Embracing Ancestors: Uncovering Your History

v

I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment podcast.

Last year around my 50th birthday, I started to feel really curious about my ancestors. Now, I had sort of already been on this journey, let's say of into exploring spirituality and the different modalities. This is a lot of the stuff that we talk about on the pod on the regular. And ancestral work had always been a little bit,

of a, I don't know, maybe interesting. I, you know, I knew all of my grandparents and I knew a little bit about life beyond. I knew that we used my grandmother's shortbread recipe at Christmas. I knew that some of the rings that I had and jewelry that I had that were given to me from my aunt or my grandmother's that had been passed on. But I started to get

even more curious. And so I started to ask questions. I wanted to know about, you know, these people's siblings, about their lives, about their parents, where they came from. And that began this interest I've had over the last year. And, you know, I have ADHD. So some might say it's a hyper focus learning about

my ancestors. So hold on one sec. I can hear the steamer in the back and it's going to drive me nuts. So I'm just going to turn it off.

Megan Hamilton (01:52.15)
Now it won't drive you nuts.

Megan Hamilton (01:56.438)
I got myself an ancestry.com account and I started by asking my mom and my aunt a lot of questions so that I could fill in some of the information that they knew, but also figure out where the gaps were.

And ancestry.com who, you know, is not sponsoring this podcast and I'm sure there's lots of different ways of doing this was a great repository of putting all the information that you have into one place. Now, I also had the benefit of several different people on either side, either of my parents sides, having an interest in the same thing and doing a lot of this sort of back work. But what

I found soon enough was that there are millions of records that have been digitized that are available on Ancestry.

And so I started getting new information. I started learning more. started filling in the gaps. This person, so it seems, was married twice. This person's spouse died very early. This person never got to meet their father. This person were not sure if they're true siblings or half siblings or step siblings.

some of the things that started to come out of this were fascinating to me. And so today we're going to talk about ancestral work because some of the things that have happened over the last year as I've been uncovering information have been wild. And if you haven't yet listened to the episode called is magic real, you might want to go.

Megan Hamilton (03:56.384)
and give that a listen and then come back because I allude to a couple of different situations on that episode. And by the way, I started this sort of quietly, but I'll make it known now that I have an Instagram account just for embracing enchantment. And I wanted to see if it felt worth it to run yet another

account on Instagram because now I have three. Actually, I have four, but that's another story. Actually, it's five, but that's we're not going to worry about that. And as it turns out, it gives me the opportunity to share very specific stuff that I wouldn't necessarily share on my other account, which is for my speaking coaching business. So at embracing enchantment pod is the handle. If you care to follow what's going on.

over there. And I do plan to share some of the pictures that I might be referring to today. So how can you find out about your ancestors? The first place to start with your living relatives. So who knows what, you know, part of what has been really interesting about this. And if you've ever done this kind of work, you've probably figured out the same thing.

People then used to talk and people used to have gigantic families. And if you are, you know, from a settler group who came to North America from somewhere else, then you also might have a ton of relatives, you know, across the seas. And also, if you are coming from

historically oppressed groups, it might be really difficult to find ancestral information because records weren't kept in the same way. And so I want to make sure we acknowledge all of this right from the get go because it's been relatively ha ha pun intended easy for me to go back, let's say five generations on a point in the directions of where when I call them in, I feel them in certain locations.

Megan Hamilton (06:25.258)
So like for example, my paternal grandmother's side is like the front right and my paternal grandfather's side or father's side is on the back right. So anyway, I don't know if that's just how I've organized it in my mind, but there you go.

Megan Hamilton (06:48.792)
So I started to get curious. started to ask questions, started to see where there were gaps. You know, I would ask my dad a lot of stuff and then for anything he didn't know, I would ask my aunt who would have, you know, might have talked more to their mother than the other. And so slowly but surely I would gather these little pieces of information. And when I was back at my dad's house in

October I asked if I could see the family tree that was in this huge old family Bible. I mean this thing is so if you're on if you're listening you can go to YouTube and check it out but this thing has got to be four inches thick and it's probably like let's say 12 inches by 12 inches it's huge and it goes back to

I think maybe the late 1700s in terms of the family line. And it's always the first born who takes over the family Bible and fills in the gaps in the family tree. Death dates, birth dates, locations of graves, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, this stuff is in pen and ink way back in the day. And now...

