Time stopped, and the room began to tilt as the retired Navy commander implored, “Amy, you must continue this work. In years of therapy, we never talked about this!”

His voice quivered, “My God! You just explained in five minutes the answer we sought for years! I know…I know my son would be alive if we had ever had this conversation. Please. You must continue this work.” He made no attempt to wipe the brimming tears from his eyes. He gave me a nod as if to say: you’ve been given your assignment, now be on about your business.

My business. How had my life come to this moment of working in a cement-floored expo hall taking photographs of people’s eyes, explaining their most detailed belief systems and earliest traumas, all in a matter of moments? Wasn’t it just two years earlier that I managed to rebuild a failed water treatment facility on the Arkansas River?

I had a lifetime of solving people’s problems: as an aid worker in Africa, insurance adjuster, systems performance manager, and as a friend. But what of my own problems? Had I ever resolved my struggle with self-esteem? My inability to hear “I love you” from my parents? My feeling of not being good enough? That I should have been born a boy?

Luckily, I’m one of the few who have made this rocky journey through life to finally understand the missing piece of my story. The piece that my mind had understood, but my heart and cellular memory had always refused to let go of. I was a mistake. It was my fault.

It was because of me that the trajectory of my parents’ lives had changed forever. I’d always known it. My adopted parents explained it to me from my youngest years. My birth parents were too young to raise me and placed me up for adoption with a loving desire that I be raised with a good family, and I was.

As a child, I only wanted to find my birth family. With my full Barbie doll case and Mom’s checkbook, I ran away from home, determined to get to Iowa to find my biological family. I was certain that once I crossed the state line, I would have immunity and the ability to locate my birth parents.

What I didn’t discover until decades later is that my origin was within me. Every time I screamed, “Let me up! Let me go! Let me out!” I relived the exact dynamics of my ancestor’s experience and re-infused the belief that sibling rivalry was still a threat to our genetic line.

The sickening feeling that turned over my stomach when I realized I’d overdrawn my bank account was the exact same chemical response of my ancestors (in their time) realizing the money was gone. As I lamented, why didn’t I wait?! I was repeating their regret and the same chemical reaction they experienced when they realized they had done something that overdrew their resources when they bemoaned, why didn’t I wait?!

As I took my first corporate job in the city, I could never have imagined I interviewed in the same office that my birthmother interviewed in 18 years earlier (even though it was three hours away from where either of us grew up). As I challenged my adopted parents for years, wanting to change my middle name from Louise to Laroy, I had no idea I was seeking the name of the king that my ancestors fought under in the battle of Hastings and that the battle scroll hung on my birthfather’s wall.

My birthfather developed a system of accurately profiling fingerprints, as I was developing a system of profiling eyes. Decades of piecing together clues revealed the amazing and rich history of my origin, of my ancestors’ repeated patterns and traumas playing out in my own life from the time of my conception. I had only to look at my life experiences to find the experiences of my forebearers.

Each time I exclaimed with emotion, it was as if their words were coming through me (in their accent, in their foreign language) as an opportunity to reaffirm or disavow if each situation was still a threat to our genetic line, or if it was no longer a threat in this brave new world of today.

I finally figured out that the situation of not being able to hear “I love you” (and the other aspects of cellular memory) were not just facets of an adopted or foster child, but that we all have the opportunity to revisit and resolve early cellular memories. I often see this pattern of feeling unwanted in children conceived during a military furlough or just prior to active duty, as happened to the retired navy admiral.

In my experience, the dynamics of our parents’ experience of their pregnancy with us repeats every two-to-four, or three-to-five generations, often going back for hundreds of years.

In this moment, I think of babies who have been conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic and how many mothers (and fathers) are experiencing fears of being pregnant (an ancestral repeat of pregnancies during other pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu).

These fears can culminate in the child as a feeling of not being wanted or that there is something wrong with them.

Every day, we all have an opportunity to resolve our ancestral traumas and to embrace the magic of who we were born to become. Amy, you must continue this work, helping others to understand the rest of their story. To finally recognize and understand their cellular memory imprints that happened in-utero, so they can resolve and resume the life they were born to live.

A timeline walk with your parents

The good news is, there’s something you can do… right now… to help alleviate some of the intensity of this situation.

Prepare a safe, open floor space. You will want 10-12 feet (about the length of a small bedroom) for this exercise. You should have enough width to imagine an adult walking on each side of you. You may want to journal or record your experience at the end.

Note to the reader: If you don’t know your biological parents, you know they existed one year before you were born. Just imagine the best of who they were for this visualization.

If you’ve had challenging relations with your parents, remember this exercise is only for the time before you were born, before you had ANY experience of them. Imagine their happiest essence for this visualization. On the floor, create an imaginary timeline of one year plus a day, with enough comfortable room at the end of that line to turn around.

Does it run from left to right? Right to left? Or in front of you going forward? Physically, stand at the beginning of your timeline, with enough room on each side of you to imagine holding hands with each parent as you walk its length.

This is a loving visualization, and you are standing at the beginning (one year before your birth). They may or may not know each other, may or may not be married, and may or may not have other children. At this time, you are just focusing on their essence. Breathe. Does it feel better to have your mother on your left? Or your father? If you need to swap their positions, do that, and check again. Does it feel correct now? Give your body a deep, cleansing breath and gently shake your hands freely to clear your energy.

Gently close your eyes and breathe deeply. Now imagine each of your parents taking your hand. Take a few minutes to just breathe with them. This was before you were born, and before you were conceived. They were just people, living their lives as you are today.

