Melissa Taylor

In this episode of Just Like Nana, host Amie (Elizabeth) Penny Sayler is joined by Melissa Taylor, a mental health provider who's deeply versed in cultural nuances and intergenerational trauma, to discuss seeking ancestral wisdom as part of healing.

They also dive into the impact of systemic oppression on family dynamics and the importance of recognizing and validating individual experiences.

About Melissa

Navigating both physical and virtual spaces, Melissa is a third-culture individual deeply versed in cultural nuances and intergenerational trauma. Driven by a mission to reconnect with her ancestors and to help others on their own journeys of reconnection, she specializes in addressing relational and intergenerational trauma as well as oppression. Melissa’s practice is grounded in principles of anti-racism, anti-oppressive practices, and Black feminism. She’s committed to working with individuals impacted by colonization, enslavement, and 2SLGTBQ+ oppression.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Ancestors are not just biological; they can include community members, writers, artists, or even elements of nature like a specific lake or river that provides a felt sense of connection.
• We don't just inherit intergenerational wounds; we also inherit intergenerational wisdom—skills, ways of knowing, and a capacity for playfulness that can anchor us during difficult times.
• Healing often begins with a sensation rather than a thought. Look for glimmers of okayness or a settlement in the body, even if it only lasts for a few seconds.
• Individual trauma is often inseparable from systemic oppression, including racism, misogyny, and the patriarchy. Recognizing these external forces helps take the pathology off the individual.

Resources Mentioned

• Ancestral Memory Therapy’s blog

Connect with Melissa Taylor

• Ancestral Memory Therapy: https://www.ancestralmemorytherapy.com/

Connect with the Show

• Website: justlikenana.com
• Share Your Story: If you have a family story or trauma you’re exploring, reach out via our website for a chance to be interviewed.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Theme music by Carter Penny.

Transcript

Uncovering Your Internal Map: Healing Through Ancestral Memory and Somatic Wisdom with Melissa Taylor

Amie Penny Sayler 0:21

Welcome to Just Like Nana. Happy to have you here today. We're going to be talking with Melissa Taylor. She is amazing. She has so much to share with all of us. Melissa is a mental health provider who's deeply versed in cultural nuances and intergenerational trauma. She's driven by a mission to reconnect with her ancestors and to help others on their own journeys of reconnection. She specializes in addressing relational and intergenerational trauma as well as oppression. Melissa's practice is grounded in principles of anti-racism, anti-oppressive practices, and black feminism. Her certifications span cognitive processing therapy, narrative therapy, mindfulness, EMDR, and sensory motor psychotherapy. She's registered to practice in Ontario, Canada. Welcome, Melissa. So thrilled to have you here today. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.

Melissa Taylor 1:22

Awesome. I love that you invited me. I'm so happy to be here.

Melissa's Great Grandmother's Story

Melissa Taylor 1:26

Wonderful.

Amie Penny Sayler 1:27

We like to start it Just Like Nana if you have a story to share about an ancestor. So whether that's a grandma, a great grandma, whoever that kind of is in your life, a story that pops out to you as something that maybe wants to be shared, and what you called that person in your life. There's all sorts of different names for grandmas of varying degrees.

