in this, whether as victim or perpetrator or bystander or, person, a person who just doesn't bother informing themselves. It's about what your role is. This is in our psycho sphere, our our space, our psychological, our emotional, our spiritual space here.

And many of us, in looking for our transcendent reality, by meditating, by moving into those elevated states, are actually doing spiritual bypassing of some of the, of the pain and the emotional impact of some of the ancestral trauma that we might be carrying, that people of our capacity might be carrying people of our culture might be carrying. And so right now, we'll just not do a spiritual bypassing and spend a moment just feeling it, just feeling that feeling in your body and be okay with having that feeling in your body just the way it is.

And again, take a breath. Let it be there. The breath connects us to the infinite. To always. And the two things can coexist. Both that uncomfortable feeling and those unpleasant realities and the breath. So we're alive. Were were surviving. And all of these other currents are there in our culture, our energy field and our psychic sphere. And so we just breathe here and we feel and for the moment, that's enough. well, thank you so much for bringing in this, this energy for us to, to to work into the healing story because so often, Grace, we're obviously we're we're focused on our own personal healing.

We want to be well and happy and vigorous, but we don't realize we're carrying all of the weight of this ancestral material with us, and it can be affecting us all kinds of ways. And like the way your sisters murder affected your father, it can be triggering disease in us. And so it's powerful when we start to become aware of all these other dimensions as well, and how they might be having effects on our, our physical bodies. So it's worth besides us being focused on healing, on individual trauma and healing and individual bodies becoming aware of the context, the huge cultural context in which we live, being a happy, healthy, wonderful, joyful person and being disconnected from the suffering of the world means that you're in a bubble and it's worth being really present for everything else that's outside of the bubble that we can get into.

In that meditative state, many people are fleeing to meditation, to transformational experiences as a way of getting away from all of the miserable things going on in the culture in the world. And you don't have to do that. You can be that transcendent person, as grace has shown you by her story, while being in this world just the way it is. So Grace, how do we do that mean? How do we move into those states? Have you live into them in the middle of these other realities? Thank you. I want to, also put into this conversation, since I'm speaking about her, my beautiful sister's name, Rosa Maria Montezuma.

And I also want to say, the real name for for the person who most people know as Pocahontas. Her real name is Mata Waka, meaning the flower between two streams, which is beautiful. And I believe that May 5th, is going to be a day of also honoring our missing and murdered indigenous women. So look in your community, to see what events are out there. And please join us. You know, it's it's really, to me, part of transcending these immense, traumas is when we see people acknowledging the harm, doing something to.

So to stop it and being there alongside us, behind us, to make changes in the way that we treat and respect all women, and in particular, in this moment, native indigenous women spread the word. Share the flowers if you see them. So to me, part of this transcendence in my work is doing what I'm doing right now with you. And part of you know, my path has been, a deep connection to the spiritual world, but also to the physical world, to Mother Earth being in ceremony every day with her. I wake up in the morning grateful for my life, the life of my children, my grandchildren, my family, my extended family community, to see my relatives in nature, which are the birds and and the animals.

And part of my responsibility is giving back. So I always say my prayers and I feed the birds. That's part of what I like to do as a way of giving back. Other times I do other things. But one of the greatest lessons that our earth has given me is that we all come from her. We are all related, and that she embraces us lovingly when we die, and we are welcomed by the ancestors on the other realms. perhaps we learn something along the way, and we are called to return that we remember that make the efforts to remember that what we need to do to continue to do our work in this next lifetime.

And part of that is many of our rituals, like our the other Muertos observations, the other muertos that we that we honor in our communities, we it starts in October. It ends in November. Second, for the larger community. Mostly it's they observe it November, first, second and third when it ends. But all of those to me are ways in which we can honor those who have gone before us. I always have my sisters, photograph on my the other where and that and in our communities I have encouraged even in Canada, which is this is not, you know, the a Cree or Anishinaabe practice.

They have their own practices. But for those who really feel that this ceremony or the other Muertos is calling to them, I encourage them and have shared with them ways to do that. Be, you know, sharing with each other helps us heal. We're in a community. That's one of the things that I see in the non-Indigenous communities is that there is a lack of connection with each other, a tendency to be alone or to feel lonely, to, be too quick. We're all too quick, especially these days, to separate ourselves from each other when we disagree from each other to if we follow different paths.

