Ancestral Healing

Ancestral Healing & Coming face to face with

the Ancestral Displacement Wound

Growing up I was blessed to have a mother who was always keenly interested in family history. My mother still does spend a lot of her free time researching and delving into many threads of our lineages here in Ireland and has devoted many years to reviving many stories of my ancestors. So I suppose as it is said, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  Isn’t it easy to focus on what we don’t have in common with our families especially our parents but we choose them for a reason and we must dig deeper to find what has woven us together rather than what has separated us.

Not everyone will be drawn to family history and deep ancestral work but for me there was never any escaping it. In astrology my chiron is in the fourth house which represents family, early childhood,  belonging, roots, ancestry, lineage and generational trauma. Chiron represents your deepest core wounds & areas of vulnerability which when healed can grant incredible wisdom & peace.  So, much of my healing over the past 15 years has heavily been focused on early childhood and intergenerational trauma. It is like what Rumi said ‘the wound is the place where the light enters you’. Overcoming your core wounds is the doorway to personal sovereignty and transfiguration of self. 

The scope of the ancestral healing work that I have done over the past 6 years goes far beyond what I will write here for it is a whole book in itself but let me share here a beautiful part of this journey that is specially related to Scotland. 

Family History 

Here in Ireland many of our ancestral records were burned during the 1916 rebellion so a mixture of that and ancestral stories and records not being passed down, I am guessing due to the vast amounts of displacement during the famine years and adverse trauma has meant that many people in Ireland don’t actually have an accurate record of their recent ancestors. We might have an insight into the last few generations buts that’s as far back as it goes for many of us.

For me there is the factual evidence we can obtain and there is of course the spiritual messages we can receive from spirit and the ancestors. This for me has been the scope of my discoveries over the past few years and is probably the reason why I never felt called to get an ancestral DNA test until recently because in one way it felt unnecessary. I knew deeply within me the different lineages and nations that live within my bones. As a sensitive and attuned being I feel the remembrance of many of my ancestors whether it be my grandmother or my great great grandfather x 6. All these memories & gifts are alive within us. 

As far as I knew from the information my mother had passed on I was basically 100% Irish. There was no stories of recent ancestors having immigrated to Ireland. Any DNA tests done by close family members had come back to confirm this, or so I thought. So therefore much of my ancestral healing work took place in Ireland specifically in the south east where I grew up and where most of my recent ancestors lived. My parents grew up quite close to each other in Kilkenny & it has been very heart warming to know and sense how many different of my lineages were all based in such close proximity.

When I lived in Australia I would look at the place where I grew up on google view. This is how much of a home bird I was and still am. No matter where I go I have always been called back to the place where I grew up. There is a sense of at home-ness in Kilkenny that I am so grateful for. I always say the greatest gift in this life is to be Irish and living here in Ireland. The love and connection I have to this land is truly hard to put into words. It is this relationship with place that sustains me, that has shown me true love again and again. It is like my beloved. My one and only love. Or so I thought until I touched down on Scottish soil back in 2021. 

Friends, I am about to try to put into words something that I experienced with the land of Scotland that is in a way beyond words, how can I protray years of journeying with a land that brought me to both my absolute knees and also straight to God’s altar. Please know as I write these words it is also beyond a story. It deeply feels like the magic of the caterpillar turning into the butterfly, these pilgrimages to Scotland led to an absolute metamorphosis of self.

‍ ‍ Isle of Skye, Scotland

So let me begin the story here. In July 2021 I had listened to an ancestral homeland meditation by sacred Ancestry, of course expecting to connect with Ireland but to my surprise during the meditation I was brought to the Isle of Skye in Scotland. The messages I was receiving was that on my father’s side there were Scottish ancestors and at least one who had in fact immigrated to Ireland. In my mind it felt like it was along time ago maybe even thousands of years ago. To me time didn’t matter really. I just knew I needed to go. A few weeks after doing this meditation a good friend of mine happened to mention that she was journeying to Scotland soon for an ancestral skills gathering and I knew I had to go.

This pull to go to Scotland is one of the strongest pulls I have ever had. I remember the week I was due to go I had been sick and didn’t have the energy to even drive down to the local shop yet some how I made it over on the ferry to Scotland and all the way up to the Scottish Highlands. It was a deep reminder that if we are meant to journey somewhere or fulfil a sacred mission the energy will come. Sometimes on these pilgrimages I feel the ancestors are helping me drive the car, honestly!

So let me skip a little bit of the story here for a minute. A few months ago my father did an ancestral DNA test. To my surprise and shock the results came back that he had 20% Scottish/Welsh ancestry. Even though I was sure I had Scottish ancestors I had no physical proof and no idea it was this recent. As far as I know from the research I have done these DNA tests only go back a couple of hundred years. So really there are only showing a small glimpse into your entire ancestry. If we are to get technical and scientific apparently your DNA is made up mainly of your recent ancestors but to me that really doesn’t matter as I have said earlier I feel all of my ancestors whether recent or ancient.