Melissa Taylor 1:48

Yeah, yeah. A story that I would love to share is the story of my great-grandmother who shows up in my professional work as examples so many times. One of my very few memories of her, she didn't live in Canada with me or my mom and my aunts or uncles. She lived in Jamaica. So my way of connecting with her was usually in the summertime during school break. I would go to Jamaica when I was younger to visit her. And one of the memories that are just clear as day that I loved sharing is I remember she must have been feeding chickens, and which it was a very strange phenomenon for me as a little one. I must have been six or seven years old, raised in the city, lived in an apartment building. So the experience was really night and day. And she sat down in front of the veranda and she grabbed my hand. And for context, what's really important to know is my grandma was visually impaired and she was hard of hearing. So she grabbed my hand, she felt my hand, and she used one of her fingers. I don't remember which one of her fingers, probably her index finger, to map the M in my hand. And she just screamed out, money! You could have lots of money. And she was like reading the palm of my hand. And there was like this excitement for her that somehow, just for transparency, I'm not must have meant rich in other ways, which I am. But I just remember just being this little human, like not quite getting it. Like, why is she excited? And you know, I don't know if this is gonna touch on another question you have, but this comes up a lot in my work in terms of me inviting folks to think of somatic memories of their ancestors, because that's very much a somatic memory that I have. So it's not just this linear memory I can count upon, but it's very much a felt sense. So if I slow myself down and I look at my right hand and I allow myself just to gently mark the, you know, the M on my hand, the unbroken M on my hand, I can still feel her presence. I can still sense her presence, which is quite remarkable because I don't remember a lot of my childhood, but I do remember her in that moment, which makes me feel pretty hard and good, which is why I love to sort of share this really glimpses of that experience. Because I don't believe my experience is unique in the world. Those somatic memories can be so helpful in doing trauma work.

Amie Penny Sayler 5:10

And we haven't really ever addressed in any Just Like Nana episode touch from our ancestors and those in our familial line or adults who were taking care of us and what that means to us as a child. Because I think as humans, it means a lot to us. As children, possibly even more. We're just so tactile.

Melissa Taylor 5:31

Absolutely. And thanks for like really mentioning that. Because I don't know why I've never thought of this before until you mention that. That makes a lot of sense to me why this memory stands out. As a child, it even as an adult, there's ways that I'm very touch deprived. I grew up in a household that didn't do hugs and kisses, which makes a lot of sense why this experience of touch is so lingering and so impactful for me, and why I can still feel it to this day.

Amie Penny Sayler 6:05

When that was happening with your grandma, did you have this sense of kind of safety and being seen and feeling special with her?

Melissa Taylor 6:12

I don't know about safety because I think I was a part of her excitement. But yeah, definitely special for sure. Like I there was that felt sense of feeling special, and that was so layered. I was like this Canadian kid visiting Jamaica. Um, so there was a way that I was treated different, just off the bat, in comparison to my cousins who are relatively age mates who were born and raised in Jamaica. There is a way that I was like approached in a more gentle way, a more gentle fashion. So yeah, definitely special. But the safety part I'm not sure about. I was quite startled by her excitement.

Amie Penny Sayler 7:04

Yes, a little uncertain. What did you call her, your great grandma?

Melissa Taylor 7:09

Granny. We all called her granny because grandma was mama, so my great-grandmother became granny. So that's how in my child's mind I was able to distinguish the two is like granny is mama's mother.

Amie Penny Sayler 7:35

You gave a a little tiny teaser, but let's talk about your work. I would love

Melissa's Work and Ancestral Memory Therapy

Amie Penny Sayler 7:40

if you can, just to describe your work to our listeners, and I'm sure you're going to touch on this, but especially the ancestral memory therapy that you offer.