If someone is, and this is my personal experience, when I have spoken with very evangelical Christians, they see my work as witchcraft. And that is part of the ongoing, policies, the doctrine of discovery of manifest Destiny that has been inflicted upon us by, you know, way back, demonizing our spiritual leaders, demonizing our beautiful healing practices, making them illegal. So we come together to help each other, to understand each other. Then we can transcend that separateness and really deep in our heart, know that we are part of everything there is.

I know that I am part of everything there is, and that I will always be when people focus too. I think sometimes, some traditions focus too much on immortality. We are already immortal. Our spirits are immortal. This is what our traditional teachings tell us. But we're also told that part of this life is understanding that when we say we're all related, it's not just to human beings. We are related to the bees. We're related to the arts. We're related to the salmon. We're related to the bears and the trees, the earth itself, the dirt.

We're related to.

Compassion, boundaries, and accountability 45:00

And we have to take care of each other. That's part of of our collective healing. If we are not going to take the the view that we are all related, and that if we bless each other, we are blessing everything else. But if we are causing harm to one another, to our words, through our thoughts, through our actions, then we are continuing to create harm and separation. So the practice here is to think about those who attempted to distance yourself from who has a point of view that is just framed with yours.

And what do you do when you encounter people who see things differently? So people who have differences when it comes to abortion, when it comes to politics, when it comes to human rights, when it comes to various international conflicts, when it comes to down to various local issues, how do you treat them? How do you hold them in your mind? Even if you don't say anything? outside, how do you see them? And just take a moment here before I give you a couple of recommendations to think who it is. Right now.

You would distance yourself from who in your world. This very moment has a point of view that you find offensive, that you just want to turn away from. It might be someone in your family, someone in your workplace, someone in your community. They might be a, Disagreement or a big social, difference going on in your community right now between groups of people. And maybe you've felt as though you're on one side of the spectrum or another. And then there are others. Who is the other? Who is it that is outside of your circle of compassion right now?

Think about that for a moment. It's worth journaling on that. Who is it that you want to pull away from? So when you hear Grace say, we are all one, not just one with, the people, but one with the animals. We're one with the microbes. We're one with the dirt, but one with everything. We're one with the cosmos. One of the universe. Who is it you don't feel one with? Who is it you feel is out there beyond the place you can embrace? And it's fine again to just ask yourself the question. We are saying you have to fix it or get over it or improve.

Right now. Just become mindful of it. Is people aware? Are this person you believe that that political opinion is just not acceptable and so you find yourself pulling away. Who is that person in your in your life? Okay, you've got your journal. Write down that name. so Grace, when we have identified that person and I'm thinking of a couple in my mind right now who are like, literally the warmongers, they've taken decisions that they made, war and others and thousands of people died as a result of their adversarial, initiation of, of conflict.

They have literally been guilty of mass murder. what do I do? How do I find compassion for all those people? Thank you for that. And, I want to just. If you don't mind, I'll just go back a little bit to your, to your comment about. We're all one. For sake of conversations, I usually don't like to use that oneness. but since that, that that that frame of reference, I prefer all my relations. I feel that when we say all my relations, we can feel those cords of light that connect us to one another.

Whereas with world one and I and I'm coming to you with a very indigenous experience, that oneness is glossed over too easily, and oneness is used as an excuse to justify, non native shamanic practitioners. Appropriation and whitewashing in and commodification of our of our practices. So I just wanted to put that in, in, in a, in my particular frame of reference, because of my own personal experiences. But there is a oneness that underlies that. It's just that we have to also remember that when we say oneness, that doesn't mean permission to take everyone, others, cultural practices or rituals or songs or instruments without understanding and having a relationship and permission to do so.

having said that, when I think of people in the world today, and even in the past, unfortunately for us indigenous people, this what we're seeing, the atrocities that we're seeing today is not new. This is something that we've experienced for 500 years. Be a temptation. You know, the the attempted extermination, genocide of indigenous peoples. here in the Americas, it's, you know, between 80 million people, that were murdered, with the coming of, Spanish and other, nations from Europe. So in a way, this is not new.

And that's why many of us feel even more deeply some of what we're seeing happen. What I, what I like to do, whether it's a person that you know or persons that you know, that you are having, Problems, having a conversation with or conflict and, these are the lighter conversations because obviously we need to acknowledge that there are some things that are experienced by our communities that are so deep that it is hard to believe that people can forgive them. And I am always humbled by the courage, the willingness to heal, by many of my clients who have experienced such horrific sexual abuse and assault, either from jail as children or as adults from, you know, fathers, brothers, uncles and others.

