The Veil Was Never Closed, Part 3: Connecting with Ancestors

I lived in one town for over 30 years.

Then I packed up my life, and now I wake up to the ocean.

People asked if I was scared to leave. If it felt like starting over.

It didn't. It felt like turning toward something.

The summers that shaped me

Every summer as a kid, we made the drive. Two and a half hours, across the border into New Brunswick, to my grandparents.

I would love watching the cows, the yard sales go by. I would play the licence plate game with my dad, where we would see who could find the entire alphabet first within each plate we passed.

That was where I ran barefoot. Where I learned the land was part of us, and something to deeply respect.  Where the air smelled like the ocean and pine trees and time moved slower. I didn't have words for it then, but some part of me already knew it was holy ground.

I think I've been driving back toward it my whole life.

Closer than I've ever been

Now I live closer to them than I ever have. Closer to their kitchens, their roads, their graves.

And closer to something older still.

This coast is one of the first places my ancestors settled. The Fundy shore… They built their lives here, on a trade route that carried goods, stories, people and news for generations. 

I'm living on the thread itself now.

They didn't follow me. They were waiting.

In Part 1,of this blog series, I said the veil was never closed. In Part 2, I said the thread runs both ways.

Here's what I didn't expect. I didn't have to bring my ancestors with me. I came back to them.

Because they are everywhere.

I felt it the first quiet night here. In the way the light hits the water in the morning. 

Like walking into a room where everyone had been expecting you.

The land holds more than my story

And here's the part I want to say with care.

My people were not the first here. This is Mi'kma'ki. Long before my ancestors arrived on this coast, the Mi'kmaq were living with this land, travelling it, and naming it. 

My roots run deep here. Theirs run deeper.

Coming home to ancestral land means holding both truths at once. I belong to this place through my lineage. And I'm a guest of a much longer memory. That asks something of me. Respect. Listening before speaking. Never mistaking my belonging for ownership.

I'm still learning what that looks like. I think that's how it should be.

If you're being called back

Maybe you feel it too. A pull toward a place you've only visited. A town your grandmother talked about. A coastline that makes your chest ache for no reason.

A few ways to listen:

• Notice the pull. Places that call to us often hold the ones who came before.

• Learn the history, all of it. Yours, and the people who were there before yours.

• Go and stand there. Feet on the ground. Say your name. Say who you come from.

• Ask what the land needs. Belonging comes with responsibility, not just comfort.

What the series comes back to

Across these three posts, I keep landing in the same place.

The dead aren't waiting for October. The thread runs forward and back. And sometimes, if you're lucky, it leads you home.

The veil was never closed.

You just have to be still enough to notice.

Thank you for walking this series with me. Connecing to Ancestors...

The veil is always thin. But Samhain is a night the whole land seems to agree on, and I’ve made something for it.

A Samhain Prayer Ritual: Honouring the Roots, Releasing the Leaves is a guided practice in two movements: turning toward the ones who came before, then giving back what’s ready to fall. It includes three prayers to choose from or weave together, a simple release ritual, and journal prompts for afterward.

You can bring it home as a single offering, or find it inside Mystic Marrow, alongside seasonal rituals, readings, and essays all year long.

trust yourself, Natalie