Melissa Taylor 7:50

Yeah, this is where I'm gonna fumble. Because what any when anyone asks me a direct question about my work, I'm like, oh yeah, what is it that I do? Um, let me think about that. So interesting. Um, I don't feel like I can talk about my current practice without talking about grad school because it's uh my private practice was really born in grad school. So in grad school, I was doing a major research paper on collective memory in the context of trauma in terms of sexual assault. I wish I had the literature I have now that I that I didn't have back then. So I was really piecemeal in a lot of things. I really had like a deep sense that a lot of the experiences of intimate violence was an intergenerational experience where a lot of women, and I was in particular my research papers talking about black women, carry this felt sense of weight of something happened to me, something heavy that sometimes doesn't have words or experiences to understand what is that felt sense of heaviness that I'm not safe and something has happened. So that was my major research paper in grad school. And early on, I knew I wanted to do private practice. Fast forward, I didn't know that that's what my private practice was going to be. It just made sense, and it made sense uh because post-grad school, I did the usual stuff. I worked in community mental health, I worked in academia as a therapist. And what showed up over and over again, someone would come in. I have anxiety, I have depression, you know, I have a phobia, dot, dot, dot. And the more I got to know the people I worked with, very quickly I learned a lot of the things they were talking about was a lot deeper than the here and now. So when I finally did open up my private practice, it just made a lot of sense for me to name my private practice as ancestral memory therapy to really highlight the ways that intergenerational trauma shapes us in many ways, ways that we sometimes don't even want to admit. But it was also really important for me to discuss intergenerational wisdom. So we don't just inherit intergenerational trauma, we also inherit intergenerational wisdom. And that wisdom helps to connect us with sometimes hope, sometimes being whimsical and playful. It helps us connect us to nature in so many ways. So it was really important for me to really hold the both in. And so a lot of the people who come to see me are not coming because they want to process intergenerational trauma, despite the title of my practice. And that's fine. I always meet people where they're at. There's never an expectation we are gonna go there. But for people who are curious about the psychological and emotional weight they're carrying, and they do have the capacity to go there, we usually start with intergenerational wisdom. So that can look like what we just did now on this call. Can you think of an ancestor who's

Ancestral Wisdom and Connection

Melissa Taylor 11:28

had a positive impact on you? What is it about that ancestor that has moved you? What is a skill or a way of knowing you would like to embody more of this ancestor? For folks who can't really draw upon those experiences, I often expand ancestor to also mean anyone that has had a positive impact on us that we consider an ancestor. So that can be a writer, some artist, a community member who's had a profound impact on you. That can be nature, so that can be land, that can be creatures. Ancestors don't always have to be biologically connected to us. What's more important is the sense of connection. So if I had someone tell me that they are really connected to a particular lake or river, I would want to learn what is it about that lake and river and the species that are inside of that lake and river that you feel really connected with. How do you experience this body of water in relation to your body? Is there a way that we can bring that into the therapy space to help support you before we move through some of these major trauma themes?

Amie Penny Sayler 12:52

Thank you for that. There was so much in there. Your work is so cool how you approach the individual in a you know collective manner. And I'm loving this. Yes, sometimes it's biological. There can be ancestors where there's a biological connection, but also it's more than that. And it sounds like, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so you tell me, is it like a spiritual or an energetic kind of connection that you can sometimes have?

Melissa Taylor 13:20

It can be spiritual for some people. I'm still trying to understand spirituality. Fair enough. I tend to use the language more like felt sense, like a felt sense connection. So energy lands really well for me because everything in the world is energy. Air is energy, oxygen is energy, everything is energy in the world. But what I'm really curious about is that sense of connection. Because that sense of connection as human beings is what helps to keep us grounded. Even if we're saying I'm highly an anxious person, there is something anchoring you to this planet Earth. What is it that's anchoring you? And yes, you you are highly anxious, but there's something more to that. As humans, it's a part of our biological makeup to try and stay alive. So even if we don't have that logical thought, I need to stay alive today. Our brain is doing the heavy lifting for us to keep us alive, right? We never have to ask our brain to keep going, or our heart, or our lungs to keep going. There's a way that our system is organically oriented to stay alive unless something really terribly happens. And part of the medicine of that is something we are connected to. And that is sometimes a piece that some individuals struggle to name. And I would challenge it still there.

Amie Penny Sayler 14:58

Yeah, when you're talking about that felt sense, and when you're talking about sometimes people will come in with something, depression, anxiety, something like that. But there's also that sense in the body, that heaviness, that lump somewhere that won't go away, whatever it is. I think it can be really challenging for us to honor our felt sense as much as we honor our kind of brain thoughts and words. We tend to, in some ways, think, well, if I can't read it, it must not be as true. And so can you just talk a little bit more about that felt sense for listeners? How do they kind of find a way to access and honor their own felt sense of their experience in this world, their truth, something they might be carrying? How do you kind of help with that?

