This one is personal. Because that’s all it can be.
There is no healing without sovereignty, and there is no sovereignty without knowing yourself.
Ancestral medicine helps us reclaim both by teaching us to receive again and opening the way to a universal truth: you are part of this world, and this world is a part of you. Through this approach, healing isn’t, “How do I get rid of this?” but rather, “How can I honor this?” The wound, the pain, the release, the growth…they all become opportunities to love ourselves more deeply and reconnect with what wants to be seen now.
We do this through ceremony, and we do it with the support of our relatives: plants, spirits, people, and the elements. In this way they remember you as a part of them too, and healing becomes an act of community rather than isolation.
Ancestral medicine is an expression of our health sovereignty, and for that reason it’s important that we have access to it. But it isn’t true that it has been lost or hidden. Though many traditions have been co-opted, commercialized, or reduced to their trendiest parts, the medicine itself has always been protected and passed down.
This isn’t only passed from person to person. The medicine is alive within our spirit, waiting to awaken when the healer arrives to use it. That is the calling many of us are hearing now: to acknowledge who you are, where you come from, and where you’re going—not only as a human having an experience, but as a carrier of medicine.
As Alberto Villoldo once said, “We are not just the product of our past, we are also a product of our future.”
My Journey Back to Choice
I’ve never liked being told what to do, or having someone else decide what was right for me. Not my parents, not my teachers, not my bosses, not even my spirit guides.
It’s gotten me into my fair share of trouble, but it has also helped me remain true to myself and cultivate an unwavering trust in my own spirit. I’ve always known that no one can own my spirit, that my body is mine, and that making my own choices is how I honor myself.
Whenever I heard a “no,” I instinctively searched for a “yes.” Not simply because I wanted a different answer, but because possibility itself called to me. Looking back, I realize that’s one of the reasons I was drawn to shamanic healing.
It never told me no.
Instead, it said, Let me teach you how to heal yourself; and let’s do it now.
I learned that healing doesn’t have to be invasive, whether to the body or the mind, rather it can be opening so as to clear what isn’t yours and reclaim what is. When you are free to choose every step of the journey, you can feel empowered as you’re healing and not just at the end of it.
This is why I practice shamanic healing today. Not to tell people what they should do, nor to do the healing for them, but to create a space where they can remember their own relationship with spirit. My role isn’t to replace their inner knowing, it’s to help them hear it again.
Remembering the Medicine
Reclaiming health also means reclaiming ancestral medicine—specifically our connection to it.
See it’s not just about learning the practice or preserving the tradition. There’s a remembrance that happens within your whole being that extends across time and speaks words of encouragement as you heal now. This wisdom has been weaved into the collective consciousness as an act of compassion, and those healers walk with us still.
Ancestral medicine teaches us that healing is always possible when we agree to tend to our spirit and nurture our relationship to the world and ourselves in it. This realization becomes a catalyst for decolonizing how we heal: not through isolation but through reconnection, just as our ancestors understood.
We were never designed to live broken, though we are undeniably resilient. Healing is always available and sometimes it looks as simple as learning to relate to every part of yourself, including the cringey stuff and especially what we deny.
Why own the pain when it never belonged to you?
Claim your health instead.
Claim your medicine.
And yes, that’s tough. Because guess what?
You have to let yourself in, open your heart, and embrace who you are.
If it hurts to let go, don’t build your identity around that hurt. Own that you are a person who has a hard time letting go. And that’s ok. Bring love to that part and don’t shame it for what it feels.
When you stop resisting you start existing.
If speaking your truth feels difficult, own that too. Sometimes it’s not that others may be uncomfortable with your truth, it’s that you are. But once you discover where you stand with yourself, you no longer have to fear falling out of integrity. Whether you’re choosing silence or speaking loudly, you’ll know what is true for you.
Sovereignty is knowing who you are and sitting in the power of that knowledge.
That is really why you have the ability to heal yourself.
We were born whole, and pure, and divine: a reflection of greater love, and that blueprint is always available to us. Though the world may try to convince us otherwise, by normalizing lesser narratives and forcing them on us, we don’t have to be that mirror for others.
Choose yourself.
Be the original soul that you are, exactly as you are. Stop allowing others to define who you are, what your dreams should be, or what your limits are. And don’t surrender your health to someone else’s authority.
How you choose to heal is your path.
How you choose to learn about love is your business.
How you choose to express yourself is your responsibility.
The freedom to live in alignment with yourself—that’s your birthright.
Being sovereign is your birthright.
Keeping It Real
You are your own person, and therefore you are responsible for your own energy. This places both giving and receiving back into your own hands. That is your free will exercised as a sovereign being.
It also reminds us that, through choice, we can only be a martyr for our own cause. We also cannot save another person.
To be sovereign is to understand that no one has the right to be over you, and neither do you have the right to be over anyone else because they are sovereign too.
Paradoxically, this boundary creates deeper gratitude.
Every act of giving becomes an offering freely made.
Every act of receiving becomes a gift freely accepted.
That doesn’t always make relationships easy or pleasant, but it does make them intentional. Instead of reacting automatically, we begin asking whether our choices are aligned with who we truly are.
That is where authenticity becomes medicine. And that is how expressions of authenticity become inspirational.
Returning to Yourself
Sovereignty is not something you earn. It isn’t granted by a teacher, a government, a healer, or even a tradition. It is something you remember.
Every choice to listen to yourself, to honor your body, to care for your spirit, and to walk in integrity is an act of returning home.
This is why I believe ancestral medicine matters. Not because it asks us to become someone new, but because it reminds us of who we have always been. Beneath the fear, beneath the conditioning, beneath every story that told us we were broken, there is a whole person waiting to be remembered.
May you trust your own medicine.
May you reclaim your relationship with your spirit.
May your healing become an expression of your sovereignty.
Because no one can walk that path for you, but no one can take it from you either.