So I want to be really clear that some things are just harder. And it's not easy to say, think of your father who raped you when you were seven. And let's just think about here for a moment and and surround you with light and send your blessings of forgiveness. that just doesn't happen that way. It takes a long time and a lot of a lot of work and a lot of Sarah mornings to do that. So we put that a little bit aside. It would go back to the people just in our everyday life who misunderstand us, or perhaps that very evangelical devout Christian who is verbally, verbally confrontational, that is harmful to to my spirit.

When I hear those voices, I take a breath. Some like what you've been doing with us today. Take a breath. I center myself, I ground myself. And I. Imagine them as children. What happened to them? What happened to them that makes them so fearful? What is it that they're a fear afraid of? Are they afraid that they're not man enough, macho enough? Is it because their father abused them verbally, physically, emotionally, mentally? Is it they're afraid of poverty? Is it that they're afraid that just not good enough?

And so they are doing their best to prove it through actions that are so brutal. They themselves are they are harming themselves in the long run. However, if I look at them from that perspective in that moment, I can pray for them because that's all I can do for people to our leaders, world leaders that I don't know that you know, I don't have that one on one connection with them. But I can pray that their hearts receive healing, that their mind receive healing. But being the protector that I am, I also ask that the spirits.

Stop them in whatever way is best for their own spiritual and physical and mental development, causing further harm to others and to themselves. You have to have boundaries, and you can and you have to hold people accountable even when they are harming you or others. some people I've spoken to feel like they always have to show this very high spiritual compassion. and always forgive people. And you should forgive people. Yes we do. We can forgive them, but still hold them accountable. And they still need to make amends, and they need to be brought to justice.

That's a little bit different than our family member who has, been mean to you, who shows, you know, shows some behaviors that are based on jealousy or, something like that. You can do something similar with that. But we also have to work on our own communication skills. How do we communicate with them that their actions and their words are our causing our heart to feel harm? We can still pray for them. I've had plenty of people over the years come to me, wanting me to cause harm, to to someone because that person, you know, did something terrible to them and I tell them, you know, the more that you focus on what they did, the more you focus.

Ten years later, 20 years later, that particular event in person, the more energy you're giving them on the spiritual realms. So I myself don't want to give away my energy to anybody unless I do it in a way that is structured and with awareness of what I'm doing. So to me, when you have those continual ruminations of revenge, of harming someone, you are gradually depleting your own life force. You keep a full line if you will open to that person. That is giving them your energy. There's there's a lot of there's a lot of of information that we could talk about, a lot of things that we could talk about in terms of this kind of spiritual connection with others.

It goes both ways. Right? But but essentially, for me, I want to heal. So I want to be compassionate to myself. Acknowledge that this person has harm me for possibly no reason of my own, because of the way that they have experienced their life. Whatever factors have created this bundle of envy, this bundle of anger that has been unresolved and they then turned outward towards usually the people they most love. So we we have to pray for them. And choose to learn how to communicate with them in a healthy way, not accept what they are saying.

I don't accept that. They say I'm a I, I, I'm a, you know, a witch. to form witchcraft. And and by that I mean, what they mean by that is harmful coercive practices. I know I am not. That is their stop. So I let them go, I release them, I bless you, I release you. That is your. Those are your issues. They're not my issues. And then I set boundaries. Perhaps I will not, engage with them anymore if it's, family member who is has caused deep harm to my family and continues to do harm in spite of my having a conversation, then I have a choice.

The choice is to set boundaries, and that can include that I no longer invite them to my family parties events. I have very limited conversations. That's okay. So again, it's not all love and light. Sometimes we just we have to pray for them. That's to me, that's just basic. We have to pray for them, but we also have to acknowledge our feeling, we want to feel how do I want to react to this person in the future? And you make your plan and you set your boundaries and you do that.

Prayer, ceremony, and returning to center 1:00:00

You take care of your heart. You take care of your spirit. Take care of your mind. Take care of your body. But we take care of ourselves in that way that we are more likely to be able to stand in a centered way and communicate in a compassionate and firm way with those others who are harming us. So as Grace has been sharing this, having healthy boundaries of having compassionate communication, that clear communication, these practices, like you certainly hold them in prayer. You certainly hold them in that vision of them, their higher selves and that part of that be in grace.