Melissa Taylor 15:50

Yeah, and I love the way you phrase that question is correct. We tend to give more value to our thoughts because they're so loud and they're with us around the clock, especially in our dreamscape. So we tend to give a lot more weight to these thoughts and treat them as true. To do the work around felt sense, the way I like to orientate people to this idea of felt sense is that A, it doesn't need to make sense. If you are looking for sense, you will struggle to find felt sense. Felt sense is sometimes a sensation. So sometimes that sensation is not necessarily calm. I don't like to use the word calm or relax, especially for someone who has historically experienced high levels of anxiety or chronic depression. That can feel like mission impossible. But felt sense is almost like the best way I can describe it a sense of okayness, just a sense. And that sense of okayness is not necessarily this like long thread we can always touch and hold on to and know that it's always there. But it can often be like a ripple sensation inside that doesn't rock our foundation, but something that we can count on that gives us that felt sense of okayness, that things will be okay. It could be glimmers. So felt sense can also feel like glimmer. So if I am working with someone who struggles with chronic depression, that's often what I'm looking at when I work with them and what I invite them to pay attention to. So that can sometimes look like your body feels relaxed, even if it's just for 10 seconds or 20 seconds in relation to something you enjoy watching or studying. So, what do you notice happen to your body when you are viewing butterflies? Whether that's upfront and personal or that is studying about butterflies, what do you notice slightly shifts? And it's often a slight shift for folks who have multiple health issues. So that's really important for me to name. But we're just looking for a shift of okayness enough. Like, is there some sort of settling, not stillness, but some sort of settleness that happens to your body? And it doesn't matter if it doesn't last all day. Look at the current state of the world we're living in. Um, that is more than an adaptive response if it doesn't last all day. But is there a way to connect with that? And with connection, there's a way to invite lingering. So there's a way we can linger in this okayness for a minute just to notice, to observe it, to give it a little bit more oxygen. And the hope is with practice, it's more easy to notice in your day-to-day life. You know, that's the hope with practice.

Amie Penny Sayler 19:22

That's amazing. And I love how subtle it is because I think sometimes, and I'm guilty of this, so this is not an accusation against anyone else. We can kind of focus on we want it to be big and sort of in our face and obvious. And I love just the quietness and the kind of temporal nature of it. It will come and go, and that's okay.

Melissa Taylor 19:45

Absolutely, right? And sometimes it can happen in really big ways, but it's actually not fair to us to have that expectation given the climate we're living in.

Amie Penny Sayler 20:07

I loved what you were saying about ancestral wisdom. And it occurred to me, you know, how you were talking about that's sort of how you'll start is let's kind of start with the wisdom, thinking about relationships that we have with our ancestors. And I'm using that term very broadly, as you did, you know, whether that's someone biological, someone who's influenced you, whatever that means to you. I've never thought about this until you said it that way, but it does make sense to kind of begin that relationship with the honoring, the gratitude, seeing the good that's trickled down and been brought through before sort of jumping to, hey, here's a challenge and here's something we can both work on together. It seems just like any relationship you have, right? Like if you start a relationship with someone and it starts from the get-go, kind of with an, I'll just use the word negative, kind of a negative focus. There's going to be a lot more tension there where if you can sort of establish, hey, here's our relationship, we're appreciating each other, we're seeing each other's strengths. There's just more room in there to explore, is there something to learn here as well?

