Ep 41: 3 Steps That Unlocked My Ancestral Connection
What does it really take to connect with your ancestors? In this deeply personal episode of Because I’ve Healed, I share the three transformative steps that led me into ancestral connection, freedom, and alignment with my soul’s purpose.
Whether you're just beginning your spiritual journey or seeking clarity on your life path, this story is for you. 💫
Through mindset shifts, energetic awakening, and guided ancestral meditations, I discovered a powerful truth: your ancestors are waiting for you. You’ll also hear about my group program, Guided, created to support Black women in reclaiming their power, healing lineage wounds, and stepping into their fully expressed selves.
✨ If you’ve felt disconnected or unsure of your next step — let this be your invitation.
Links & Resources
✨ Learn More About Guided → ashawilkerson.com/guided
✨ Join the My Email List → ashawilkerson.com/email
Let me know how these tips resonate with you—I’d love to hear your thoughts! And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to rate, follow, and share Because I’ve Healed. See you inside the community! 💛✨
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Asha (00:07.906)
Hey there, you're probably wondering exactly what it takes to connect to your ancestors. And I woke up this morning, I'm in the middle of my launch, I woke up before dawn thinking about what could I tell my audience, my people, my friends, my family to make connecting to the ancestors a little easier to digest and less intimidating. So,
I got up, you can probably still hear the sleep in my voice. I'm still in my pajamas. If you can see me, they're very cute pajamas from Target back when Target was okay to patronize. But I'm gonna tell you three things that I did to end up connecting to my ancestors in the way that I do now. So the very first thing that I did, I wasn't actually thinking about ancestral connection, but the first thing that led me down this path of ancestral connection,
was really trying to tap into what I want and really trying to hear my own voice. So at the time, I mean, many times throughout my life, I've always sort of done the right thing and I've done what has been expected. And I wanted to prove that I could do it, that I'm, I suppose on some level it was trying to prove some worthiness, but also, you know, I wanted to be good at playing the game. I wanted to be good at playing the game in America and I wanted to have success at the game in America.
The path was laid out before me. knew that I was going to go to college. I knew that I wanted to get a job and make money and live the American dream, right? Who doesn't? But within that, there were so many times that I felt like I was doing the thing that I was supposed to do and it didn't feel good. It wasn't aligned. And sometimes that's a really hard place to be because it's hard to point to exactly what's wrong because nothing's wrong per se.
but it's just not aligned, and so years ago, I started when I got introduced to mindset work, probably in a business coaching community, I started writing down, what did I actually want? Started asking myself, what do I actually want? How do I want it to look? And I started thinking about visualizing my life in that kind of a way. But just asking yourself, what do you want? Begins to open up the door to possibilities.
Asha (02:26.783)
It allowed me to connect to myself in a way that I hadn't done before because before I was just playing everybody else's game and not knowingly, it's not like I knew that I wasn't doing it for myself. I thought I was. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to have these things. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to
do well, I wanted my family to be proud of me, all of those things. It's not like I consciously thought, I'm doing this for me or for them and forsaking myself. No. But when I actually started to ask myself, what do I want and how do I want it to look? And most importantly, but the hardest question to ask, was how do I want it to feel? That opened the door to my imagination. That got me to ask follow up questions of if it could look
this way, how would it look? If I could do anything, what would I do? If I didn't have any obstacles, what would it look like? And those are great questions to ask, and they're also a little uncomfortable. And I think a lot of people don't ask them because when you start asking yourself, do you actually want, then at some point, you're going to want to make a change to get what you want. And if you interrogate the system, if you...
take a look at what you're doing and discover that it is not aligned with you, or it's not making you happy, or it's not what you want to do. There's an uncomfortable truth in that because most of us spend probably the first half of our lives, the first third of our lives doing what we're supposed to. And then we realize we don't want to. And then there comes a moment of transition when you have to decide what you're going to do. So anyway, the first step is to ask yourself what you want.
What do I want? What do I want? What do I want? Ask repeatedly. Ask in your journal. Ask as you're taking a walk. Ask as you get ready to say yes to a new job or a promotion. What do I want? Is this what I want? Why do I, And why? Why do I want this? That's the first step. That allows you to hear your internal thoughts and your internal desires and that connection back to yourself ultimately can lead to a connection with your ancestors and I'll make that tie in just a second.