over the last few years has been just regular old pen, like a blue ball point pen. But you can go back and start to make lines, right? Find patterns between what you know and what you've been curious about. So for example, and again,

If you are listening to this, just know that you can go to YouTube if you're curious. I have this little seal. It's pretty small. And on the bottom is where somebody would have written a letter, used sealing wax, and then stamped it. And it says, Eliza. And I've always been curious who is

Megan Hamilton (09:09.088)
Eliza and opened up my dad's Bible. And sure enough, Eliza is the second person on the list of people who owned the Bible or who protected the Bible or who, you know, kept the Bible through the generations. So, wow, how cool was it for me? And I must say, I find this stuff invigorating. Like the minute I realized

that this stamp belongs to Eliza, who I can now see. I can see her handwriting. I can see who she married, how she came into the family. It's a thrill. Another time.

I realized that this brooch I had been given

came all the way from Scotland, because I did a Google image search, because my aunt who gave it to me didn't really know anything about it. Turns out it's called a pebble brooch, and it goes all the way back to late 17, early 1800s in Scotland. And guess what?

It's made with crystals. Like, high.

Megan Hamilton (10:27.886)
You're going to want to know that I was flipping out with excitement. Once I realized that I wore this at my wedding because I just love it. I didn't realize it was 250 years old or this locket that I have.

Right? Plain locket. My grandmother used to wear it. It's actually got pictures of my grandmother and grandfather in here. Turns out I have an old family photo of the woman who owned this locket and was wearing it. And then recently this other piece that I have, this sweet, you know, what looks like a hat pin, but I found a different.

Turns out that this was also in that same picture. So now I can connect the dots between these pieces of jewelry that I have. I know who they belong to. If I have the photographs, then I can place a face to them. And it helps me keep it all in perspective.

Megan Hamilton (11:39.224)
So, you know, aside from just simple curiosity, why might we be interested in learning more about our ancestors?

So for me...

getting deeper into this kind of work that I've been doing. I was really interested in where I come from. What kind of genetic lines were passed down and by genetic lines, I don't even really mean, you know, like where in the world we came from, but more what were their stories and how might that information have been imprinted in the genetic line that I might

have inherited it. When I started to get curious about witch trials several years ago,

and feminism and public speaking and this is a great opportunity to bring up one of my favorite books of all time Women and Power by Mary Beard. If you're ever curious about why it might be more difficult for women and non-binary folks to speak up Mary Beard explains it incredibly well. That book is probably at your local library. It's a short read and it's

Megan Hamilton (13:03.906)
fabulous. But I started to think about, okay, so if you're living in Scotland during the witch trials or America during the witch trials or frankly the witch trials that continue to happen, there's a great book called Caliban and the Witch that you might be interested in reading.

Megan Hamilton (13:30.286)
You're if you're a woman living through witch trials, you're and you're a mother, you're probably your main focus is going to be don't get killed and don't let my kids get killed. So what do we know about the witch trials? What do we know about the women who were, you know, sentenced?

Megan Hamilton (14:00.61)
They were either strong women, maybe they were weird. They didn't do things in the regular way.

and or somebody wanted something from them. And the easiest way to get it was to make sure they got killed.

And this is, you know, there are enough books about how things actually went down that are really worth reading. And there's a great podcast episode by Pam Grossman. Her podcast is called The Witch Wave. And she talks about.

Megan Hamilton (14:44.694)
you know, we have this phrase.

And I can't think of it right now, but basically it's like we are the daughters of the women you couldn't burn or something like that. Right. And like talking about calling yourself a witch and the witches who died in the witch trials. But the people who died in the witch trials were not witches. They wouldn't have called themselves witch. And again, there are people who have studied this, who know more about it than me. I am basically telling you a story I heard in a podcast.

Megan Hamilton (15:20.96)
And so we if we're curious about witches, then we might think to ourselves that, I wonder if there are witches in my family line and. You might go back to Salem or you might be interested in the witches in Scotland, and certainly, you know, certainly I'm sure there were magical women and non binary people doing lots of different practices and men.

but they wouldn't necessarily have called themselves witch. Saying I'm a witch in today's world and you know what? This could change at any minute knowing what we know and seeing what we've been seeing. But calling yourself a witch is a...

privilege.

