Archives for March 2020

Embodiment & Grounding in a Changing Reality

March 20, 2020 by Jennifer Holik

In this ever changing reality we are living in during the times of COVID-19 or coronavirus, we are being called to go inside and do our inner work. To become embodied, ground our energy, respond rather than react. Promote these things rather than fear and panic.

In this video I share what is happening in my world this week and give you a grounding exercise to do which I hope will help you feel more calm. Try it out, change it up, and see how this one thing can bring more peace to your life in this moment.

Grounding is something I do multiple times a day, especially when I feel stressed, I start futuring (worrying about the future) or the monkey mind starts going. Grounding takes me out of fight or flight and into what is actually happening. It has kept me sane for the last week as things have changed daily, including my return from my Dutch husband in the Netherlands, whom I may not see for six months. Grounding has helped me sleep, prepare in a calm way, and explore what is possible in this moment and the next few weeks.

We are being given an opportunity to change a lot in our world. Are you ready to take that next step? If you would like to work with me to create a new reality with you, please check out my FACILITATION and COACHING packages on my online course website, Finding the Answers Journey.

If you would like to know more about me, the work I do on both the energy/ancestral lineage healing side or military research side, please visit all my social sites via LinkTree.

Program Review – Tackling Difficult Chapters of Our Family History (RootsTech 2020)

March 16, 2020 by Jennifer Holik

“What we know about our ancestors can be deep seated within us……” Cheri Daniels

FAMILY STORIES

RootsTech 2020 had a couple of interesting programs that were live streamed on the concept of healing and ancestral trauma. So far I watched one of the two. Cheri Daniels’ Tackling Difficult Chapters of our Family History.

If you have the RootsTech app you may still be able to download her handout. It has some good information in it.

I appreciated Cheri’s description of difficult family stories and chapters. Her family is completely different from mine and has been in the U.S. much longer. She brought up a lot of topics that I would never see in my history, but that some of my clients might. Though overall, many of her family’s difficult chapters included some form of what all of our families include: GRIEF, LOSS, INFIDELITY, ABUSE, RAPE, RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL ISSUES, ADDICTION, PTSD, VIOLENCE, and so many other topics. These are all topics we can explore within our own family stories and our personal lives and start to process.

Cheri mentioned many times during her talk that she is not her ancestor’s therapist. On one level I can agree with that. On another I can’t due to the education I’ve had with ancestral lineage and energy healing. While we may not function as our ancestor’s therapist, through our exploration of our personal issues, triggers, baggage, whatever you want to call it, we do serve as their therapist as we unpack it all, process it, and hopefully heal it. There are a lot of ways to explore this idea and I encourage you to consider how you are either being a therapist or not.

Cheri gave a lot of good tips on how to handle the difficult things that come up through numerous examples of her own family’s stories. You might be surprised at the things she shares, which I applaud her for sharing. There are too many people pushing us to keep things quiet and shoved under the carpet, especially within the genealogy community, out of fear. Fear is a big reason there are so many secrets, lies, and patterns in our families. Fear is not real and we can go into our research and analysis, discovery, processing and healing with a non-judgmental, non-fearful lens and energetic space. This is important so we not only process what was but do not re-attach to it and continue the patterns or cycles.

I encourage you to watch the video replay while it is available on the RootsTech website. I also encourage you to start journaling your difficult chapters and see what new information comes from that point of view before you dive back into records or oral history. I wonder what you will discover and heal.

Course Review – Find Your Ground

March 10, 2020 by Jennifer Holik

Limited time online course!

I follow Trauma Aware Care on Instagram and Facebook and a few days ago discovered they have an online course to help you learn to ground your energy. This course is only available for registration through early March I believe. It is called FIND YOUR GROUND.

While I know a lot of grounding techniques already, I wanted to hopefully learn more. I am also looking for new ways to present materials through workbooks, my online courses and coaching. So, taking this course served several purposes for me.

what i loved about this course

The course has a beautiful workbook with plenty of space to make notes and journal.