Asha (04:47.839)
The second thing to do...
Asha (04:56.319)
The second thing that I did, and I didn't necessarily do these things in order, some of them were happening simultaneously, but this is a thing that I did. I had always been really curious about energetic connection and clairvoyance and psychic abilities and things like that. My mom is very, very intuitive and she would see things. There was a point when I almost drowned in an ocean when I was...
probably in middle school. I think it was, A sneaker wave... If you're from the Pacific Northwest or from the Oregon coast, you've heard plenty of talk about sneaker waves on the Oregon coast. And this sneaker wave came up and took me. Fortunately, it took me inland, but it took my legs completely out from under me and I couldn't get up and my dad had to pull me out. And my mom, I came home and I didn't say anything to my mom. My mom said she...
knew that something had happened because at that moment she felt like something had come over her and she couldn't breathe and she didn't know exactly what it was. But there were plenty of moments like that where she has been connected to people or she has seen things. When my grandfather passed away, we were sitting on the airplane and I remember looking at her and she was just kind of smiling and I would say, why are you smiling? And she didn't tell me but later she said she was having a conversation with her father and he told her,
exactly what suit he wanted to be buried in, where his shoes were, where this thing was in the closet. And she said she got to the house and she went exactly to where he had told her the stuff was as she was communicating with him after he had passed away. So my mom has always had this psychic and energetic connection and I never felt like I had it. When I would get astrology readings, people would say,
You're so intuitive, it's in your chart. And I'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about. I can't feel a thing. I don't see a thing. I don't hear a thing. I don't know what you're talking about. But I had always been curious. And so I started taking classes that taught me about the Clair senses. Now there are eight Clair senses. Let me see if I can name all of them. But there's the five senses like sight, taste, touch, sound, smell. Then there's empathy.
Asha (07:13.085)
There is feeling and then there's knowing, cognizance. So all of those are Clair's. Clairaudience is when you hear. clairsentience is when you feel like emotion. claircognizance is when you know something, it just drops into your consciousness. Taste, clairgustance I think it's called, is when you taste something. I don't remember what the Clair is for smell, but like if you smell the scent of your grandmother after she's passed away or like,
a cigar that somebody, your uncle used to smoke before he passed away, right? Things like that. So I learned about those clair senses because I wanted to learn how to turn them in, turn them on in myself. And as I started learning more about what we would call like the woo woo, I also learned more about the science and I learned or remembered from high school physics class that everything is made up of energy.
Our bodies are made up of energy. This couch I'm sitting on is made up of energy. The stairs behind me are made up of energy. There's energy that goes into microwaves that heat up your food if you put them in the microwave, right? Everything has an energetic component to it. And sometimes that energy comes together in solid form. And sometimes that energy is something that you cannot perceive with your eye, but it doesn't mean that it's not there. So when something heats, you can't
always see the heat waves, Sometimes you can't always see the heat waves, but you feel it. And so when I started thinking again about physics and energy and science, it made sense why somebody might be able to communicate with the spirit of somebody who's no longer in physical form, because it's a different form of energy. And if you can
open your brain and tune in and it's really like practicing practice tuning in to that to perceiving that kind of energy there's a whole world of information that is available you've probably felt it like back in the day maybe you still have a crush on somebody but back in the day when you had a crush on somebody and you'd go to the party and you'd hope you'd see them and then you could feel the energy in the room change when they walked in right that's not something that you're
Asha (09:34.8)
perceiving with your eyes or even with your ears, it's something you're perceiving with your body. And so I started learning more about the science and how it was possible. And that allowed me to open my mind to the kind of supernatural, if you will, because it made sense scientifically. And so that gave me the safety to go on and explore.
