"My life divided into before and after the moment I heard my great-great-grandmother's voice ... a woman born in Magherafelt, Ireland in 1834."
There was a moment that changed everything, David, my husband, told me about his battle with alcoholism. I spent the years that followed loving him, grieving him, and carrying a hope so fragile I once stood in a grocery store checking expiration dates on the food, quietly praying things would be better before they ran out ... they were not.
David passed away four and a half years later. In the quiet that followed, my ancestors came. They opened up the resilience I carried from them, and the emotional trauma that had been passed down but never healed.
Bernadette is a certified grief and trauma specialist, an End-of-Life Doula, a trauma-informed genealogist, and an Intuitive Ancestral Healer. She is the founder of Tell Me Our Story, the co-founder of the Ancestral Healing Center, and the author of Ancestral Whispers: How My Husband's Passing Unveiled My Spiritual Inheritance. For three years she has served as a healer at the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) conferences, where she has also presented on ancestral healing and our connection with those who came before.
I was not alone. I had never been alone.
WHO I WORK WITH
I work with people wanting to understand a deeper sense of self and who have a curiosity about their ancestors wondering if there are answers there. People who are grieving; who feel a pull toward their ancestors but don't know where to begin. People who are wondering "Who Am I" and wanting to know if they are carrying something that has been passed down and never healed. People who have touched something they cannot yet name, a near-death experience, a visitation, a knowing that changed them, and want to trust what they already sensed rather than explain it away.