I've never been a particularly sentimental person when it comes to material things. Living in a small cabin in a warm and rainy tropical climate means being ruthlessly practical about possessions, as anything that doesn’t get used on a regular basis will quickly succumb to mold, rust, or other forces of decay. Yet among the utilitarian tools that furnish my home, one object stands out: a tarnished silver candlestick that belonged to my great-great-grandmother in Saskatchewan. I remember rolling my eyes when my mother gave it to me to me shortly after I graduated from college. What was I supposed to do with a candlestick? Who even used candles anymore?
At the time, I was living in San Francisco, and my life in the city felt lightyears away from my ancestors’ existence on the prairie. In my brightly lit apartment, there was no need for candles, and with all the taquerias nearby my roommates and I rarely ate at home. Indeed, we didn’t even have a dining table. Yet somehow, I held on to the candlestick through frequent moves, reluctantly packing it up even as I felt vaguely foolish for doing so. So what if it belonged to my great-great-grandmother? The candlestick was a nuisance, a random knick-knack I didn’t really need. Still, something in me couldn’t quite let it go.
Somehow, the candlestick stayed with me for the next eighteen years, outlasting books, instruments, and items of clothing I would have told you I cherished far more. It survived friendships, relationships, and versions of myself that were all destined to fade. And when I made the biggest move of my life, leaving city streets behind to live off-grid in the forest, the candlestick came with me. It sat on a milkcrate during the years I lived in a tent, and eventually graduated to a simple shelf I built out of scrap wood.
So many things in my life had not endured, and yet my great-great-grandmother’s candlestick had stayed with me all that time. After years of seeing it as “useless,” I now appreciated the unexpected dignity it lent to its humble surroundings. I realized that in my grandmother’s hut on the prairie, it had probably done the same thing. Like me, she lacked many of the luxuries and conveniences that people in the city take for granted; and yet she could still light a candle and eat a meal in its glow.
After a lifetime of feeling little connection to or appreciation for my ancestors, I began to wonder what else I had in common with them—what other shared threads ran through our lives? Which of their skills and talents had I inherited, and which of their wounds did I still carry? In which ways were their choices still shaping my life, just as the candlestick exerted a subtle but powerful presence in my cabin?
Last year, I had the opportunity to edit Dr. Steven Farmer's book, Healing Ancestral Family Patterns: A Practical Guide to Ending the Cycle of Intergenerational Trauma. Dr. Farmer writes that we inherit four types of traits from our ancestors: physical traits such as tallness or a proneness to insomnia, emotional traits such as a melancholy streak or a reputation for being irrepressibly cheerful, behavioral traits such a love of long-distance running or a tendency to flirt, and mental traits such as a facility with numbers or a way with words.
He points out that when these traits repeat themselves over many generations, family patterns emerge. These can be positive patterns, like loving and enduring relationships, or more challenging patterns, like a tendency to burn bridges and sever ties. In some cases, children can seem to be reruns of a particular ancestor’s life: the older brother who amasses a fortune at a young age and squanders it all by the time he’s thirty, just like his grandfather, the younger brother who seems cursed with misfortunes, just like his great-uncle, the daughter who’s the spitting image of her great-grandmother and has the same sharp sense of humor.
As I edited Dr. Farmer’s book, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own ancestry. Unlike my Hawaiian neighbors who can recite not only their own family lineage but the lineages of friends in their community, I know relatively little about my parents’ families, having grown up far from their hometowns. Yet this in itself constituted the first of several family patterns I ultimately came to recognize: like me, many of my ancestors moved far away from the places where they were born, and expressed few regrets about doing so.
Although my living relatives are scientists, teachers, and writers who live in cities, it warmed my heart to remember that most of my grandparents and great-grandparents had grown up in settings far more rural and isolated than my tropical homestead. They would surely relate to ordinary tasks such as carrying water from the spring, preserving a big harvest of fruit, and coming together with neighbors for seasonal celebrations.