Melissa Taylor 21:15

Absolutely. And the reason why it starts that way is you alluded to this already, is we are relational beings. I always sort of joke with some of my clients who are introverts. I'm like, I don't care how much you are an introvert. I really don't care. It's not that I don't care, but it's important and it's not important. You're still a relational being. There's still something in the world that you need to relate to to feel a felt sense of safety, security, community with, whether we're talking about the land, moon, or sky. There's something that helps that you need to orientate to ground you. And the reason why this becomes so fundamentally important is. Our internal system, our nervous system will not allow us to go somewhere that feels emotionally dangerous all by ourselves. Like it just won't happen. Let me put an asterisk with that. It can potentially happen, but there is a risk of re-traumatization without the relational piece. And what the relationship piece does, it reminds us that we're not alone in the world. It reminds us of our own strengths, our own sense of justice, our own ways of taking care of ourselves, our positive impact we have on others in our lives. And that can become possible when we connect with our ancestors. There's ways that we forget our own goodness as human beings when we've experienced trauma. Often it's difficult for us to see our own goodness, our own worthiness through our own eyes. But sometimes and often I find we can see it through our ancestors' eyes. Whether it's a question of like if your ancestor was in the room with you right now, in this therapy space with us right now, I wonder if there was words they would like you to know. I wonder if there's a demonstration of care they would like you to know. Um, because that's something I can't give clients, but they can definitely receive it from ancestors they feel connected to. Like they might sense it from me if in small ways, but it's not, there's not ways, you know, because a big part of a therapeutic relationship is that connection, is that attachment, but there's a limit to that. And so it's really important for these two energies to meet. So the energy of the client, the energy of the ancestor, for them to build their own relationship beyond the therapeutic room.

Amie Penny Sayler 24:04

Sometimes do clients actually talk out loud with their ancestors? Is it something they just do internally? How does what does that sort of look like?

Melissa Taylor 24:12

It's both and I always give people the option. Some people wouldn't don't feel comfortable doing that in front of me. Some clients do feel comfortable doing that with me. Sort of the way that I learned to do this, I sort of borrowed from other modalities. So in Gisalt Therapy, they have like the chair where you're bringing the chair in and you're talking to someone maybe you have a conflict with in this chair. So I borrowed from that modality, but instead I don't call it a chair. I call it like inviting your ancestor to sit with you. I invite the client to think about how they want this ancestor to sit beside them. In some cases, if it's a younger part of this client, are you sitting on your ancestor's lap? Are you sitting across from them? Just sort of to just sort of build sort of the groundwork of how they relate to each other in space and time, and to sort of uh provide prompts for clients to either have that conversation internally on their own, or they might say it out loud in therapy for me to witness. So it really depends on the client's comfort level if it's gonna be more of an internal

Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive Frameworks

Melissa Taylor 25:26

process. I've had a few clients are like, I can't do this in front of you, I need to do this on my own. So they asked for some of those prompts to like sort of journal.

Amie Penny Sayler 25:53

What does that mean to you? And how do systems of oppression carry trauma through generations? I mean, that is a ginormous question. I appreciate that. So, but I I want to make sure that there's some space to hear about that because that's so powerful.

Melissa Taylor 26:11

Yeah. Let me start with myself first, like my own body that I'm living in. You know, I'm a black woman, I'm first generation Canadian. My grandma came to Canada from Jamaica through a domestic workers program in the 1960s. And she brought up my mom and my aunts and uncles so they can have a better life here in Canada, a better life than they could possibly have in Jamaica. So that has really been the framework of anti-racism before I even knew what the word was. Understanding my grandma's experience coming here to Canada in the 1960s, where there was some migration happening in general, but in Toronto was still pretty white. So this sort of her and her experiences really laid the groundwork. I think the first four years of school, I was pretty much the only black child, and I experienced racism before I knew the word racism. That change after the first four years, I started to notice more diversity in my classroom. But I do remember how like that felt as being the only black child early on. And just sort of reflecting on my family experiences, going to school, learning some of the academia language around anti-racism, anti-oppressive practice. Through lived in professional experience, uh it was really important for me to name that it's not good enough to just focus on family systems. Psychology has this tradition of everything starts with mom and pops, and that has some truth to it, but it's not everything. One of the things that psychology has just started to ask more of, but historically has completely ignored, is how systems of oppression impact family structures and how states, nations, etc., how policies can negatively impact people. And who are these people who are highly marginalized, right? How that impacts like behavior, how that impacts how people access help, how that access things in the realm of addiction and trauma. I feel like we can't talk about trauma without talking about systemic racism, it's systemic oppression. Being here in Canada, I can't talk about any of this stuff without talking about the ways indigenous people on Turtle Island have experienced horrific violence, and how that violence has resulted in loss of land, but also language and um familiar relation, and how that has been used to weaponize Indigenous people by pathologizing them by behaviors rather than Canada taking responsibility as well as the Catholic Church and their roles of systemically harming Indigenous people in Canada. So that's so much of my work. So when I work with people, I am curious, not just about sort of these individual experiences of trauma. I am interested how misogyny has played out in their family. I am interested if their family system is married to the patriarchy. I am interested in internalized racism, how that plays out when I'm working with people of color, and like how did their families learn about colorism and how that impacts how they show up in the world. So for me, it feels really dishonest not to integrate an ARAOP framework with uh within trauma. The work just feels really dishonest without having that framework when talking about trauma. So it's really important to me.

