Chats with Aunt Jacki - The Ancestors We Carry: Roots, Place & Everyday Magic with Emily Bolander

What does it mean to carry your ancestors with you—even when you no longer live on the land they came from? In this episode of Chats with Aunt Jacki, I’m joined by my longtime friend Emily Bolander for a conversation about ancestry, place, memory, and the everyday ways we stay connected to the people who came before us. Emily shares how growing up in Central New York shaped her spiritual life, what it was like to leave a place where her family roots run deep, and how ancestor work became a way of carrying that connection forward. We talk about graveyards, family objects, handwritten signatures, food, ancestor altars, grave dirt, cemetery water, and the strange little ways our dead sometimes make themselves known. We also get practical about ancestor work: how to begin an altar, what to do when you don’t know where your ancestors are buried, how to work with complicated family histories, and why relationship matters more than doing everything “perfectly.” This is a conversation about roots, belonging, remembrance, and the magic that can happen when we stop treating our ancestors like history and start recognizing them as part of our living story.