What Kind of Ancestor are you Becoming?

This is an entry from my substack, Love Letters to Dr. Grief: Heartful & artful dispatches from the frontlines of divorce, abuse, motherhood, self-responsibility, longing, and the recalcitrant reality of living in broken systems.

Dear Dr. Grief,

In my last letter, I spoke directly to the ones who left me when I needed them most. The ones who watched me unravel inside a state-sanctioned nightmare and chose to look away.

“We don’t want to get involved” aka “We are protecting our peace.”

And I asked a question I will keep asking until it lands: What are you modeling for your children?

Because if this happens to your daughter—and it very well might—what do you hope her friends will do? Will they stay? Will they speak? Will they listen when she says, “I’m not safe”?

This question isn’t rhetorical. It’s a pattern interrupt.

It’s a line drawn in the sand of lineage.

You Are Always Becoming an Ancestor

Whether you mean to or not, you are passing something down.

You pass down your silence.

You pass down your boundaries.

You pass down your nervous system.

You pass down your capacity to stay with the hard, and the holy.

This is epigenetics. It’s the science of inherited trauma, and the biology of change. What you repress—your children carry. What you heal—your children inherit.

When I chose not to self-abandon, even while drowning in the crucible, I wasn’t just saving myself. I was rewriting the pattern map encoded in my blood. I was giving my children a different blueprint.

I am rebuilding a bloodline that was never allowed to rest, to receive, to radiate.

And I am doing it while dragging myself through hell.

This is not luxury shadow work. This is shadow work in the fire, shadow work with teeth, shadow work as survival.

I Am Becoming the Ancestor Who Has Never Existed in My Line

I come from a lineage of women who:

• Overfunctioned, overperformed, and overcompensated

• Silenced themselves in the name of being good

• Hated themselves to stay loved

• Martyrdom was their medicine

• Self-erasure was their survival strategy

And I want to say this clearly: I don’t judge the women who came before me. The overfunctioning, the martyrdom, the self-erasure—these were necessary strategies for survival. They kept us safe in a world that did not value women’s power, voice, or rage.

They were brilliant adaptations. They were sacrifices made to protect children, to keep peace, to endure impossible circumstances.

But I am no longer willing to survive. I am here to live—to thrive.

And I also come from a lineage of men—men who weren’t taught how to feel, or be with their pain. Men who were praised for control and punished for tenderness. Men who became hardened, disconnected, cruel, or numb—not because they were monsters, but because no one ever taught them how to love without dominance.

So this healing is not just for the mothers. It is for the fathers, too. It is for the places in me where the inner man still silences the inner woman, and where the inner woman still betrays herself to stay close to that man.

I’m not here to demonize my lineage. I’m here to transform it. Because survival strategies are not meant to be permanent legacies.

I am becoming the ancestor who no longer needs to betray herself to feel safe. The one who teaches her son how to stay with his emotions, and her daughter how to roar. The one who embodies love that doesn’t abandon. The one who says: the violence stops here—not with vengeance, but with devotion.

I am here to become legendary. The ancestor I am becoming is not yet extant in my family tree. She is a mythic anomaly. A rupture in the record.

She is the woman who:

• Is in full masculine power without domination

• Is in full feminine power without apology

• Is epic as fuck because life is a gift

• Will not abandon herself or her children

• Does not perform wellness—she births it through her bones

• Is not digestible to systems built on feminine erasure

And she is turned on. By life. By eros. By the holy fucking ache of becoming.

We are so used to displays of masculine-coded power. We know what that looks like: force, control, success, detachment.

But what does feminine power actually look like?

• It looks like feeling everything.

• It looks like staying soft and sovereign while burning.

• It looks like being so fucking alive that the earth notices.

• It looks like not needing to be palatable or pleasing to be powerful.

• It looks like creating what has never existed—just because your blood asked you to.

  
  

How Far Are You Willing to Go?

This is a question I ask myself every day.

How far am I willing to go for my children? All the way. Without question. Because I will not abandon them. And when I feel the temptation to abandon myself, I remember that abandoning me is abandoning them.

And how far am I willing to go for myself? I’m learning to go all the way.

Because every time I choose myself, I model for my children a life beyond survival, beyond need.

How Good Am I Willing to Have It?

Honestly? I don’t even know how to imagine the magnitude of what I desire.

What I want is legendary. I feel it. I ache with it. But it’s still coming into form.

The level of good I’m willing to have is beyond image, beyond model, beyond what anyone in my lineage has known. It’s not just love. It’s not just safety. It’s ensoulment in every cell.

And I am willing to be the first. Even if I’m called dangerous for it. Even if I’m punished for wanting too much.

Because my desire is not frivolous—it is evolutionary.

And my devotion to this earth, to this body, to this sacred human life is unmatched.

Feeding the Goddess, Rewiring the Line

To feed the goddess is to give form to your fire.

It is to birth what only you can create—whether that’s a book, a baby, a boundary, a new standard of love. And when you offer this to the world with devotion, the world gives back. Not metaphorically. Materially.

Your body is not separate from the earth.

And the earth is not a victim.

She is not waiting to be rescued.

She is responding.

She is always listening.

She knows how to raise the ones who remember.

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. But if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” (Gospel of Thomas)

The Medusa Year Is the Invitation

This is why I created The Medusa Year.

It is a mythic cauldron for becoming the ancestor who doesn’t yet exist.

It is a feedback loop between your healing, your creations, and the living earth.

It is a reclamation of the feminine soul through body, grief, and rebirth.

It is not performative. It is sub-cellular.