Felt Sense and Systemic Oppression

Melissa Taylor 30:16

And it's really birthed from lived in professional experience.

Amie Penny Sayler 30:20

And when you're focusing on that or incorporating that, does that also rely heavily on that felt sense? Because I think part of the power, right, is that you don't talk about it. There aren't words for it. It doesn't exist, it's a denial. We don't talk about that. So I'm just wondering if that that sort of you really need to be present with your felt sense when you're working through some of that.

Melissa Taylor 30:48

Yeah, absolutely. And um, felt sense in terms of being oppressed is really important because collectively, I would say all of us, um, if I were to narrow on the power of the patriarchy, collectively a lot of us have been gaslit that our experiences are not real and we doubt ourselves as women about sort of like how we've been harmed, how particular experiences have impacted us. And but also we have a sneaky feeling or the sneaky sensation or this felt sense, like what happened is not quite right. But there's ways that we don't give ourselves permission to like name it because it's just so unbelievable that that would happen to us. And so sometimes there is work and even trust in that felt sense of like, oh, that wasn't right. I don't know why that wasn't right, but it wasn't right. And sometimes even having language um could be quite powerful for people because I've had clients say it's I've never heard anyone name it that way. Like I thought I was going crazy or I thought I was making it up. So language is extremely important. It's part of the reason I will explicitly ask particular questions when I'm getting to know someone around whether it comes down to how did your family talk about skin color or how did they talk about the texture of your hair? How were you made to feel when you said knowing your family and learning more of the context of that? And like, what are some sort of ways that family systems have internalized particular systems of oppression?

Amie Penny Sayler 32:37

One thing that strikes me when you talk about the gaslighting, too, is it's sort of premised upon this notion that there is one decider of what things are or what is, and there are no deviations from that decision. And typically the decider is a wealthy white man, right? And so just even acknowledging oh, this is my sense of it, and my sense of it is just as real. And that sort of out there idea isn't the arbiter of whether what I experienced and my felt sense is so-called legitimate or real or any of that. It is what I experienced. It inherently exists and is real and is my experience of this situation.

Melissa Taylor 33:24

Absolutely. I sometimes offer trainings in this area. And one of the things I talk about in this training, when you live in a marginalized body, one of the things you actually do become an expert upon is the oppressor's actions. There's a way that you know the oppressor better than the oppressor knows their self. And the reason why we may know the oppressor so well, it's a part of our survival to be able to know and to anticipate. And I share that going back to felt sense is that you can actually trust your felt sense because whether you're conscious of it or not, there is a way that you have been studying for your own survival to be here today, to be able to form words together. There's ways that you've had to study, whether we're talking about this in the context of oppression or abuse, there's a way that you've had to study this for your body to

Hope and Micro Shifts

Melissa Taylor 34:22

somatically pick up on like that didn't feel good or that felt yucky. There's something that you have somatically already integrated in your system that is correct.

Amie Penny Sayler 34:34

Kind of along the lines of honoring the ancestral wisdom, I would love to. Well, first of all, I could just keep talking and talking and talking. This is fascinating. Thank you so much again for talking with me today. But what kind of gives you hope or what comes from all of this work?

