Healing the Waters

In this paper I put forward the African and Shamanic belief of the Daoist tradition that ancestors and their memory are real, passed on from generation to generation. This memory includes the trauma memories of enslavement, and post slavery. This understanding becomes important in the field of trauma and grief healing, as the transmission of ancestral trauma and grief memory, from one generation to another is not fully understood. This has wide implications for those of African descendants who have suffered from ancestral, historical and continuous trauma. And for all who have suffered harm to the body, mind, and spirit resulting from loss of land, home, culture, and torture in its many forms. I examine the images of Kwame Akoto-Bamfo Memorial Heads installed in water, as a visual way to guide and lead this discussion. Understanding the transmission of ancestral trauma especially in relation to African descendants is like climbing the Mount Everest of the Trauma field. If this trauma can be understood more fully, recognition that such trauma exist can open the field of trauma to profound exciting ways on how to effectively shift these sort of trauma memories up and out of the memory of the waters of the body. Above all, we give dignity to those who suffer from ancestral traumas of this magnitude by acknowledging their trauma is real.