They're still killing women and non-binary folks who they think are witches in different parts of the world. So I got way off on a tangent there, but I have been curious about some of the lineage because I'm curious about, know, where who else in my family might have had ADHD, for example, or anxiety or, you know, the kind of

the way that this stuff expresses itself for me, where might that have come from? You know, why might I be fearful of certain situations and not fearful of other situations? And certainly there's so much to be said about your environment growing up. But I also think there's a lot of genetic imprint. And so, you know, when I was first doing this, because I wasn't as comfortable talking about magic or fully investing in

Megan Hamilton (17:16.02)
magic or spirituality or spiritual is spiritualism. I would think to myself, okay, well,

When I'm calling in ancestors for support, I'm calling in the genetic imprint that is still inside of me, right? So like all of the people who came before me, there are parts of them genetically that are part of me. And that got me curious as well, right? How can I access that? How can I learn more? Are there memories somewhere imprinted in my DNA?

Again, I'm going off on a tangent, but this stuff has been so enriching for me and I have been absolutely loving learning about the different people in my family. And so one of the things you might think about is, OK, well, if I do want to work with ancestors.

How? What can I do? And so I'm going back to Carmen Spaniola's, The Spirited Kitchen. Carmen was a recent guest. This is her first book. And she talks about, this is in the first part of the book when we're looking at Samhain, Halloween, and Day of the Dead.

And this is a section called the altar and Carmen says a shrine is a devotional space dedicated to an ancestor or deity. If we work other magic there, then it's commonly called an altar. Leaving offerings at the altar ensures we're in a relationship of mutual exchange with the greater than human elements. Think of a friend who always calls for help, but never checks on how you're doing.

Megan Hamilton (19:11.222)
Eventually that relationship feels extractive and exhausting, right? And so this is, you know, similar to what Carmen was talking about with animism, which is if we believe that everything is in sold, i.e. everything has a soul, then we have to have an exchange. And so this is another little tangent, but I remember somebody inviting me over.

to look at their herb garden and to share their herbs with me. And she said, make sure you bring your magical scissors. And I was like, I don't have magical scissors, what? And I was like, I'm just gonna go with the flow here, because I don't know anything about this and I'm gonna learn. And she taught me that I have a conversation with each plant and I ask for permission to take.

from the plant. And what that does, even if you don't believe in any of this, okay? What that does is it makes you be intentional about what you're taking and what you're giving back. And there has to be a bit of reciprocity. So we know that in any garden,

Overgrowth isn't helpful for the garden either, right? Trimming, pulling away the dead stuff, taking bits and pieces so that more can grow back, all of that is really important. And if you take too much, the plant won't be able to thrive or survive any longer, and then you won't have the plant, and the plant can't keep growing. And so,

Megan Hamilton (21:07.736)
Thinking again of the same principle of animism into ancestry, we want to think about how we can honor the folks that we might be asking things from in the spirit of reciprocity. So again, like Carmen said, we're not just asking for stuff all the time without giving back.

She continues the altar ritual is a way we can engage in reciprocity with the more than another term with the more than another term we can use to name the greater forces the other than human the gods or the spirits. And so.

Megan Hamilton (21:56.654)
I started setting up little spaces in my office where I would honor ancestors and or people in my life who had passed on that weren't necessarily related to me, but who were important to me and or ideas.

hopefulness asks different different things that I might be working on. Having these altars or shrines sort of around me helped me keep them in mind and helped me stay intentional. So I'll just share with you what I have around here in front of me behind the computer.

is an altar that was made by a lovely woman that I met in a workshop I was giving a few years ago and she's a woodworker. And it is so it's a handmade wooden, you know, small flat table and by small I mean it's you know it's probably two feet by one foot right and it's maybe about four feet off the off the table so it's on the back of my desk and then it has a mini version of itself.

that I put up. So on the top part, I put all my tarot cards and then I have a little section where I honor ancestors, my maternal grandmothers and their mothers basically. And so I change it up every once in a while. I'll put different crystals in the warmer months. I bring flowers. Sometimes I'll bring sort of an associated food that goes along with whatever

season we're in and if I find dimes that to me is a sign that ancestors are thinking of me and so I'll bring the dimes and put them on the altar. Or for example if I wanted to summon luck so right now over here I have a lucky penny that I found and I've put a clear quartz crystal on top of it to expand the luck.