Many gorgeous, inspiring images are used throughout the course materials and as oracle and affirmation cards. They provide not only additional information on the topic being presented but when printed from your workbook, make inspiring art for your work area or bulletin boards. They can also serve as reminders to ground, center yourself, and relax when you feel triggered.

The course was easy to move through. It was well written and contained a glossary at the end of the course, with beautiful images, to reinforce what you learned or teach you what you didn’t already know.

I learned some new ways to ground and check-in with myself, especially when triggered. The course provided a few different perspectives on grounding. While the basic concepts I knew, the different perspective gave me a different way to work with grounding.

Perhaps the thing I appreciated most about the course was the specific wording and images placed in strategic places to remind you to step back, go at your own pace, slow down, check-in, especially if you feel triggered. The course was not written to specifically trigger anything but we are all different, all carry different baggage and inherited trauma. These reminders are good.

I encourage you to register for this class before it disappears. You get a year’s access and it is one you can return to again and again when you need a reminder to ground your energy.

Do Research Professionals Require Therapy?

March 9, 2020 by Jennifer Holik

That is a loaded, triggering question isn’t it? Isn’t it time these communities start the conversation about the effects of research on us mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally as researchers and professionals?

I have been a genealogical researcher for more than 20 years. For a decade, I’ve studied every military branch and it’s paperwork for WWII, which resulted in the creation of numerous research guides, speaking programs, and more clients than I can count. I took ProGen and several other professional genealogy prep classes back in the day. I self-taught the 20th century military research because no one else was teaching this – no other books existed. Then in 2012 when I moved out and got divorced, I started down a spiritual path alongside the military research. Then I began to travel in Europe. I also wrote some gut wrenching, sad, life changing books about my family’s military members. Those broke me open. Helping clients write books and share their deeper stories has also broken me open.

Do you know none of the genealogy business groups, classes, webinars, or anything talk about these issues? None provide support on how we as professionals or researchers deal with this? Only recently through the DNA surprises people are getting are these topics I speak of below being even whispered. Yet no one is stepping forward to address the therapeutic side of what we do.

The combination of years of genealogy research for both myself and clients plus the military research plus explaining to clients the heavy stuff, the family secrets they didn’t know about (pregnancy during war time that was never disclosed), helping unravel family trauma, PTSD, inherited trauma, multiple issues that we all grow up with, broken homes, and on and on PLUS being a caregiver to my husband and dealing with loss, grief, anticipated grief, PTSD, etc., – as a result of the genealogy and/or military research I was doing for clients……resulted in both myself as a professional and my clients or anyone else who worked with me to have unresolved grief, triggers for PTSD and other issues, and many other things show up because we chose this work.

How Do I Know We Need Help?

In the last two years, the clients who hire me have changed. They require and sometimes demand the deeper healing – the deeper answers. Most are not satisfied with the facts, documents, answers to their questions. They require facilitation to process what we discover, especially when it turns their world upside down and makes them question who their father or mother was and who they are now that they know this information.

Many clients deal with caregiving issues, grief, loss, PTSD, inherited trauma, compassion fatigue, discovering their WWII mom had a baby out of wedlock the family didn’t know about, discovering a father wasn’t who they thought he was, talking about LGBTQI issues, rape, assault, they ask about ancestral lineage healing, they are adopted or through DNA discover things they weren’t prepared for…..it goes on and on. All of this comes up in the military and family history work I do with clients.

I have had to find resources in books, online classes, professionals, and articles, to name a few things I’ve used, to help both myself move through the issues of caregiving, the issues of professional compassion fatigue and PTSD from the work I do, and help my clients through these issues.

Am I a therapist? No. But I do not believe we need to be therapists to help guide clients and provide resources. I do believe we need to recognize when we should refer someone to a professional therapist/spiritual teacher/religious guide, etc. That is part of our responsibility as professional researchers and human beings. To help support and love each other.

What’s the Next Step?

In January 2020, I gave a free webinar for genealogy and military research professionals, with a workbook, on incorporating resources into our genealogy and military research businesses to help clients.

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