It is easier to love my mother now she's dead.
Mother-daughter relationships don't end.
As someone without children or siblings, who never knew her father and had a mother who reinvented herself with each of her three marriages, sloughing off names, family and friends as she went, I’ve never had a sense of ‘family’ as something particularly capacious; if anything, it’s been rather anorexic.
So perhaps it’s a little bit strange that for the last couple of years, I’ve been asking my ancestors to support me with the entirely homemade, hands-on healing practice I’ve developed for my husband, mother-in-law (and dog!). I’ve tried different ways to tune into the right state of mind for it, and the most powerful one I’ve found is simply to ask my ancestors for help: ‘Please help me,’ that’s all it takes, and they pitch up willingly, rolling up their sleeves and announcing their presence with an undertow of energy that tugs at my nervous system like an interdimensional foghorn.
If I try to imagine them, I see a hazy mirage of …