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Restorative Empathy

Transforming Domination Culture from the Inside Out

You are never alone

September 9, 2025 By Angela Watrous

Join us Mondays from 2-4 pm PT (note our new meeting time), starting September 22, for the Autumn Ancestral Healing Circle.

 

When I was a small child alone in my bedroom, I could sense I was not actually alone. “Don’t contact me,” I’d say, quietly.
 
For decades, that was my relationship with the dead: aware of their presence, but uneasy and unwilling to connect. 

I wasn’t wrong to be wary. There was a lot of heavy burden in that palpable energy around me. That heaviness was weighing on me enough already, I didn’t want to invite more connection.

For years, especially at parties, I’d find myself in conversations with strangers about their relationship with the unseen realms. Hardcore skeptics and true believers alike would tell me animated stories of kitchen cabinets repeatedly opening, lights flickering, grandparents they’d never met appearing at the foot of their bed, voices whispering hello in their ears, ancestors giving them messages in their dreams. I was equally fascinated and afraid. I tried writing a novel about talking to the dead, but that, too, weighed me down. 

A couple years later, I happened into family constellations work through a beloved mentor, and began working directly with the troubled dead, taking their energy into my body to help them communicate. “Be careful,” a friend told me after joining me for a weekend of this work. “This is opening a pretty big portal.”

She wasn’t wrong. While working directly with unwell ancestors was exhilarating, it also wrecked havoc—like opening a door during a tornado and welcoming everything in, without discernment.

Which is why I so deeply value the strong emphasis on ritual safety in the Ancestral Lineage Healing approach. In this work, we never engage directly with the troubled ancestors. Instead, we work with wise, loving, vibrant ancestral guides who themselves work with the unwell dead, giving them all the love and witnessing and empathy and prayerful healing energies they need to complete their dying process and become healed and elevated ancestors who are safe for us to engage with in daily life. 

Now, when I feel the dead around me, I feel the six lineages of healed ancestors who are grounded, vibrant, relieved, and supportive. The heaviness I felt for so long was lifted, replaced with a palpable sense of being carried along the river of life. 

Our ancestors are with us, whether or not we connect with them. Whether we call their pain epigenetic trauma or cultural trauma, we carry the unresolved losses, disappointments, and mistakes of our people. We get swept up in the patterns they set in motion long before our great great great grandparents were even born. 

I love guiding this ritual work, because it supports both the living and the dead, bringing peace, rejuvenation, and loving familial connection.

Whether or not you’re close with your living relatives, whether you know anything about them or even who your biological family are, loving ancestral connection is available to you through this work. 

I hope you sign up today for our Autumn Ancestral Lineage Healing Circle—a sacred journey into resourcing yourself and your family with ritual clearing and protection, connecting with supportive powers, and unburdening yourself and your living family through ancestral healing.

 
Much love and empathy,
Angela

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Welcome to Restorative Empathy!

My work is inspired by a rich lineage of nonviolence, the neurobiologically healing power of empathy, and diverse spiritual traditions. I approach personal and social healing as inextricably linked. Read More…

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