Even if you don’t know them or anything about them, you know they existed a year before you were born, and you’re just standing there, breathing with them. Take a moment to note the feeling of your hand in each of theirs. If you feel any resistance, gently remind yourself this is one year before you were born. You have no experience of them yet. You are feeling their best essence before you ever met them in this exercise.

Now, gently turn your attention to the parent on your left. Breathe with your focus on them for a few moments. Allow yourself to feel their happy place as if their hand was transmitting it to you: their favorite color, fragrance, sound, music, taste, and happiest memories. Even if you don’t know them or their favorite things, it’s okay to just receive what they’re sending you as if it’s all perfectly true.

Enjoy the wonderment they are feeling in recalling their very favorite experiences. (If it’s easier for you to imagine them as toddlers or having been a young child full of laughter and happiness, do that – anything you can do to imagine them in their best place and space of their life is good.)

Spend a few moments with them. This time and space are for connecting with their most joyful and happy times. If anything comes that doesn’t feel right, just bless it and let it go for another time. Imagine you are holding their hand as you do this. You are giving them permission to feel their favorite moments and share that feeling openly with you. Give them the gift of a few moments of love, enjoyment, and happiness. Hold their energy in love and light. This is all before you were born, before you met them, when they were just a person doing what they do.

Gently bring your energy back to yourself, allowing them to hold onto those wonderful impressions while still holding your hand. Take a few deep breaths from head to toe.

Now, gently turn your attention to your parent on the right. Breathe, with your focus on them for a few moments. Allow yourself to feel their happy place as if their hand was transmitting it to you: their favorite color, fragrance, sound, music, taste, and happiest memories. Even if you don’t know them or their favorite things, it’s okay to just receive what they are sending, as if it’s all perfectly true. Enjoy the wonderment they are feeling in recalling their very favorite memories.

Spend a few moments with them. This time and space are for connecting with their most joyful and happy times. If anything comes that doesn’t feel right, just bless it and let it go for another time. Hold their hand as you do this. You are giving them permission to feel their favorite moments and share that feeling openly with you. Give them the gift of a few moments of love, enjoyment, and happiness. Hold their energy in love and light. This is all before you were born, before you met them, when they were just a person doing what they do.

Gently bring your energy back to yourself, allowing them to hold onto those wonderful impressions while still holding your hand. Take a few deep breaths from head to toe. Breathe slowly and fully for a few moments as you infuse yourself with a color you love, a fragrance, sound, music, taste, and happiest experiences. If anything comes that doesn’t feel right, just bless it and let it go for another time. This time and space are for connecting your most joyful and happy moments.

Hold your parents’ hands as you do this. Infuse them with the most wonderful experiences of your life. Load them up with the best of the best you have enjoyed and experienced and the hope of all that is yet to come as you continue forward.

Now, imagine filling the timeline in front of you with your favorite color, your favorite fragrance, your favorite sound or music. Imagine spreading that essence out, filling the room. It feels particularly inviting to you as you stand at the start of your timeline. Smile to each parent, reassuring your hold on each of their hands as you take your first step forward, the three of you together, three months before your conception, one year before your birth. Each of you is filled with your personal joys and favorites. Each of your parents is filled with their best experiences and memories.

Hold their hands, breathe, and whisper (aloud or silently), “I’ve got you. We’re going through this together.” This walk is about your time of life. Even if your parent is deceased, they’re holding your hands as you go. Step into your timeline one year before your birth. Take small, purposeful steps for each month, eleven months before your birth.

Take a moment to bless your ancestors and their amazing gifts as you take these steps. Bless your parents for your connection to them. Walk slowly and purposefully. Fill yourself with love for those ancestors who had impossible journeys and decisions, and exhale that energy with love and light. Imagine the magnitude of your ancestors, who created the next generation and the next, all the way to infusing your parents with their best gifts and talents, that came to you and live on through you now.

Ten months before. Embrace gratitude that your parents gave you the link to the very best of your ancestors and your inherent gifts and talents. Gently walk your parents through the full term of their pregnancy with you, brushing away any challenging memories (with love and light) for a later time and place.

As you reach the moment of your birth, slow yourself and stop. Still holding their hands, raise your head, and imagine your bright, graceful, joyous future with hope and love and knowing that the deep resonance within you is that of your ancestors. Their greatest gifts, strengths, abilities, and intentions live on through you and your future.

Nobody has ever walked our planet with the same ancestral connections as you, and no one else ever will. Embrace that for a moment as you breathe with your parents holding their hands. They are the link to your most beautiful and gifted ancestors.

Look to the parent on your left. Thank them, still holding your connection in love and light, for bringing you to this future that awaits you. Feel gratitude in your heart as you recognize that you have also walked them through this timeline to the moment of your birth. Move your energy up to your heart, establishing a heart connection as you gently let go of their hand. Breathe with them a bit longer, embracing that love.

Gently bring your energy back to your center. Take a couple of deep head-to-toe breaths and look to the parent on your right. Thank them, still holding your connection in love and light, for bringing you to this future that awaits you. Feel gratitude in your heart as you recognize that you have also walked them through this timeline to the moment of your birth. Move your energy up to your heart, establishing a heart connection as you gently let go of their hand. Breathe with them a bit longer, embracing that love.

Take one more step forward, lovingly releasing your parents’ energy. Gently bring your energy back to your center and bring your hands up to your heart. Take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, and imagine your ancestors for a moment. As you are one step in front of the timeline, whisper a thank you to the thousands of lives that have come before you to bring you to this moment. Thank them for being your spiritual sponsors, bringing you their many generations of skills and gifts every day.

Gently open your eyes and remember:

In every moment of this life,
Forever the world is changed
Because you are here
And your ancestors are with you.

Gently bring your awareness back to the present moment where you can now record your experience.