I realized that many of the values I thought I'd discovered independently, such as resourcefulness, thrift, and community building, were actually family traditions—I just hadn’t recognized them as such. At the same time, I realized that some of the things I struggle with mirror the struggles of the generations who came before me. My family tree contains several sets of siblings who are estranged from one another, just as my sister and I have been estranged throughout most of our lives. Maybe this wasn’t “my” problem, but just one manifestation of a bigger wound that had its origins deep in the past—and by studying the histories of my aunts’ and grandmothers’ relationships with their siblings, I could better understand my own.
Throughout Dr. Farmer’s book, he emphasizes that you do not need to be a genealogy expert to heal ancestral family patterns. In some cases, it isn’t even necessary to know who your ancestors were at all. Simply opening yourself to the fact that you represent one link of a chain of being can be enough to change your mindset, empowering you to question which energies are really “yours” and which have simply been passed down, available for you to transform through your own wisdom and benevolence for the benefit of future generations.
When my solar batteries run low, I light a candle in my great-great-grandmother’s candlestick, and the flame illuminates my small space just as it once lit her prairie home. In those moments, the physical and temporal distance between us seems to collapse.
In the soft light of that candle, I sometimes wonder what she would make of me—a woman living alone in a hut in the rainforest, typing on a laptop which is powered by a handful of solar panels. Would she recognize in me the same deeply practical nature that allowed her to survive in Saskatchewan? Would she understand my choice to live in this unusual and inconvenient way? I'll never know for certain, but I like to think there would be a spark of recognition between us that transcended our physical traits.
As Dr. Farmer points out, our ancestors were far from perfect—they made mistakes, often held beliefs we would consider offensive today, and sometimes caused damage that reverberated through generations. Yet by engaging thoughtfully with our inheritance, neither rejecting it out of hand nor accepting it uncritically, we can weave something new and healing from these ancestral threads.
Toward the end of Healing Ancestral Family Patterns, Dr. Farmer describes the thrill of diving into your ancestry, which can be akin to a treasure hunt or mystery novel: “Just when you think you understand your story, some new piece of information comes to light, revealing insights that may have eluded you before.”
As I was drafting this essay, I picked up my great-grandmother’s candlestick and inspected it closely for the first time in years. I noticed nicks and scratches on its stem, and some kind of patch or repair just under the depression where the candle goes. Picking up a cloth to polish it, I was startled when the candlestick came apart into three pieces; I had never noticed they were held together by a long screw. For a moment, I had the wild thought that there might be a secret note hidden inside one of the sections. How incredible it would be to find an old love letter in faded, spidery handwriting, or a yellowed photograph slipped in there for safekeeping.
Of course, the candlestick was empty—yet it still felt like some imaginary threshold between the deep past and present had been unexpectedly breached. In the instant it came apart, I saw it for the first time—not as “my” candlestick, but as its own being, a thing which might well outlive me, just as it had outlived my great-great-grandmother. For a moment, I felt my own mortality. Then I screwed it back together, and pushed a brand-new candle in.
Sincerely,
Hilary T. Smith
Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing
The patterns of the past don’t have to define your future.
Drawing on decades of experience in psychology, family systems therapy, and shamanic practice, Dr. Steven Farmer reveals how the physical, emotional, behavioral, and mental traits passed down through your family tree influence your relationships, decisions, and overall well-being. This compassionate and practical guide will help you:
Identify the traits and patterns you’ve inherited from your ancestors.
Heal emotional wounds that have been carried across generations.
Break free from cycles of addiction, trauma, and dysfunction.
Enhance your connection with your ancestors to draw on their wisdom and strength.
Create a legacy of healing that benefits both you and your descendants.
With a blend of modern therapeutic techniques and ancient shamanic practices, Healing Ancestral Family Patterns offers a clear path to ancestral healing. Whether you’re seeking to address deep-seated trauma, understand your family’s history, or simply connect more deeply with your roots, the practices within will empower you to transform your ancestral patterns into sources of strength and resilience.