How to Invite Your Ancestors Into Your Writing Life

Back in January, I participated in a panel titled “Dreams to Deadlines” for James River Writers’ monthly writing show. During our discussion, Nick George the Poet shared that he invites his ancestors into his work whenever he begins a new project.

Two weeks ago, at the Psychotherapy Networker Conference, Jacqui Johnson encouraged us to ask our ancestors for permission to explore our trauma during her daylong training session.

These moments helped me reimagine what it means to write from lineage—and how ancestral wisdom can become a powerful source of creative fuel for our writing projects.

If you’re reading this—especially if you’re a memoirist—conjuring your ancestors might lead you to think about the pain they caused or the suffering transmitted through your DNA. While excavating this can be healing, what might happen to our stories if you also connect with the love, strength, and wisdom of those who came before you?

One way to do this is to identify a safe ancestor who can serve as inspiration.

At first, this was a challenge for me. My family story is a tangled ball of yarn that’s difficult to unravel. Sometimes, it feels safer to imagine myself as the one untangling it rather than seeing myself as part of the thread—or perhaps just one more knot in it.

Then I came across a photo of my great-great-grandma, Anna Bixby.

My mother and aunts describe Grandma Bixby as a being of exceptionally pure light. All you had to do was sit next to her, and you felt loved. “Sometimes, all she’d do is hold my hand and smile at me. She listened—really listened—without judgment or offering advice,” my aunt once said while describing her.

My understanding of Grandma Bixby, as she’s always referred to, comes from snippets shared by family members and some research on Ancestry.com. Here’s what I’ve pieced together:

Anna Rafferty was born in 1886 to Irish parents who emigrated from Galloway, Ireland to England and later, New York.
According to family lore, her mother either died of pneumonia during the voyage and was thrown overboard, or she fell overboard.
She married Stephen Bixby before the age of twenty-three.
She lost her sixteen-year-old son to suicide and her thirty-three-year-old daughter to a stroke.
Her husband passed away eleven years before she died at age seventy-five in 1961.

Ancestors can act as mirrors for our major life themes.

Two of my major life themes are overcoming adversity and loving myself. Grandma Bixby endured the unimaginable, yet somehow, her heart remained open. She’s proof that while the knots in my family are large, the thread of love continues to be passed down.

When thinking of ancestors, we don’t have to limit ourselves to blood relatives.

We can widen our idea of family to include:

Family of choice
The land we inhabit
The sky above us
The books that shaped us

I now call upon my dearly departed colleague, Susan Defreitas, who dedicated her life to the transformative power of stories. And I think of the many memoirists and novelists I’ve interviewed as well as those whose books line my shelves. These remarkable writers inspire me and remind me that there’s always a way forward, even when it’s not immediately visible.

I can trace my writing lineage back to writers like Maya Angelou, Viktor Frankl, Elie Wiesel, Jean Toomer, and many others who demonstrated that hardship can become grace if we allow ourselves to be changed by it.

Even my undergraduate honors thesis on Mary Wroth taught me something important. Mary Wroth was the first English woman to write a sonnet sequence. She broke form and convention by writing not about a man on a pedestal, but about love itself.

She showed me that forms can be subversive, and rules can be reimagined.

Above all, this ancestral work has shown me that we are not alone in our creative lives. We don’t just have permission to explore our stories—we receive support, wisdom, and creative energy from those who came before us.

So how can you invite your ancestors into your writing life?

Try this exercise next time you sit down to write:

Identify an ancestor (blood or chosen) you want to work with.
Reflect: What’s one way they’ve inspired you?
Notice: What’s one sign that they’re with you now, whether it’s your sentence style, eye shape, or worldview?
Write a letter to this ancestor, thanking them for their presence and influence.
Keep the letter and a photo nearby as you write.

As you expand your connection to family, lineage, and the wider world, use the love you experience as inspiration. Let it remind you that you are part of something much bigger—and that the strength you need is already in your bones, ready to help you always—always—write on.

Warmly,

Lisa

Love what you just read?

Get my weekly posts delivered to your inbox. As a special bonus, I’ll send you a FREE copy of my ebook, Write More, Fret Less: The Toolkit for Gaslight Proofing Your Writing Life.

I’d love a copy of Write More, Fret Less