Melissa Taylor 34:53

I think what gives me hope and it's um is when I'm able to, it's such a my job is so strange. It's so strange. I get to like witness these micro shifts that sometimes my clients don't know. It's like classic, they downplay it every single time. And one of the things that I've learned to do over the years when I'm sensing that they're downplaying some of the profound shifts that they are living and experiencing is I slow it down in session. I slow it down enough so the client has the opportunity to sort of track within their system what just happened. Because what happens when we're just living life, a lot of us are like an autopilot. We need to either pick up the kids, we need to get groceries, we need to pay the bills, we need to, there's so much hustling involved to keep ourselves afloat that we may not even notice the first time we said no, when we traditionally say yes. We may not notice that we are choosing rusts when we usually have a guilty part of us uh that says we can't miss out. So the interesting part of my job is I get to sort of listen for those moments and really pause and invite the client to slow down of what just happened and just sort of witness them, witness sort of their own shift. And sometimes that results in like tears because sometimes people honestly don't notice. They're just trying to get by in life in surprise. And sometimes clients smile, they're like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that happened. So I feel like that's like sort of the most beautiful part of my job is that I get to notice these like micro shifts because often people are expecting it to be this jaw, shattering experience where their earth is shaken, that they're transformed. And often that's not the way it works. It's often these like micro little shifts that are playing out as we're just trying to live our life. But because life is so busy, we don't notice sort of um our own sense of power, the ways that we may be held by our ancestors that are allowing us to walk in a good light. I think often when I am even sort of reflecting on my own life, the times that I'm walking, what I call walking good. Um, when I'm walking good, I'm like really connected to my values and what's important to me. Those are the moments that I can honestly say that I am like walking with my ancestors because I'm like less alone in the world. When things are upside down, it's because I'm relying on myself to figure it out and I'm very much alone. And I don't see that as a unique experience. I think that is very much a universal experience. It's like when we do try to do things alone, we tend to suffer when we are connected, whether that's with our partners, our friends, our ancestors, we tend to do a lot better in life and we're able to go a little bit further.

Amie Penny Sayler 38:04

Do you have suggestions for resources or last tips that you'd want a listener to leave with as far as really experiencing those felt senses, connecting with ancestors, anything along those lines?

Melissa Taylor 38:16

The one thing I like to say, because it's so true, I feel like everyone is looking for like this map of like this how to, what to do. And I even a part of me freezes when people are

Connecting with Ancestors and Internal Maps

Melissa Taylor 38:29

asking me that question. I'm like, me? How can I offer that? And I want to share with folks the map is within you. That's not something anyone can give. And the map opens up when you focus on connection. So whether that looks like you are building an altar for an ancestor, whether that's that you give yourself permission to be close to bodies of water, and whether that is connecting with horses if you love horses. The map is in you. So, what opens up when you are connected to your ancestors? What is being spoken through you in terms of are you gonna go on a major highway? Are you gonna go on side roads, little windy country roads? And it's not gonna always appear as like a thought of oh, yeah, I should go right, I should go left. But often what we're listening to in terms of connecting with our own internal maps is to notice something different. So that could be a softness, that could be uh tenderness towards your emotions, that can be exercising self-compassion. So whether you're finding compassion through a body of water that now is offering yourself that level of compassion, but that really is the roadmap, is that connection will really guide you to the not so much the what next, but your sense of humanity, the ways you want to live in the world, your own values. That map is already inside you. It's not something someone can give you.

Amie Penny Sayler 40:13

Thank you for that. It's just been lovely to talk with you. Really appreciate all you've had to say. And just it's always the intention that Just Like Nana. I love this. What did you call it? An internal map. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's always the intention of hey, here are some ideas. What sort of lights you up? What sort of doesn't quite land with you? And follow the way that makes sense to you. So I love that you just named that so strongly.