Here is how I healed my Mother Line

Here is how I healed my Mother Line

Corrimony chambered cairn
Corrimony chambered cairn image by Annwyn

Healing the Mother line isn’t easy ancestral work. However, it is rewarding and powerful work that can help future generations.

On Easter Sunday of 2015, my younger sister came flying down the stairs of my childhood home and tried to perform an exorcism on me in front of my child. I walked away without looking back. For a decade and 6 months, I didn’t see or speak to my biological family. Over the years, I exchanged a few text messages with my mother, but things never worked out. I healed, found peace, and became the best version of myself.

In August of 2024, I visited Dartmoor on a women’s day. We walked the land, carried bone bundles, chanted, drummed, did divination, and I spoke with the spirits of water, ancestors, and the land. In the evening, we entered a roundhouse and drummed loudly. It sent me deep into a trance, and the ancestors began rattling around in my head. They showed me that I needed to heal my motherline. I was instructed to weave the stories of each of my relationships with my mother and my sisters. The warp, the foundation, and the weft would represent the years, the potent memories. It was a powerful message that I had intended to follow through on. Life took over, and I kept meaning to do it, but I hadn’t followed through yet.

May of 2025 came, and I was traveling through the highlands with my partner on our way to Orkney. We stopped in Inverness and visited Clava Cairns. I was pretty upset about its condition and how people were behaving, so we decided to visit another Cairn at the lower end of Inverness. I had visited this Cairn in 2012, and it was so potent. It was such a powerful place. I never forgot about it.

This Cairn is especially important to me because a single woman was found there. She clearly had a high status and may have been a religious figure. My intuition says she was a holy woman, a priestess, but we may never know. Either way, she was a woman of importance from the Bronze Age.

We arrived at dusk with Sacred Water and a Lyre. I took my time approaching the site. I circled around the Cairn as my partner played the lyre. I approached the entrance, gave a gift of water, and crawled inside. When I stood up, the sound of the lyre put me into a trance, and I could feel her presence. She appeared to me and we danced together in the center of the Cairn.

She spoke to me and said, “Why do you count time by the men?” She was so frustrated that we counted generations by the masculine and that women take their husband’s last names. In her time, this was not the case; bloodlines were traced by the matrilineal line. We spoke of other things I will not share here, and she even gave me some health advice that is wildly accurate to where I am at the moment. My time with her came to a close, and I crawled out of the Cairn.

The sun was almost gone and the sky was grey. My partner continued to play the lyre, and I walked towards him. There between us was an allen wrench. I picked it up and grumbled about tourists littering at sacred sites and went to place it on a fence post. It was then that I had an understanding. My mother’s mother’s maiden name was Allen. She had just spoken to me about my motherline and there was an Allen wrench infront of me. I put it in my pocket and we continued on our journey.

Later, after we returned home (about a week later), my son arrived home from work later than expected. We asked him what happened and he told us about his bike breaking and grumbled about needing an Allen wrench that actually fit his bike. I reached into my pocket and produced the Allen wrench from the Cairn and gave it to him. It fit his bike perfectly. My Mother’s father was an avid bike rider and was known for riding his bike across England.

I also find it curious that an alternative name to the Allen Wrench is “Hex Key.” There are some interesting thoughts to ponder with this one. A key to unlocking a hex? Breaking generational curses?

August of 2025 came, directly after Lugnasadh, I received word that my great uncle had died. My Mother’s, Mother’s, brother. Unfortunately, he was a difficult man. When my Mother’s, Mother’s, Mother passed away 20 years ago. He had withheld so many of my own mother’s and my Mother’s Mother’s personal items from them.

Not long after the news of my Great uncle’s passing came, my nan called me. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a decade. However, she asked me to go to my uncle’s house and retrieve her personal items and all the family photos because she was worried that a step third cousin was going to steal them all before she could get access. (She lives in Florida) So the next day I drove to Birmingham. I received permission from the step 3rd cousin, who had been named as the sole beneficiary of the will, to retrieve their personal items.

In 2 hours, I combed through the house and found every single photo I could, as well as a few personal items from my mother’s childhood and my Nan’s earlier life. Things became complicated after that, and they refused to let us back into the house and even got angry when the coroner would call me to tell me the cause of death, rather than the beneficiary of the will. If it weren’t for the Allen Wrench at the Cairn, I never would have gone to such lengths.

The same day, I left for vacation to another Bronze age landscape near Brecon in Wales. There, I took the sticks and yarn and began weaving the stories that I had been told to weave a year before. There was an urgency now. The words “Weave, before it is too late” kept banging around in my head. I wove and wove until they were completed.

A month went by, and I got word of the funeral. I told my Mother that I could go, assuming she was not going to come, as she lives in the States. However, she did get on a plan,e and we all went to the funeral. We met at my great uncle’s house, where my Mother was told by the step third cousin’s husband that the house had been cleaned out and there was nothing left. I didn’t get everything; I didn’t find every photo, but they threw out what was left.

My drive to Birmingham to rescue the photos was a miracle that happened. I rescued my family history from the rubbish bin and saved the photos of my mother’s line. My mom stayed a few days and spent time combing through the photos and photo albums over and over again. I got to see a photo of my great-great-great-nan, something I had never seen before. Her name was Victoria, which is one of my middle names and also connected to Victory.

2 twisted men in their greed tried to destroy the photographic evidence of my motherline, and if it weren’t for the Bronze Age ancestors giving me clues, telling me to weave before it was too late, placing an allen wrench in my path, everything would be lost. My mother took all the weaving home with her. We will see what happens now…

I have a sneaky suspicion that this whole thing had nothing to do with me. I was just the tool that Spirit was using to heal the ancestral motherline. Each of the women before me was the firstborn daughter of the firstborn daughter. I am not the firstborn. I am the 2nd born daughter. However, my sister, the firstborn daughter, also had a firstborn daughter. She has just now reached womanhood. I suspect this has something to do with her and setting energies straight for her life. Time will tell…

 

Water Priestess Annwyn Avalon – Image by VicFoklHeart
About Annwyn Avalon
Annwyn Avalon is a Water Priestess living in Avalon. She is the Founder of Triskele Rose Mystery School, Water Priestess Training, and the Water Priestess Confluence. She is also the Author of Water Witchcraft: Magic and Lore from the Celtic Tradition, The Way of the Water Priestess, and Celtic Goddess Grimoire. She has also contributed to numerous esoteric publications in the U.S. and England such as The Magical Times Magazine, This Witch, Witchology, the Patheos Blog "The Water Witch". She has contributed to Brigid's Light: Tending the Ancestral Flame of the Beloved Celtic Goddess and more. She has devoted her life to the study of Esoteric Water Mysteries and Avalon. Her path is one of sacred service to the waters of this world and her ancestors. She is an initiated Witch and Priestess, Reiki Master Teacher, award-winning Dancer, and has a BFA in sculpture, BA in Anthropology as well as an apprentice certification in herbalism. She is also the Sacred Steward of Chalice Orchard. The former home of the famous authors Dion Fortune and Geoffrey Ashe. You can find Annwyn roaming the hedge rows of Glastonbury or at the White Spring in sacred service to the waters. You can read more about the author here.
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