However my Mam gifted me the Ancestral DNA for my birthday this year which confirmed of course I do hold Scottish DNA, 95% Irish, 4% Scottish 1% Russian! I honestly do not know how absolutely accurate these tests are but I know in my bones there is truth here. I did my test with ancestry.com and they also located where in Ireland my ancestors might have been from which was of course Kilkenny and other places that I happened to be drawn to live in over the past few years. This is also a reminder that we are always drawn to specific places for reasons we might not even be able to comprehend for there is much going on in the unseen realms as we walk the lands and go on pilgrimage.

So returning back to the pilgrimage in 2021.. It probably might have been helpful to have this concrete evidence of recent Scottish ancestry at that time but I do of course trust that this was a huge opportunity for me to tune in myself and simply trust my own knowing and guidance and yet I am also very grateful to now have this information because it is truly helping me understand even deeper what was going on for me when I went to Scotland in 2021 and all those times since. 

Coming face to face with the Ancestral Displacement Wound…

Back then I had limited experience of what the ancestral displacement wound was or what it would feel like. Again as far as I knew I was 100% Irish and my only love was Ireland. I often did wonder what it was like for American’s of Irish descent retuning to Ireland after their ancestors were forced to emigrate and I have since worked with many Americans who are on ancestral pilgrimages here in Ireland but at that  time I had not physically or emotionally felt this inside my own being. As we know it is very different to logically know and understand something than to feel it in the very depths of your bones & DNA.

Let me first explain what the ancestral displacement wound is and how it can manifest in the mind, heart & body. Ancestral displacement is when people in our lineage have been forced form their land, country or nation because of war, colonisation, famine or some other traumatic event. Leaving behind not only their way of life and other family members but their innate connection to place and home, loosing their cultural ways of life, perhaps language, music, dance, food and other indigenous and spiritual practices.  Stripping them of what makes them nourished, whole and complete. This wound can be passed down through many generations leading to difficulty returning to the land, finding home, feeling rooted and feeling safe in the world. It is huge and as we know throughout Ireland in particular this happened on a monumental level during the famine and colonisation.

Also in Scotland, particularly in the Highlands during english occupation there was what was known as the highlands clearances in the 18th & 19th century where landowners where evicted from their land to be replaced with more profitable large scale farming. Also in 1746 after the battle of Culloden highland culture was systematically dismantled and banned, which was when a lot of Scottish people emigrated to north America. In the second phase of the highland clearances from 1800-50 seen tens of thousands of displaced islanders migrate to Ireland looking for work in fishing or agriculture. This of course did not just happen here in the Celtic Isles but all over the world to many indigenous tribes and nations,  The Aboriginal people of Australia, the Māori in New Zealand, The Native American’s and the First Nations in Canada and many more & unfortunately to this day it is still happening!

As a race we have been severed from the land beneath us and it is our generation’s work and mission to make our way home to this innate connection to land and place. When I landed in Scotland on that pilgrimage in 2021 I was feeling an array of emotions. Extreme love and homecoming and also a huge amount of grief and pain. When you are the first person in your lineage to return to a land that your ancestors were forced to leave as a sensitive being perhaps you are the one to feel all of their unprocessed emotions. So many people over the last decade in particular have been called home to their mother lands. To bring the ancestors home through their own body. To bring peace and harmony back to their lineage.  It is deep work that thousands upon thousands of people are now having the courage to undertake.

Dunure Castle, Ayreshire, Scotland

So let me share my experience of what this displacement wound felt like for me. When I returned to Ireland after the ancestor pilgrimage to Scotland it was like a huge upheaval of my entire life and existence. It was like life before that month long pilgrimage and life after. Nothing felt the same for along time after, and I mean a long, long time. It took me almost two years to integrate the pilgrimage. For months after my return I could not listen to Scottish music without wailing and honestly that felt unnerving and extremely vulnerable.

I felt extremely ‘displaced’ like I had been ripped from my homeland. Which was the strangest experience because never in my entire life did I feel homesick while in Ireland. Never did I long for some where as strongly as Ireland so not being able to be in Scotland brought up an extreme amount of grief. Probably the most amount of grief I have ever felt. This felt very deep and raw, although it was like unprocessed grief from all my ancestors that had ever had to leave their homeland unwillingly.It was like being a solid loving relationship and then coming face to face with another person who you also were madly in love with and you could not settle with either one. Scotland being the new lover. Sounds romantic perhaps but honesty it just felt very unsettling and ungrounding.

Looking back now I can understand what I was feeling was this ancestral displacement wound but at the time I really could not truly fathom what was happening. I also felt a lack of rootedness, unable to feel at home where I was, feeling like I was an outsider and a deep sense of loss. Eventually over time I knew what I was feeling was beyond me and my own grief and was in fact deep ancestral trauma among other things. To sum it up that pilgrimage brought me into a deep deep spiral of ancestral and soul healing and like all initiations it eventually led to deep and profound healing and wisdom which I am extremely grateful for.