It is not aesthetic. It is epigenetic.

And it’s not just for you. It’s for the daughters, the lovers, the mothers, the friends, the children watching. Because what you do now is what they will remember.

Why Medusa?

Because she was once a maiden—a priestess of Athena—who was raped in the temple by Poseidon. And instead of holding the god accountable, Athena punished her. She turned Medusa’s beauty into terror. Her voice into danger. Her gaze into something deadly.

But what if Medusa was never the monster? What if the real fear was not her destruction—but her power? The power of a woman who sees with clarity. The power of a woman whose erotic presence demands reverence.

What if she was exiled not for what she did—but for who she became? The power of a woman in full union with her feminine and masculine—and unwilling to bow.

Medusa was a woman fully in her feminine power. A priestess of sacred embodiment. And when she was violated, she spoke up. She pointed to the truth—that Poseidon’s power was domination, not divinity. She named the god’s weakness. She refused to be silenced. She became herself.

In her full authenticity, in her full sovereign feminine and masculine expression, she was feared. They feared what she saw. They feared what she said. They feared the power she held when she stood in both grief and clarity. So they made her the villain.

They told us her gaze could turn men to stone—when really, it turned them toward themselves. They said she was dangerous—when really, she was free.

The snakes she wears are not symbols of evil. They are symbols of Kundalini—the sacred feminine life force coiled at the base of the spine, waiting to rise. They represent her exalted feminine power, her cellular knowing, her untamable body-wisdom. They are the crown of women who refuse to be erased. They are erotic. Alive. Unapologetically sovereign. They are her crown—and her birthright.

Medusa is not the villain of the story. She is the spell that was broken. And now, we are calling her back from exile.

We are choosing to wear the snakes. To keep our eyes open. To let our beauty be dangerous, not because it wounds—but because it awakens.

To be Medusa is not to curse the world. It is to break the curse of silence. It is to say: “I will not be exiled from myself ever again.”

Beloved, you are always becoming an ancestor. And your nervous system is a prayer. So, what are you summoning?

Make your nervous system, your energetic way of being, one your children will want to inherit.

Love,

Me

Dr. Grief’s Prescription: Sign up for The Medusa Year

The Truth I Return To:

The greatest gift you can give yourself, your children, and the world—is the full embodiment of who you are. Even in the ache. Even in the trap. Even when they want you silent. You are still becoming…

Love Letters to Dr. Grief is my core publication — free for everyone, always. It’s where I name abuse, trace patterns, and write the truths that most people are too afraid to touch.

For those who want to go deeper, there are paid tiers that unlock additional medicine:

• Descent Craft — grief alchemy practices for navigating the underworld with courage and creativity.

• The Speakeasy Apothecary — intimate, esoteric medicine, where the forbidden becomes fuel for healing.

And don’t miss the online companion apothecary, where practical remedies and seasonal formulas meet mythic insight.

Pandora’s Panacea — a survival companion guide from Dr. Grief, mapping the hidden faces of abuse and teaching the language of freedom. It is a subsection of Love Letters to Dr. Grief.

This work doesn’t live in isolation. It’s part of a larger ecosystem that also includes:

The Yoni Herbal — a feminine body care mystery school rooted in herbs, fertility, and cycle-based teachings. Also with its own companion apothecary.

The Medusa Year — a spiral-year journey launching this fall, helping women claim the full spectrum of their power, loverhood, and sovereignty. Also with its own companion apothecary.

Each project is a thread — together they weave a fabric of remembrance, resilience, and radical reclamation.

If this letter speaks to something in you, consider subscribing or sharing it with someone who needs it.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

A Note from the Author

These letters are not legal evidence or accusations submitted in a court of law. They are testimony—of soul and heart. If you find yourself mirrored here and feel exposed, that is not on me. That is on the behavior that made this letter necessary.

I will not hide my truth to protect a man—or a family—who never protected me or my children. I am documenting the emotional, spiritual, and psychic impact of what I am living and what I’ve lived. These letters are not written to prosecute, but to illuminate—so no one feels alone in the grief, the gaslight, the ache of unsafety.

A Note on Truth & Testimony

These letters were never written to be evidence—only to be truth.But they are evidence of what it means to live through grief, abuse, gaslight, and coercion.They are timestamps of my reality. They are not legal affidavits, but they are soul-affidavits.If the court or culture ever chooses to listen, may they hear what lives between the lines.

Legal, Ethical, and Creative Disclaimer

The following content reflects my personal lived experience and does not constitute legal accusation, medical diagnosis, or actionable defamation. These are my words, shared in good faith for the purposes of truth-telling, systemic change, and community healing.

This Substack is a public art and grief witness project. It is not a legal document or part of any active legal case. Any references to abuse, coercion, or harm are grounded in my personal and collective understanding of trauma and relational dynamics.

If you recognize yourself or your behavior in these words, that reflection is yours to hold.

These writings are protected under copyright and are part of an original creative body of work. Any misuse, misquotation, or unauthorized reproduction of this work outside its intended context is a violation of the author’s creative and spiritual rights.

The intention of this project is not to target or malign individuals, but to bear witness to emotional realities often minimized or erased by systems of power. Alleged behavior is described from lived experience and is offered in service of healing and awareness.

If this letter brings discomfort, I invite you to look not at me, but at the conditions that made it necessary. Naming harm is not an act of vengeance—it is an act of survival, of repair, of rehumanization.

Closing Invocation

I am not just documenting. I am dismantling silence.May these letters become undeniable, unextinguishable, and unburnable.