Healing Through Indigenous Wisdom Book Review
29Jul
Rockpool Publishing sent over a brand new healing guide for me to review:
Healing Through Indigenous Wisdom: A 52-Week Guide by Valerie Ringland, PhD. - A year around the medicine wheel. Learn to connect with your ancestry.
Valerie says this book is for you whether you identify as indigenous or not because we all can learn from the struggles she shares through the indigenous stories and wisdom peppered throughout this healing guide that will help us garner a better understanding of indigenous cultures. I greatly appreciate the stories told throughout this book because I believe we can all heal by learning of the experiences of those different from us. We each walk a different path and experience different challenges, obstacles, pain, hardships, trauma, etc. as we travel that road. Sharing those lived experiences with others helps us develop empathy for others and leads to growth in our own healing process.
It has been proven that reading and traveling develops empathy because we expand our view of the world and of the human experience. We should all be challenging ourselves to look outside our bubble to understand the lived experience of others. That could be the very thing that helps to heal the divide that we all feel today. Unity is the answer and that only comes from listening to each other and learning about cultures other than our own. Stories are powerful. That’s why generations upon generations have always sat around fires and hearths passing on stories from the past – so they will be remembered and valued. Our ancestors have always known the power of sharing these experiences. It's up to us to continue this healing tradition.
The exercises offered in this book will help us heal some of the cultural and ancestral wounds we still carry within us, which are calling for us to process and heal now to move us forward as a collective. One of the massive tasks I feel I’ve undertaken in this lifetime is to heal as many wounds as I can to release my familial line of pain we’ve carried for generations.
This guide is designed to take us through a year of healing that Valerie hopes will leave us with a deeper peace about ourselves and the life we are living.
“There are stories to inspire you and help you feel seen and exercises to facilitate you to do things like connect with your indigenous ancestors as well as ancestors of the lands where you live, divine your medicine wheel, integrate sacred earth-based rituals and ceremonies into your life and experience more grounding in your body and the land where you live so you feel more solid and centered.”
The book is designed where you can sync your reading and healing exercises with the seasons/solstices or read the book straight through. We start the journey by assessing where we think we are in the areas of our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual lives, which helps identify imbalances in any of these areas, and throughout this healing journey we will work on seeking balance in any of these areas where we need attention and care. By the end of the healing journey, we should see improvement in these 4 areas, so by tracking our progress from beginning to end we can assess how far we’ve traveled on our healing journey.
“We cannot be ourselves until we unpack the energetic suitcases we are carrying with tools that allow us to process and release their contents.”
One of the lessons from this book that will always stick with me is the story she told of an Indigenous Elder in the Amazon telling her that the vast majority of the thought loops that circulate in our minds are not based in our ego, but in ancestral trauma. He estimated that to be about 90 percent. Wow! It really resonated with me. I also think a lot of it has to do with past-life wounds we carry with us as well. That's what my healing focus has been on the past several years.
Valerie suggested making an ancestral altar for rituals, offerings, and a place to honor your ancestry so you don't continue to carry that ancestral trauma in your body. When she did this she noticed a huge difference in the number of accidents she was attracting. I immediately dedicated a small table in my office for my ancestor altar where I display healing crystals and cards to show my gratitude for my ancestors and to work together with them to heal the trauma that I agreed to release in this lifetime that will benefit my ancestral line!
We can all do our part to heal ourselves. They say wounded people wound others, so I always say healed people can heal others!
If you follow my healing blogs and Healing Thru Tarot Podcast episodes you know that I’m a big proponent of healing with the seasons. I love changing my healing rituals and lessons with the turn of the season, including the cards and tools I use, the decorations in my home that surround me each season and even the playlists I listen to in order to sync with the change of the weather and energy moving through my body. By changing all of these variables I'm better able to transmute the energy and wounds coming to the surface that are ready to be released.
Over the past few years, I’ve been exploring healing through the turn of the wheel of the year, and that constant change up keeps my healing journey fresh. It never gets stale, and I find my energy changes throughout the year – reducing and turning inward in the autumn and winter for instance and ramping up with energy, optimism, confidence and enthusiasm in the spring and summer. I best work with grief and introspection in the autumn and winter, creativity in the spring and increasing self-worth and rededicating myself to my goals in the summer when my energy peaks.