And when I say supernatural, we call it supernatural. But what I realize is that our bodies are capable of perceiving. They are hardwired with electric and energy circuits. Our heart is on an electric circuit, our cardiovascular system, our heart's part of the cardiovascular system, but there's like a neurological system that operates from energy, that operates with electricity. And if
we have an energetic field in our body, it makes sense that we can perceive other energetic fields. Like if you bump into the table, you feel it. So it also extends to make sense that you should be able to perceive the energy even if you can't see it because there are so many receptors and so many ways that we can perceive energy. So when I started learning about the clair senses and started
working on opening those receptors and even just tuning in to, what do I feel? Let's close my eyes and what do I feel? What do I hear? What do I know? Then that really also opened the door to deepen the connection with myself, but that also made me curious about communicating and being in touch with my ancestors. So now I know that my body is capable of perceiving. So if that's true,
maybe I can tune in my radar, my perception to the energies that I want and that would be my ancestors. The third thing that I did, this is probably the last thing that I did. Well, I guess a couple of them happens.
Asha (11:45.988)
The third thing that I did was to intentionally connect with my ancestors. So there's two kind of big events that I'm thinking of. One is that I went to Ghana. I don't know if this was my first or second trip. This was my second trip to Ghana. And I was in one of the slave dungeons.
And I was looking out of the Door of No Return, the last door that enslaved Africans walked through before they were, or as they were boarding the ships to be transported across the Atlantic. And I just remember standing there and the instructions were to say a little prayer, just have a moment of connection, whatever that looked like for us. And I remember standing in the door, just intending to be open and to feel whatever I needed to feel. And then the thought,
popped into my head that all my ancestors have ever wanted was to be free. And that was kind of the first message that I feel like I received from my ancestors that I was aware of. And freedom didn't just mean like physical freedom, but it also meant mental freedom. And the more I kept learning about the influence of Christianity in just colonization in general, but particularly in the slave trade, I started thinking about all of the ways
the programs, the thought patterns that we have been taught that keep us from being free. So that was the first moment of thinking, okay, all my ancestors have ever wanted was for us to be free.
So that was the first moment of thinking that all my ancestors have ever wanted was for us to be free. And if I can get myself free, then I can help others be free. And that started the path of thinking, what does that freedom mean to me? And how can I be free? And at that point, I had started to realize that teaching full time, while it was my dream job at one point, was no longer aligned. I had not concluded it at that moment, but it opened the door to thinking about what else I could do.
Asha (13:52.417)
because I just wasn't as into doing what I had been doing before. It didn't mean it was bad, it was just no longer aligned. And then the second big ancestral connection point in my life was working with some healers out of South Africa and I worked with them to determine my incarnation purpose. So to determine like, is my purpose here on earth? What is...
What am I supposed to be doing this lifetime? And I worked with four healers in that incarnation purpose package. And it was so transformative. So in that process, I met my four ancestral lineages. Because before that, I could really only think about my recent ancestors, the ones who had suffered through the slave trade and had been trying to get themselves whole and free since being trafficked to the Americas. And now I knew that they were ancestors
prior to that, but I just didn't have access to them. And I started to learn a little bit about how people were in Ghana before the slave trade, and that was empowering, but I didn't know personally for me what that meant or for my lineage. And so in one of my meetings with one of the healers, we met my four ancestral lineages. And I thought that he was going to tell me about my ancestors, but what he did was led me through a meditation and I got to meet
on my maternal and paternal side, each of their maternal and paternal lineages. So my mother's maternal side, my mother's paternal side, my father's maternal side, and my father's paternal side. So the four lineages that way. And I was so surprised at the information that I got. And for only one of the lineages that I actually kind of see,
a figure and it wasn't, I didn't really see his face, but I saw sort of the essence of his body. And this was an ancient, ancient, ancient ancestor. And the first thing he said, or the first like feeling I got was, you're finally here. We've been waiting for you. And it told me that they've been waiting to connect with me and I've just been out here like not connecting, right? And I didn't even know that they were waiting for me, but it made me feel so good to know that they had been waiting for me.
