Ancestral Pilgrimage Part 7: Sweden

In June of 2022, I embarked on an Ancestral Pilgrimage searching for my distant European roots. Below are my poetic reflections from perhaps the most revealing part of my journey- a week in Sweden praying for maternal healing and searching for standing stones.

There’s a strong fire burning in me

Sailing me across continents 

for standing stones

Deep blue water 

Sail boats

Wind power turning from inside the sea

Tall wildflowers sway

A glimpse of standing stones out the train window

Sprinkled around the Swedish countryside

Someone who hasn’t forgotten!

My heart leaps

Only been in Sweden an hour and already got lost

Maybe we’re all lost

and then found

Holy Swedish land,

Sing me back into my body

Remind me of what I’m made of

Who I’m made of

and who made me

Remind me where I belong

That I belong

That I am a part of you

Show me that I look like people

and that there are people who look like me

Sing into me

Show me myself

Open me

Come to me in my dreams

Remind me of myself

Beloved ancestors,

I don’t know the house you lived in

But I know that one day a really long time ago 

our kin had to worship the earth

I’ll go back there

To touch the stones that you stood upright

I heard that you made my grandfather

from a line of deep depression

Who were you?

What was your life like in Sweden?

How did you connect to the land? Yourselves?

What songs did you sing?

Are you still connected to culture?

Does it nourish you?

How do you sing to the water? Celebrate the seasons?

What part of yourself would you recognize in me?

How can I heal what you couldn’t in your lifetime?

Water

Waves

The sea

Northern winds 

My dirt collection is growing with

These particles of my distant bones

I’ve come here to try a back door to maternal healing

To forgiveness

Transmuting the toxicity that eroded Grandma’s heart

Praying the terror seared into me 

Can dissolve

Freedom must possible in my own being 

and Hers

Free me from my conceptions of right doing

Open peace

Healing

Something I can’t even imagine

I lost count how many times people have asked me 

“How did you get so tall?”

I was always a head taller than anyone I was related to

In the back of my mind I wondered

Where did I come from?

Whispers of a distant Swedish past

Northern Europeans are tall, right?

Some recessive gene must have made me outgrow my parents

I was bound for Sweden

On a journey to find where this body blended in

imagining the Swedish women must be my sisters and cousins

Finally here

I do some casual people watching on the train

Blonde girl with headphones

Blonde girl with a streak in her hair

Where are the tall ones?

I Google it: Average height of a Swedish woman

5’5”

My belly drops 

I laugh

They’re not as tall as I thought

But maybe a sliver of me here

Small nose wide white cheeks

A sliver there

Long legs, bicycles 



Somehow I recognize myself, my parents, a piece of us everywhere

Piecing together the puzzle

One sliver at a time 

Tourists come and stand in the center of Ales Stenar

taking awkward family photos by the stones 

and pushing strollers straight through to the sea

I sit for hours in the center

Mesmerized

Children look at me, puzzled

Adults pass by

I wonder if their inner life is wilting

I sit at the edge of the ship

feel the Swedish ones

Hours pass

I go to the side and unzip my bad

dig a hole with my new Swedish spoon

make offerings

This land sips rather than gulps

It’s slow

I journey back to drink in the golden hour

People from all over the world are there getting their best family photo

Am I silly to think these stones are sacred?

They wouldn’t have brought them all the way to this cliff for nothing

A surge of childlike joy washes over me

I rush to the edge of the sea and spin in circles to George Harrison

Hare Krishna

Krishna -the god of love

My love

I dash back through the field of cows running like a child

Giggling and beaming

Frolicking through wildflowers

A poppy tucked behind my ear

My new spoon on my finger

I feel so free!

I love Sweden

Hollyhock heaven with tall pointed roofs 

and bright yellow houses

I could belong here

Women of the dusk stand stroking the stones

in a language with no words

Touch

Silence

Eyes

Their long dresses and bare feet remind me that 

I'm not the only one like this

The stones are in good hands

Your pain bled on everything

And there are still parts of you in me

I hope you’re healing

Please help me as I mend this generational wound

Dissolve the hardening

Sun drawing closer to the sea

They loved me for having another mother

The earth slowly sipping

Were we sea people, grandpa?

A sliver of me

Piecing together the puzzle

I'm everything 

My bare feet touching the wildflowers of this Swedish land 

I listen for you now

For you and before you

Listening for us

You’re quiet here

Perhaps you and I have something in common 

I may never be average

Poppies sway in the sea breeze

An open wound, healing