The Persistence of My Ancestors

This past weekend, I faced some big challenges. I felt like I was representing a lot. I was the leader of an event, and pulling it off during covid times and with other challenges felt monumental. I just didn't feel up for it. Not only was I inadequate, but I also felt alone. How do people do this?

I thought of my maternal grandmother, a woman known for her backbone. In the cold North, she raised four children on a little dairy farm during the Depression. Her husband, although he worked as much as he could, was sick with a debilitating illness. Somehow, she juggled herding cows, child-raising, and educating her town's gaggle of children as the sole teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. She managed to bring a good life to my mother and her siblings, against all odds. My mother shares stories of the fun they had, even amidst the deprivation: "We didn't even know we were poor!"

I was suddenly struck with awe at how tricky human life has always been. So many generations of my ancestors struggled to live a good life, cooperated with each other; did their best to learn the nuances of how to live in the society they were born into; married and nurtured children into adulthood; lived through illness and tragedy, mistakes and setbacks; and succeeded at being human, on and on and on throughout the decades and centuries...and their end result is me.

Sunday morning, squaring my shoulders, I pictured the team of people who have my back and were preparing for the event with me. Feeling their encouragement and imagining also the support of my ancestors, I headed out the door.

Perhaps my grandmother, deceased years ago after a long and fulfilling life, had felt similar feelings as she rose each day to face the world.

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Initiated as a tradition-holder in the Nahua/Mexican weather worker lineage in May 2003 by don Lucio Campos de Elizalde of Nepopualco, Morelos, Mexico, Erin Everett is a weather worker, ceremonial leader, and traditional healer. She is known in Nahuatl as a quiatlzques and in Spanish as a tiempera. As are many in this tradition, she was struck by lightning in her youth, which is a known calling to this path. A native of western North Carolina, she and her colleagues work with weather in the Asheville, NC geographical region. More information about their work, tradition, and teachers can be found at seedsoftradition.org.