It is important to say here that there was also other things spiralling in relation to Scotland at that time which included a romantic connection with a man that was quite chaotic and unstable. Also I feel my soul has had many connections to Scotland from many different lifetimes that were also coming up for clearing & healing at this time so there was a mirage of things happening at this time. I do personally feel our soul lifetimes and our ancestry is tightly interwoven. I think it’s very possible we incarnate into the same lineage over and over. Therefore when we do ancestral healing we are also bringing deep healing to our soul. 

Another vital element of what was occurring here for me was a very dis-regulated nervous system which is of course all connected as ancestral memory is embedded in the nervous system. At that point on my journey I had yet to do deep healing of this which of course meant that the displacement wound found a home in me or already was at home within me because my energy was not stabilised and fully grounded. Let me try and explain this more, if we do not feel fully grounded and stable in our energy and have a solid connection to the Divine, God, Great Spirit however you like to refer to our creator it can make it very difficult to navigate deep core wounds including ancestral ones. Additionally if our energy is not grounded and protected we also open ourselves up to all kind of entities and unhealed ancestors hijacking our energy fields. Since these first major pilgrimages I have learnt deeply about protecting  my energy as I walk the lands and especially places where the memory of deep traumatic events is still very much alive. 

Ideally we first we do the nervous system work and develop a strong connection to the Divine and then we dive deep into core wounds and ancestral pilgrimages but of course life doesn’t always work out that way and as many of us know it is through the exposure to suffering, pain and deep core wounds that actually forces us to deepen our connection. That is definitely what happened here for me and for that I am grateful.

I am not sure exactly yet where in my Dad’s line the Scottish ancestor came in but really it’s not the most important thing to focus on here. What is most important for me what is sensed and felt within the heart and body.  To simply have the courage to go to the places internally that the external pilgrimage has brought you. I do believe that many many people are holding this wound within and completely unconscious of it and what does Carl Jung say ‘until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

This intense and magical journey with Scotland has led me to the most profound heart opening I could have ever hoped for as someone walking the path of the heart and soul. The grief it opened me up to was the biggest heart expansion that led me towards True Love in it’s purest form. Grief and Love are opposites sides of the same coin. We grieve because we love. And truly we are to love. 

This pilgrimage within brought me towards the Divine, God, the creator which vibrates only at the frequency of Love. They say suffering is a vehicle for awakening and my journey with Scotland definitely showed me that. To be courageous enough to journey to the depths of self, of grief and pain and to come out the other side feeling pure love and peace is something I am honestly extremely grateful for and very very proud of myself because at times I thought it was honestly going to break me.

As I said it took years to overcome this grief. Many times I wailed in front of the sacred fire or while bathing in the sacred waters. I did everything I could to root down in Ireland again and reclaim this as my home. I prayed and I prayed and I called on all of the support in the spirit realms and of course the physical and I give thanks to the men and women in my life who continued to listen to me while I shared my journey. To the healers I had to go and the sheer devotion of my soul to not hide but face the chaos head on. Since the first pilgrimage in 2021 I returned again at Samhain 2021 for a week and in 2022 for a few weeks and then again in 2023 & 2025 for a few days to visit to Roslin Glen & Chapel but it was not until recently which was the Summer Solstice 2026 that I returned to the highlands.

I can hardly believe it took me this long to reunite with the land there in that way and to meet old friends that I first met back in 2021 but honestly I know deep down that I had to put a boundary in place with myself. Scotland in a way was the key to a huge awakening but it at times it nearly broke me and I knew that to heal and settle in Ireland I needed time away from the land there. I knew I had chosen Ireland for a reason and this was my home & I knew my soul had chosen to incarnate here and I had to reclaim that knowing. 

Inverness, Scotland, Summer Solstice 2026

Inverness, Scotland, Summer Solstice 2026

Inverness, Scotland, Summer Solstice 2026

What an absolute joy it was to return to Scotland this solstice and to feel only peace and love in places I had only felt grief. I felt calmness in places that had once arose a storm within me. I felt gratitude over sorrow and at home in this beautiful land of my ancestors. Before I felt the ancestors crying in the high places now I felt them bowing. For peace had been restored in my lineage. The ancestors  had been brought home by me feeing at home in myself and the land I call home.

Ancestral displacement was healed through feeling the grief and the loss, singing the songs, speaking the language and most importantly doing deep nervous system healing to finally feel at home and safe in my body and the world. I am still navigating different threads of the displacement wound that ties in with my chiron in the 4th house and needing to very much focus my energy on deep nervous system healing however this very specific thread with Scotland and the ancestors absolutely feels complete and at peace and for that I am extremely grateful.

What I felt as I walked the lands there this solstice is that we hold the medicine of these ancient, sacred landscapes within us where ever we go. They are always in our hearts and neither time nor distance can ever take us away from that. We are the land and it is us. We are the ancient clay of these sacred lands in physical form and that land lives on through us and in us as we breath, as we sing, as we craft and most importantly as we love. 

May we love one another just as the land loves us and just as the ancestors do. 

Le Grá

Elaine xx