40: Confronting Ancestral Fears & Redefining Your Identity

In this episode, Lara Eisenberg shares intimate details and advice about confronting ancestral fears & redefining your identity, guided by her unique experiences of healing her ancestral wounds. She immersed herself in the inner work necessary and found a beautiful light of remembrance throughout her journey. This is a powerful message and inspiration to all those who struggle to connect with their heritage or ancestors. The essence of this episode invites you to stand within your power, working through ancestral traumas, pain, and suffering to emerge from a place of courage. Lara has been a friend and soul-sister of mine for over 15 years and I’ve had the absolute privilege to witness her growth, awakenings, and empowerment process. Throughout our chat, Lara shares deeply intimate memories, experiences, and realizations about her Jewish heritage and lineage, working through experiences of antisemitism and how that has impacted her and her family. She explains how for most of her life she lived in fear, guilt, and in the shadow of her heritage due to so many comments and experiences that inevitably made her feel small in her Jewish identity. Until she started healing these wounds in such a profound way and started accepting her identity and working through the experiences and memories of her family. There is a sense of fear that isn’t easily extinguished when so much pain is inflicted, and it is a conscious choice to walk towards your fears. She describes her next step in ancestral healing as “getting close and intimate with your fears. In this next step, Lara embarked on a pilgrimage to Poland, she toured the concentration camps, and the gas chambers and she felt the heaviness of tragedy immensely. Through this process, she describes it as incomprehensible, to hold the emotions and energies of everyone who went through those walls, through the trauma and death that still lingers. “How could this happen to my people?” She describes how difficult it was to hold space there, and how the grief alone felt exhausting and overwhelming. This pilgrimage set aside such a beautiful journey for Lara that she connected not only with her Jewish identity but also with the brave women in her lineage who fought, escaped, and worked so hard to remain strong within the movement. While working through the painful parts of her lineage, Lara now describes herself as filled with pride instead of shame. Now she lives a life connected to a proud Jewish identity, only because she decided to work through her fear and shame, allowing her to unfold a new celebration within her ancestry. She shares advice, rituals, and practices that can help anyone who wants to connect with their ancestors, and heritage, and heal wounds they may discover along the way. This episode is a dose of empowerment, and I encourage you to listen to it knowing that there is always a way to step out of fear, into confidence, out of shame, and into the light!

Lara Eisenberg is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner®, Yoga Therapist, and Sexuality and Embodiment Coach. She holds dual master's degrees in Psychological Counseling from Columbia University. She has extensive experience and education in stress management, trauma touch skills, earth-based spirituality; restoring sexual vitality, self-love, and awakening the feminine.

Lara is the author of the "Trauma Resolution for the Empowered, Awakened Female: Mind/Body Practices for Emotional, Spiritual and Physical Balance" and the CD "Relaxation, Peace and Restoration."

Lara has been working in the field of mindfulness, therapy, spiritual and somatic healing for over 22 years. She owns Body Mind Wellness—a virtual somatic psychotherapy and coaching practice helping women to restore the natural harmony that exists between mind, body, and spirit, by deepening their connection to Gaia (the earth’s spirit) and the language of the body. She believes women need a space to explore their red thread (matrilineal line) in order to understand themselves and the emotional burdens they may be carrying, as well as reclaim their feminine soul from the impact of patriarchy, sexualization, and objectification.

Lara feels life on earth will be transformed when women connect deeply to the Earth and fully commit to reclaiming their emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual, and sexual health. In her personal life, Lara uses her intense passion for dance and playing the frame drum as a beautiful form of feminine expression.

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