This book walks us through a 52-week healing journey with exercises and lessons for each week, making it very doable for any person whether you live a fast-paced life or not. I find the lesson and exercise only takes a few minutes to half an hour at most per week. The reason I like this format so much is that healing is a slow, gradual process. Many people try to rush the healing process and are disappointed when they aren’t progressing quickly. I know for myself it’s been years and years that I’ve spent healing physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That is not a linear process and does not produce results over night. Taking our time and pacing ourselves allows us to fully feel the lessons we need to learn and absorb during challenging and transitional points in our lives. If we rush the process, then we often have to relearn the lessons we missed again at a later date.
I’d rather address it head on as it starts to unfold in my life rather than cycle through the same lessons and challenges over and over again because I failed to internalize the reasons those obstacles popped up on my path initially.
By incorporating our healing journeys into our daily life, it becomes part of our rituals and routines, allowing us to grow with each insight and lesson. That makes it a really enriching and life enhancing process. This book embodies this approach to healing and makes it accessible for almost anyone. In our fast paced society, we are almost trained to expect fast results and quick fixes, but if you haven’t noticed, those changes don’t feel as rewarding when we encounter them. Growth can be hard but always enriching.
Slowing down allows us to examine the reason things come into our lives to challenge us. Seeing the purpose in those hardships does lead to growing pains but also to an evolution that leaves us changed, stronger, and more purpose driven.
I learned so much about healing through this guide. Valerie covers things like ancestral healing and wisdom, seasonal healing, and intergenerational healing from the trauma and wounds that have been passed down through our families for generations.
So much of our healing journey is centered around healing those wounds so we can break free from the grip its held over us, not just for ourselves but for our ancestors and our descendants. We owe it to those we love to take ownership over our healing process and to do the work to heal ourselves so that we can be a more whole, happy, fulfilled version of ourselves, giving back that love and kindness to others after we’ve shown it to ourselves first. Healing yourself requires a self-love that many find uncomfortable at first, but it’s necessary and worth it in the end. I promise!
“Heal yourself, heal the world.”
We are at a pivotal point in history where our individual healing adds tremendously to the collective energy, thus giving us a chance to greatly impact the world we live in. If each of us devoted time to healing our wounds, we can usher in a kinder, more compassionate, loving world where equality and inclusivity is the norm!
We can do this together. I’m doing my part to heal myself and inspire others to do the same. Challenge yourself to start your own healing journey and share this message with others. Let’s unite with as many people as we can to tackle this work together. If you’re sensitive to energy, I’m sure you felt the energetic shift that just occurred this past week (starting July 21st 2024). The energy drastically shifted from fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and depression to elation, hope, and immense enthusiasm. It has been the largest shift of energy I’ve ever felt. All week, the new energy has flooded through my system, grounding itself to the planet. This left me very hopeful that there are millions of lightworkers uniting at this moment in time to change the trajectory of our future – to one that is inspirational, joyful, and hopeful. I, for one, hope this energy stays and even gains more momentum. And I believe it will IF all of us do the work needed to release those old wounds that have been holding us down.
I promise you that you will feel lighter and freer once you address those past wounds and release them for good. Don’t let them continue to be an albatross around your neck. You deserve to be free of this pain/trauma. Books like this one will help guide you down the healing path, allowing you to break free and step into a new way of life, unshackled from what once held you back from your full potential.
Thanks to Rockpool Publishing for sending this book! You can purchase it here on amazon – out August 6th
About the creator
Valerie Ringland is an Indigenous East Frisian (and Jewish-Sumerian) woman with a PhD. in social work and experience in Indigenous and Western healing work. She is the first generation born off her traditional lands. You can follow her here on the Earth Ethos website
FTC Disclosure: In accordance with Title 16 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Part 255, “Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” I received Healing Through Indigenous Wisdom from Rockpool Publishing for prospective review. Everything I’ve said here is sincere and accurately reflects my opinion of this book.
My Novels
Check out The Divining Sisters Series here.
If you're looking for a good witchy book check out my fictional divination book series, The Divining Sisters. Start with book 1 in the series, The Call of the Cards, and then catch up on the rest of the series: book 2, We Divine Three book 3, The Threads of Fate, and book 4, The UnbindingThey're available as eBooks and paperbacks on Amazon. And the eBooks are also on Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Scribd, Smash words, and more. The eBooks are just $4.99. Find out more details on my novels on my author website author.heatherhardison.com - where I post updates on book releases, video book trailers, book blurbs and quotes, as well as fun things like my Spotify playlists for each book. I carefully curate those to express the energy of each book.
This series follows a group of women (witches, healers, diviners) who reincarnate lifetime after lifetime and reunite with their coven so they can fulfill a mission of keeping their craft of divination, healing, and magic alive for future generations.
Book Blurb for Book 1: The Call of the Cards