Megan Hamilton (24:17.974)
And on top of that is this. This is probably if you follow me on Instagram, you'll know about this. But in the winter, I was thinking about four leaf clovers and how I hadn't found one in ages because it was winter. And I looked down and found this. Which to me, I thought it was a four leaf clover. And I mean, we're talking like an empty barren

field of snow with nothing on it except for this one tiny little four leaf and again I'm showing the camera if you want to look on YouTube.

a clover turns out it's it was it's just it's a flower from a hydrangea. It doesn't really matter because the point was I was thinking of it and there it was and you know.

Megan Hamilton (25:15.584)
So to me, that also embodies luck. And so I put those all together over here. Over here, I have on top of a book of travel to Scotland. I have a little altar where I. It's for abundance and for the symbol of pentacles, which I've been really interested in this year. And so the magic of aliveness.

And then beside that is another little enter and altar that I have set up for different ancestors that I'd like to get to know more. And I might put cinnamon sticks, I might put coins, anything. mean, you know, like I just get whatever I find that I think is neat and I switch it up. And right now there's a photograph.

of my great great grandmother who I uncovered recently and her name was Friedrich Bergwitz and her married name was Barco and that got me really curious because Bergwitz is a Jewish name and this would have come down on my mother's side and I thought okay this is interesting.

Well, here's what else is interesting. I can't find out very much about her or her family at all, as opposed to everyone else where, you know, we can keep going back and going back.

It's really difficult to find family history about the Bergwatt side. And, you know, this was not information that had been passed down to my mom or to her sister. And...

Megan Hamilton (27:13.858)
that got me thinking about, okay, so here we go. This is gonna be more difficult than the others, but now I feel very compelled to find her and her story and add that to the bigger family line. And today I found her dad actually, so that was pretty cool. I was supposed to do this podcast.

several hours ago when I got very interested in looking at my family tree. And this is the problem. So I mean, it's problem who you get to call whatever you want. But like I can go on ancestry and spend literal hours and be absolutely unaware that I am spending this much time finding these people. I don't know if everybody who goes on there has the same experience, but certainly that has been that has been true for me. And so.

When might be a good time to honor your ancestors aside from just learning about them? So we know that sawing October 31st and November 1st are traditionally days when we say the veil is thin and that you might be able to connect with ancestors more easily than not. So that might be a time to think about

Who do you want to connect with to learn more about? How might you thank your ancestors for all of the good stuff that you've inherited? Right. And I don't mean tangible things. I mean, although it could be, I also recently found out that this chair that I have in my house is from the 1700s from Scotland. And it was so important to this family line that there were 12 chairs and six of them were sent to

North America and six of them were sent to Australia. And so there's somebody in Australia and there these chairs are dispersed among different family members. There's somebody or people in Australia who have chairs from the same table from the 1700s from Scotland. And I'm thinking to myself.

Megan Hamilton (29:33.144)
the expense, the you'd have to know the address. You'd have to know like you'd have to tell people these chairs are coming. Why do it? And I guess the answer is because this stuff is important to us. Where we come from, who we are, who we come from, right? I cannot imagine the lives.

that especially some of the women in my family had. I mean, hardship, right? Now, again, please know that I'm putting this in context, okay? But absolutely much more difficult existences, let's say, than mine.

Megan Hamilton (30:30.798)
And then I think about perseverance and bravery and making things work with not very much and commitment. mean, you know, how did this broach from Scotland from the 1800s find its way to me?

Megan Hamilton (30:54.37)
Right? It's a miracle that it's here. It's a miracle that I know how it got here. Anyway, so if you are curious about, you know, working with ancestors, you might think of a goal of, let's say, Halloween as a starting point. And from now until then, maybe you start gathering your information and whoever you feel drawn to, that might be who you

might want to start thinking about connecting with if that feels like a good thing to you. Even if you just find out tangible facts and parts of the history, there's a lot of value to that.

One of the things you can do that I have found to be profoundly

impactful is to speak their names out loud. So you may know that most mornings I begin my own little ritual of journaling and shadow work and then I call in circle and so I call in the seven directions. Then I call in my ancestors and I change it up all the time but I used to call in all of the names of people I knew. Well at this point

I mean, I don't know how many people are on my ancestry, but I think it's like over 250. I'm not. can't do all of that. Right. But I also start to notice, OK, well, who are the people I remember?