Asha (16:14.312)
And the feeling that I got was that they were so whole and so connected and so at peace and that they had it down in terms of balancing mind, body, and soul and spirit. Like they were the enlightened ones. They were the whole ones. They were the healthy ones. And then fast forward somewhere to my middle lineage. And it really felt like they were still healthy and whole, but there were some things in history
that had affected them and started the disconnection from mind and body. And then more recently in that same lineage, they were just freedom fighters and lovers and the people who engaged the community and the ones who were the leaders and had a vision for people and could lay out a path for people, which feels very familiar to kind of the work that I'm doing now. On my mother's maternal side,
they had once been healthy and happy and whole as well, but I felt from the more recent ancestors that there was something that they needed to say. There was some way that they wanted to express themselves that they had been blocked from expressing. And I didn't know if that was necessarily a way of being or just something that needed to be said, but I felt like part of my role is to be fully expressed, to become fully expressed,
because that was what they weren't able to do. On my dad's side, my dad's side was not as healthy and nearly as whole as my mom's side. On one of my father's lineages, I felt like they just didn't get it right in terms of balancing mind and body and soul, but that they had tried. They had done the best that they could. And then on another side, it just felt like they had been so hurt and so damaged that
they just needed a lot of work to get back to healthy. And that information was so helpful for me in terms of understanding one, how my parents came to be, like what was the energy in their lineages and how that formed and shaped them, but also to have a blueprint and a model for what my real purpose is here in this lifetime. And it's
Asha (18:34.638)
And before connecting to the ancestors, I thought coming out of the civil rights movement, my mom and dad coming out of the civil rights movement and fighting for equal rights and all of these advancements that have happened in their lineage that I was supposed to carry that torch and that legacy. And that meant staying in the law practice and that meant continuing to be a college professor because those were the jobs that were coveted and highly rewarded for their generation.
But when I was able to connect to my more distant ancestors, the mission wasn't that per se, but the mission was to get back in balance, mind, body, and soul. And that is, that's just where I'm at right now. That is the mission. That's the goal. And however that manifests, whether that means I go back into teaching full-time, okay. Whether that means I ever go back to practice law, okay. But the, the real purpose, the real mission
is to be balanced and aligned mind, body and spirit to find that enlightenment. So those are the three major steps that I took. It's not necessarily or wasn't necessarily a linear path. I'm not telling you that you have to do those things in that order, but it really started with a curiosity, A curiosity to understand what is available. What do I want? How does this stuff work? And then more specifically, who's actually in my ancestral
lineage and when I connected with the ancestors again I didn't see people except for one and I didn't know names I felt the energy which was so so so healing and so empowering. So based on all of that I created this group program called Guided and I love guided because it is a blend of all of the things that I have learned. It has the educational and scientific piece of it so that you can wrap your mind around.
what is happening. Excuse me.
Asha (20:34.403)
It has the...
Asha (20:39.227)
So with all of that in mind, I created this group program called Guided, which is a blend of all of the things that I have learned in and on my journey. I needed to understand the science to be able to trust the process. And so I explained some things scientifically to you. I explained exactly what's going to happen. So then when you engage in the process of opening up your mind and when you start to
feel things in your body when you start to have knowings that just drop in, you understand what's happening to you scientifically so you're not scared. I also, We are doing this as a group so that you have people to work with that you trust and people to share experiences with. And then I add a component of breath work so that you can relax your mind and your body and that you can tap in and allow whatever is going to come to come in a safe container for you.
I love Guided. The transformations have been absolutely incredible from people feeling lost and unsure of what to do next to knowing that their next step is going to be guided by their ancestors. From having a lack of confidence and not being self-assured to knowing that she can do anything that she wants because the desires that are put in her heart are supported by her ancestors.
There's also been healing that has taken place with family lines and not necessarily healing the family lineages, but healing the identity or the association with parents. right? We all have some kind of trauma from our parents. That's just a part of life. That's a part of being human, but there've been a couple people who have connected to their ancestral lineage and have understood
what has happened in their parents line that has made them more forgiving and more understanding of what their experience was with their parents. And so for anybody that has trauma dealing with their parents or grandparents, or maybe parents just couldn't step up and just weren't great parents, tapping into your ancestral lineage will help to heal some of that, not because
Asha (23:02.561)
it excuses the actions of the people who raised you or who didn't raise you, but because you begin to understand what they were battling and you know it's not personal. So I would love for you to join me inside of Guided. This round of Guided, the doors close on April 30th. If you have any questions, please, please, please let me know. You can send me an email at hello@ashawilkerson.com or find me on Instagram
where you will see plenty of posts and reels and carousels and stories about Guided. My handle over there is @AshaWilkersonESQ. I look forward to talking with you and I cannot wait to see you inside the program. Ciao.