The Power of Lineage: Reconnecting in an Authoritarian Time of Fracture
One of the foundational tactics of authoritarianism is to fracture: to slice up communities and pin them against each other; to confuse our understandings of “what is true” and “just;” to separate our understandings of who we are, our ideals and our dreams, from the actions we choose to take in the moment.
Perhaps you feel the impacts of this fracturing in the ways you make decisions, assess risk, or normalize what you see happening – I certainly do. (It’s exhausting.)
With local elections coming up, I’ve been thinking about the importance of un-fracturing and reconnecting to our understandings of who we are and what has made us – our ancestry and lineage.
When we intentionally turn toward our ancestry and lineage, we can see the ways in which we have become who we are because of others. We can feel our place within an intergenerational process. We can view the political work of our lives within a larger frame, one that includes countless generations of people building a future for us to continue.
And we can also face the catastrophes that have led to this moment. For some, this might mean working with a therapist to navigate lived trauma and grief; for others, it might mean confronting the reality of having ancestors who committed inhumane atrocities; for others still, investigating one’s ancestry and lineage might lead to seeing how cyclical patterns of poverty evolve over time through family history.
This work of un-fracturing and turning toward our ancestry and lineage helps us become more resilient, able to widen our lens on the world while recognizing where we ourselves stand.
For me, this work invites me to honestly face the fullness of my own lineage: of my great-great-great grandparents Mary and Thomas Velfl, who (after migrating from Czechoslovakia and having their name altered to Welfl by U.S. immigration personnel) became midwest farmers in the early 1900s; of my grandpa Gayle who cared so tenderly for his first wife as she died of cancer and then his second as she descended into the depths of dementia; of my great-great-great-great grandmother Hanna Neeley who viciously enslaved people in the South in the 1800s; and of the stories my Dad tells of the culture of white supremacy he encountered as a child visiting his grandfather in the Mississippi summers.
It invites me to see my lineage as more than just my biological ancestors, but also the teachings, voices, philosophies and spiritualities that have informed my way of being: James Finley; Teresa of Ávila; Malcolm X; Richard Rohr; Ida B. Wells; Resmaa Manakem; contemplative spirituality; the enneagram; asset-based community development; internal family systems.
And when I notice and name all of this, I feel both more connected to what has shaped my life and more emboldened to do what is mine to do.
Each of us will have our own varied lineages – and each will be spotted with their own particular blends of beauty and terror; of the best of humanity and vicious degradations of it.
Exploring one’s lineage isn’t about curating a “nice little origin story” we can pass down to the next generation, but about understanding what each of us is carrying, consciously or not, into every work meeting, every family dinner, every difficult conversation, every attempt at change.
It is about connecting deeply to our own life stories and learning to intentionally carry our lineages as we navigate the waters of authoritarianism today.
I invite you to take 15 minutes and do a bit of your own un-fracturing work: to consider those who have come before you; the philosophies and experiences that have shaped you; the voices you carry with you in your own words and actions.
(Here’s a guided lineage practice I recorded for a cohort I ran last year.)
Just as community is essential in facing the realities of this moment, the lineages we carry – and the intentionality in which we carry them – will inform us how to embody the fullness of ourselves forward.
