An in-depth journal which investigates complex trauma by life-long rehabilitation counsellor Jenny Chapman, who uses the power of song and her convoluted becoming, to resolve ancestral patterns.

This riddle has to do with my history, one that includes childhood trauma and a propensity to carry what belongs to other – an interloper or outsider. Over time, it became apparent these others – ghosts of my far distant past locked in my ancestors and the land – were key to my story.

This true account is less about trauma theory and more about applied practice. It concerns embodiment: manifested in the metaphysical anatomy of Jenny’s illness and for the need to revisit ancestral experiences, to free the self. Jenny worked as a rehabilitation counsellor for thirty-five years, lectured at Masters level in her field and transferred her company’s best practice across Europe yet, her own story and set action patterns presented a riddle. One that required her to decipher the meaning of songs, sent from the afterlife, conduct hours of genealogical research, divine ancestral wounds and creatively use a range of ecological mapping processes.

If Jenny failed to unravel this mystery, the threads of her ancestor’s distress would continue to haunt her and travel across the generations. In this journal, you will find voices that can’t be silenced. Voices that have been muted and ignored for far too long. Voices that had to be given life, again.

This non-fiction journal has been written with medical clinicians, professional therapists – psychologists, social workers, mental health nurses – and trauma specialists in mind although it may also be helpful to sound therapists, ancestral healers and other trauma survivors and their families. It applies healing practices recommended in somatic trauma work and the Northern Spiritual Tradition.