Megan Hamilton (32:29.356)
What stories do I remember? And for whatever reason that might be.

why I'm supposed to know about them or meet why I'm supposed to potentially, you know, connect with them or learn from them. But saying their names out loud can be, you know, like when I say impactful, mean, like full body chills.

Megan Hamilton (32:56.884)
So here's a story. I have boxes of stuff that different people in my family have given me because they know that I'm interested in this. And I was using a pendulum and I had learned how to use that pendulum at the Tarot conference I went to last October. And actually the woman who organized that is an upcoming guest. And that is going to be a knockout podcast episode that you're not going to want to miss.

And one of the people who was there taught us how to use a pendulum.

And if you don't know what a pendulum is, it is I've got two here. I'll pull it down for you. Hold on.

I should have had all my stuff organized a bit more, but I'm going freestyle with this. So here's an example of a pendulum and they can look, you might be more familiar with ones that are like long and pointy. On the end of a chain is some form of crystal and you connect with it in whatever way and you calibrate it so that you know what the yes means, you know what the no means, you know what the maybe means and you can ask questions. Usually yes, no questions.

And so I had been working with this pendulum because that was not something I had done before, but I learned how to do it at this conference. And I connected with my, cause I would say like, is it this person? And it would be, no, is it this person? And it would be yes. So I connected with my great grandmother and you you start asking questions and eventually it seemed that she really wanted me to go to this box.

Megan Hamilton (34:40.742)
family stuff. So I go to this box and I'm like I don't know what I'm looking for and all of a sudden I find this handwritten memoir from my grandmother that details her life.

And I find this section about her mother who I had just connected with with the pendulum. And it said that before she had met her husband, she had been an elocutionist. And I'm like, elocutionist. Elocution is something I talk about in my public speaking job. So I look it up and it's a public speaker.

Megan Hamilton (35:30.794)
I mean, draw your own conclusions, but I'm connecting with the person I believe to be my great grandmother. She's telling me to go to the box. I look at the box to find out that she did the very job that I now have made my business around. Nobody in the family knew. I was like, did you all know that your grandmother was an elocutionist? And they were like, I had no idea. She was actually really quiet.

And so I typed up my grandmother's memoir and sent it to my family so that everybody could have it.

But that felt like a pretty strong indication that I was getting some guidance towards something. Another time I was, I will ask for signs often. I was in the park with the dog. It's the place I like to take her the most. And I sometimes, you know.

talk out loud and ask questions and work things through. I'm a verbal processor, but I always sort of feel like I'm talking to my ancestors and I was talking to one in particular who I had just learned a lot about and turns out she had been in this book and I found this old picture of her that nobody had seen and that was really neat. And I said, because I'm always doubting myself and I'm always doubting all of this. And I said, all right, well,

I'd really like a sign. Can you give me a sign? And dog's doing her business and it's getting dark. You know, it's close to five and I hear this rushing sound and I think to myself, okay, the street cleaner's out.

Megan Hamilton (37:26.4)
either cleaning the street or salting the road. And then I remember thinking, well, that's kind of weird. But I was sort of like looking over at the sky or I don't know, doing something and like the sound was getting stronger and stronger, but it was going on for a really long time. Not I sort of suddenly clued in like. Is the street cleaner just. Standing there like what's it doing? So I turned to look and in front of me.

coming towards me was a hailstorm.

And it was so loud and I could see it coming because you know the hail pieces were I don't know let's say like an inch maybe not that big like they weren't they were a little bit stingy but not terrible and it was coming towards me and I thought okay that's probably a sign that's a pretty good one that's a big one I don't think I'd ever seen

storm coming towards me before as opposed to it just like coming down on top of me.

Another situation was a few years ago. I was getting a reading from a psychic medium and she told me that my grandmother said I should ask my dad about his back. So I called my dad and I said, listen, I know how you feel about this stuff, but this just happened. And you know, apparently grandma said that I need to call you and ask you about your back. And he went, my God, are you serious?

Megan Hamilton (39:14.478)
I was like, why? He said, I just pulled my back this morning.

