Ancestor Connections
Deep Family Roots
My awakening to the reality of ancestor spirits and their role in our lives formed long before my introduction to shamanism and helped pave the path ahead. As time passed, signs and dream messages fit together like pieces of a puzzle, with the bigger mosaic slowly emerging. At a certain point, it became clear that ancestors were calling me back to the place of my birth, and as it will be revealed, the home of more generations than I knew at the time. There is much I still do not know. But I have learned ancestors are greatly invested in the lives of their living descendants. What I will share is how and what I know.
In the same intuitive reading related to the bridge of icy tears, my partner ended with the following:
There’s a churchyard, old and ornate; you are looking for a gravestone⸺an ancestral or reincarnation search. There’s a name on a gravestone. A young woman wants to know as much as you do. There will be a journey to tie up loose ends, bringing to fruition, dangling threads that seem unrelated with an urgent need to bring them together. You will see how they connect like a chain, intertwining in a way that makes perfect sense and brings you back to the first step.
...A few weeks before moving back to Newfoundland, on a morning in the zone between waking and sleeping, I have a vision of a young man in uniform. He is standing in a field in France. At his feet is a shallow hole in the ground in which there is a pile of oval metal pellets. While I know something of our family's French connection, this vision prompted me to find out more about my great-great grandfather, James Guinchard.
Later I investigated family records and discovered that James was a soldier in the Crimean War. After being injured and discharged, he lived in St. Père on the coast of Normandy. The metal pellets were clearly significant. Additional research revealed the French army used newly developed ammunition that gave soldiers better accuracy in battle, and it is said, helped them win the war. A picture from the internet showed the pellet-like shapes of the new ammunition, the same as those in my vision.
My great-great grandfather’s full name was Gilles Pierre Jacques Guinchard. The records state he was wounded in battle. He was awarded the Queen Victoria Service Metal for saving the life of a British officer. The musket balls from his wounds have been kept in a metal container along with his military records, which are still in the possession of a family member in Nova Scotia. The story goes that James left a sweetheart behind in France, a woman his family disapproved of due to religious differences. I was told that the 160-year-old handkerchief he used to wipe away her tears on his departure from St. Malo, is also in the possession of a descendant. Gilles-Pierre sailed to Terra Neuve, and several years later James, as he was now called, married Hannah Biggin, my great-great grandmother.
By now I am aware that my ancestors exist in another dimension of space and time, and are able to communicate with me. There is a thin veil that separates the living and the dead. On my way back to ancestral lands, this dream vision is a direct communication from Gilles Pierre Jacques Guinchard. While I feel trepidation about what lays ahead, I’m excited with the confirmation, sensing their pleasure at my return. There is work to be done.
Excerpt from Return to Pangaea: A Shamanic Journey Back to Newfoundland Roots, by Alison Normore, Available in Paperback and EBook format soon!
