Naming the Ghosts

Some families don’t haunt houses — they haunt silence.

This week, we’re walking into the part of shadow work that doesn’t feel mystical or romantic. It’s the kind that sits in the room with you when you realize how much of your story was edited before you even learned to speak it.

Every family carries ghosts. Not the ones that rattle chains — the ones that keep secrets. The kind that taught us to smile through pain, to change the subject when the truth got too close, to stay loyal to dysfunction because that’s what “good people” do.

But here’s the thing: silence doesn’t protect us. It preserves the wound.

When we start naming what was never supposed to be named — the affairs, the abuse, the addiction, the mental illness, the abandonment — we’re not dishonoring our bloodline. We’re freeing it. Because pretending didn’t keep anybody safe. It just passed down the burden.

This week’s work isn’t about calling folks out. It’s about calling things by their real names. It’s the difference between a curse and a story. A curse hides. A story heals.

The mirror confession under moonlight is just one way of saying: I’m done carrying what isn’t mine. I’m ready to see my reflection unblurred by generational shame.

So if the ghosts show up this week — the quiet ones, the ones you can’t quite name but still feel in your bones — don’t run. Sit with them. Ask what they came to teach you.

And when you’re ready, write.
Let the pen tell the truth your family couldn’t.

Journaling focus:
What family truths were buried to protect me, and what did they cost?

Next week, we move from naming the ghosts to mourning them — a deeper descent into ancestral grief and the sacred act of integration. Because healing isn’t just remembering what hurt — it’s choosing what lives on.