Right? It's nothing major. It's not, you know, some kind of catastrophe, but pretty interesting.

When I was at the tarot conference that I referenced earlier, this is a really cool activity and I'll share it with you and you can give it a try if you like. I haven't even pulled a tarot card.

Megan Hamilton (39:49.268)
unlike me. Hold on I need to get my deck because I'm doing a tarot dinner tonight and I put it in...

Megan Hamilton (39:59.393)
a different place than usual.

Alright.

Better late than never.

Megan Hamilton (40:09.486)
I'll tell you the story as I am shuffling the cards. So.

Megan Hamilton (40:16.472)
Basically, you can do an ancestral spread with tarot cards and you start off with yourself and possibly, you know, your siblings. And then you do two cards for your parents. And she had said it can be your birth parents or adoptive parents or, you know, whoever you consider and then their parents and so on and so on. And you do five generations and you pull a card.

for each person. So this is whether you know who these people were or not.

And by then I did know who these people were and it was even cooler to do this exercise. And then you start to see things like

Megan Hamilton (41:06.28)
How many...

Megan Hamilton (41:12.367)
Cups I'm trying to remember if you did it

If I think you pulled a card each time and so it's possible you would have like, let's say the king of one several times. Okay. And that's really important because then you can draw, look at the lineages and think, okay, the energy of king of ones comes from my great, great, great grandfather. And it's coming down the line. But it also can help you see, you know,

Where what family lines didn't have a lot of cups? Right? Where might they not be emotional? now I remember we only did court cards.

so you only use the court cards.

Anyways, it was a fascinating way of looking at your family tree and pulling cards and gaining information. What card wants to come out today? And perhaps it will make sense as to why I forgot it when I did and why we're doing it now instead of earlier.

Megan Hamilton (42:34.734)
Seven of ones. So.

I use the Rider Waite Smith deck.

Seven of Wands is about...

standing in your values, fighting for what's right, feeling like the world might be against you, but also being elevated from that, right?

Megan Hamilton (43:06.648)
Where do you need to?

Megan Hamilton (43:12.396)
Be brave. How are you gonna draw your courage? Always go back to what is this higher ground and why am I standing on it and why am I defending it?

That seems pretty relevant for these times.

Megan Hamilton (43:34.008)
I think about what we're looking at right now in terms of history.

Megan Hamilton (43:41.448)
and the relatively comfortable lives that many of us have had.

And the idea of fighting, literally fighting for something, might feel terrifying.

but.

Megan Hamilton (44:05.569)
my great uncle.

in the war. I'm sure he probably...

felt that too. Scared. Et cetera.

Maybe that's it. Maybe we go and we look at who our ancestors were that had to fight against the norm that had to carve their own path that had to be brave that had to make things work despite all the odds. Perhaps that's why that card wanted to come up and why it wanted to come up now.

Megan Hamilton (44:52.588)
What happens if your ancestors weren't good people?

I have uncovered a lot of really interesting and crappy information about some of the people in my family line.

Megan Hamilton (45:08.626)
And I have heard from so many different people about what happens after you pass on. Some people think.

Once you're in the spiritual realm, it's love and light only. Everything in the earth is forgiven, forgotten. And all they want to do is help us. I've been watching Tyler Henry on Netflix and really curious about how he taps into this stuff. And he will often say that there's people who don't

necessarily want to come forward because they feel guilty or ashamed and so they can't.

Megan Hamilton (46:00.673)
And then

And there's other folks again in an upcoming episode who talk about.

The same thing that if there's uncomfortable feelings or if they feel like they didn't do things well, they may not want to come forward in a, let's say a mediumship reading and you can't really make them, I guess, unless you forgive them or let them know that all is forgiven. I don't know. I don't know how these things work. I tend to really lean into my intuition about stuff like this.

And can tell you this, there have been times when I have felt very close to all of my ancestors and felt very much supported and loved. And then there's been times where I'm going through stuff in my life and dealing with some old stress and pain. And then I get, I can feel really frustrated and angry with some of these ancestors. And I might even say it.

And, you know, I know there's folks out there who would be like never, you know, never upset the ancestors. And I don't think that's healthy either. Right. You know, if we're if if what we're doing is leaning into truth, if what we're doing is acknowledging our human existence on this plane, then we're going to have human emotions, then we're going to have pain, then we're going to have trauma that needs to be dealt with.