And you also have this clear boundary, and you set those healthy boundaries, and you don't do things that necessarily bring you into harm's way by voluntarily being close to this person or bringing them into your life any more than you need to. And so this is such a powerful. Reminder of, as a un, spiritual pause, we're seeking these transcendent states. We all want to move into that state of bliss and be in samadhi and be one with the all that is. And it feels wonderful to be there. And it's facilitated by having those healthy boundaries.

And many people are easy going up there, playing much harder to create those kinds of structures down here that are going to give them that definition. But we have to do that. We have to create that space around us for that healthy boundary to move into these elevated states. And so think about whether you have done enough of that in your own life. Other people, you need to draw really clear boundary with, other people you need to speak to other people you need to spend less time with, even with the family members, other people, who needs a really clear and directed conversation with you in order to set that boundary?

Is there somebody's been avoiding and is there situation but avoiding dealing with them that way? And if you think about the possible range of people this may apply to when your own life check into your body again, where is your body telling you? I bet accepting a boundary violation here. What is your heart telling you? When you think about people? What is your your tension in your neck and shoulders? In your pelvis, hips and knees? What is your body reflecting back to you? The body is keeping the score.

And if you are letting yourself be violated in those ways and you aren't taking care of yourself, then you're likely to feel in your body and that may be your signal. You need to go out and have that conversation and draw that line in the sand with a person. So as you think about those possible people in your life, right now, who might it be that your next spiritual assignment is to go draw the boundary with, as important as reaching the elevated states? And then just as we're wrapping up our time together here, grace, I love just, how do you share with us when you have done all of the above?

You've done that inner work. You've done the outer work, you've set those boundaries. You backed knowledge, all these violations of the past you had run away from them. So you have done this big cultural and ancestral work. You've done the personal and family work required to make all this happen. Just you personally, I was just curious about where you Grace Sesma, where where do you go to in your own inner life? I go to the grandmothers. I go to the grandfathers in spirit, go to creator. When when I am offering up my prayers.

I am in that, in that space and it all just melts away. Having said that, our healing journey is a healing journey and it has moments and pauses. And then we have to go on. And this is part of life. many people want to believe that, when you when you've done this work, you're done. And life is magical and joyful and that's free and that's just not the case. but we can bring ourselves I bring myself back through my prayer by offering, burning of Baal, offering tobacco outside. I there's a beautiful oak tree right in front of my house that I like to make offerings to in the sense that it represents my life.

It represents the represents my roots, and it represents all the branches of my family tree. It represents the various paths that even in my own family, that they've taken, some follow Christianity, some follow Catholic way, some are Buddhist. So follow our native traditional ways. Some are a combination of both. so to me, I love this oak tree. She is just beautiful. And that is part of bring me back to myself to that place within myself that is always there, that it's always in you. That we just have to be reminded to whatever practice we choose, whether it's my native practice of burning herbs, of taking herbal baths on the full moon, of, using certain floral waters to restore my energy to myself, especially after working with people with very difficult, issues.

But we can still come back to that. And part of that, and also is that when I give to others, that is part of me honoring that aspect of themselves, that is part of the greater whole that has a spark of creator, that has an element to the grandmothers and grandmother spirit within them that is unfolding, but at their own individual pace. So you can see that and honor that and respect that when you're taking care of yourself and then having all that self-care that you do, what a joy to connect with you.

I felt so deeply moved, honored and touched. Thank you for this amazing work you do, and thank you also for bringing these issues into our awareness. I know for many of us listening here, maybe you did feel uncomfortable, maybe felt a lot moving in your body. That's great because now we can be mindful of all of these things. And as we become mindful, as we learn to look at some of the really uncomfortable things that may have happened in our society in the past and the present, that's just part of us connecting with those around us, the earth we live in.

And it's great to be in those elevated states. And it's powerful to heal not just your individual trauma, but do your part in whatever way to heal the enormous ancestral trauma that all of us carry. Grace, thank you so much again, every blessing. Oh, thank you so much. May all of our words be a blessing to everyone who listens to us. And thank you so much for for allowing me to share from my heart with you in a way that that you acknowledge. So beautiful and we all work together, continue to bring healing to all of our communities and our world so that we ourselves can be that transcendent, healing presence where.

We can be that transcendent healing presence. I love it. Thank you. Thanks again. Bless you and we will see you all on the next episode. Thank you.