Traditions are dormant - not lost · Healing from Within

Traditions are dormant - not lost

People tell me their traditions are lost. I hear this from students, people in healing circles and other places.

The story is familiar. The language died with a great-grandparent. The practices were forbidden or shamed out of the family. Nobody is left to teach them. Nobody talked about these ways.

I understand why it feels that way. This was the experience in my family. It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned about my great grandfather's healing ability. I had a great aunt who was well known for her divination and healing knowledge of herbs. She would have people come from long distances to see her. Hardly anyone in the family talked about this without being asked many times over for details.

In light of all this, I want to hand you a different word.

Not lost. Dormant.

Lost means gone. Dormant means sleeping. A seed under winter ground is not dead. It is waiting for conditions to change.

Your traditions were carried in bodies for thousands of years. Some of that carrying does not stop just because the teaching stopped. It waits in you. In what pulls you. In what makes you weep without knowing why.

The work is not resurrection. The work is waking up something that never fully slept. It's that knowing that sits just under the first layer that is waiting for sunlight.

I want you to think about how your traditions are part of you. What is one practice, sound, or place that pulls at you even though nobody taught it to you? Put it below. Read the other answers before you scroll on. You will see you are not alone in this.

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Traditions are dormant - not lost