Megan Hamilton (47:41.91)
And you can decide what feels the right way for you. You can also know that that might change.

Megan Hamilton (47:52.824)
But as far as what I've been doing, it feels pretty nice to connect with everybody. But there's definitely certain characters in my ancestral lines that I feel much more compelled to feel close to than others. And some of that there's obvious reasons and some of that there isn't. I was asking who

what people do to honor their ancestors. I'm at 48 minutes. This is going to be 25. Okay.

Megan. Caitlin wrote to say that she likes to wear, family rings and I am wearing family rings. This was my maternal grandmother's and this was my paternal grandmother's and I love to wear these rings. And, especially when I'm doing journaling, tarot, et cetera, it helps me feel close to them.

Megan Hamilton (49:04.586)
Lately, I've been asking if ancestors want to make reparation through me.

I'm going to say that I don't know that that's been the best idea because I will say that some stuff's come up that's been incredibly challenging. And also if we think of breaking cycles, then perhaps that's also what's necessary. And then finally, why might our ancestors want to help us? I don't know.

I don't know why, but all signs point to the fact that they do and we just have to tell them that they're allowed to and open up the door in whatever way. Here's what I think. Okay. I think that as humans with human brains who are also spiritual beings that there is a limitation to how we process anything that is beyond our usual way.

of sensing and understanding things. Right. And you can hearken back to, it's under my computer right now, but Amy Miranda's book talks about the Claire's right. Claire voyance, Claire sentience, all the different kinds of knowing that aren't, you know, in the traditional ways that that we that we do know things.

Megan Hamilton (50:36.79)
And it seems to me that we all have different experiences working with the spiritual realms because our brains.

have draw from different wells of wisdom and experience. so.

If something comes to me and an idea comes to me and I think it's, you know, I don't know, somebody asking for forgiveness.

Megan Hamilton (51:18.03)
And that might be the case or it might just be that I'm getting like a quick memory of from somebody else.

the DNA or whatever. That's not making a lot of sense. What can I say more? I was listening to the telepathy tapes and I don't know if you've listened to them or not and there's certainly lots of different things to consider. Okay, lots of different things to consider but what was striking to me was there was a lot of similar themes but they might have different specifics and I think that the reasons the specifics are different

is because the people who are interpreting the information that can't really be interpreted fully through a human experience are using their human metaphors to be able to explain the feelings that they feel. And I have no idea if that makes sense to you or not, but to me it does. And so this is when I tend to lean into my intuition.

and create pretty good boundaries around my energy, what I would allow in and what I don't.

but I take what's given to me and see it through the lens that is me. And that's the way I'm supposed to see it.

Megan Hamilton (52:53.612)
And you can do whatever you would like to do.

So.

I'm going to close out here because I'm curious if you're listening to this and you had any epiphanies or any ideas, would you head over to the website embracing enchantment.com and leave us a voicemail and let us know what came through for you, what you're thinking, whether whether this is interesting to you or whether you think it's a bunch of hogwash. I hogwash.

Let's look at hogwash. kidding. I actually probably going to go into a deep dive of what hogwash means and where that came from after we're done here. But for now, I'd love to know what you think about all of this. We have some really, really exciting episodes coming up, including a live taping on Saturday, March 8th in Toronto for International Women's Day. More on that soon. Hopefully, actually today when the episode comes out.

And you can definitely find out about it at EmbracingEnchantment.com or else the Instagram at Embracing Enchantment pod. You can find all the information and takeaways from today's episode in the show notes or at EmbracingEnchantment.com. Subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts. And we'd love for you to leave a review. You can also leave a voice note at EmbracingEnchantment.com and we might feature it in a future episode.

Megan Hamilton (54:29.464)
You're going to want to make sure you're subscribed because we have some exciting episodes coming up about mundane magic and what it feels like to be psychic. We also have a live taping, as I mentioned, coming up in Toronto, March 8th, and a couple of upcoming guests are going to blow your mind. I am ever amazed at the folks who agree to come on the podcast, but holy smokers, y'all. You can catch up on previous episodes where we talk about collapse.

human design and the question of whether magic is real and so much more. Until then, here's to building an enchanted life.