MY ANCESTRAL HEALING JOURNEY: TAMALES & TEARS
- Maria Luna
- Feb 22
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 31
Words + (most) Images By Maria Luna
I. IT STARTED IN MY BONES
It was December 2023. The holidays were fast approaching, and I found myself in a cozy, well lit bookstore in the tiny mountain town of Burnsville, North Carolina, close to where I lived at the time. My chilly body immediately relaxed as I practically melted into the rows of books. I’ve always loved bookstores.
As I browsed, the sizable section of international cookbooks drew my attention. I am a passionate cook, and I am Latina after all. Maybe I can find something that piques my interest, I thought to myself…
I love to cook!!
…and THAT was when it happened. In that exact moment, lulled into a near trance by the warm, colorful bookstore in a sleepy small town in winter, gazing at vibrant pages of Mexican dishes.
Something inexplicable stirred in my bones, and suddenly I FELT how meaningful it was to be a Latina, living in the United States. I felt it like I never had before— that this was a really big part of me and always had been.
Even though I grew up in a Mexican-Cuban household and was raised speaking fluent Spanish, neither of my parents made a huge effort to transmit the importance of their cultures of origin to my younger brother and I.
I never thought much of this growing up. After all I lived in America, land of dreams; land of the privileged (and sometimes ignorant). My parents both come from stories of migration and worked hard to achieve a better life in America than where they came from.
Maybe that’s why I never learned much about my Hispanic background from them— they were understandably, rightfully proud to have made a better life, and what came before didn’t matter as much.
But even if it was never fully explained to me, my mixed cultural heritage ALWAYS had an impact on me. I had grown up with a sense of grief, displacement, and not-quite-belonging that haunted me no matter where I went or who I was with. It wasn’t until I began exploring ancestral healing that I really began to understand and at last make peace with these emotions that seemed engraved into my soul— more on that later.
That cold winter day in the mountains of North Carolina, a fire lit in my belly. I left that bookstore with a gorgeous Day of the Dead Cookbook and a memoir written by another Mexican American woman.
Little did I know, reading her stories and struggles to come to terms with her mixed cultural heritage would catapult me into my own adventure of doing the same…
I devoured the Mexican-American memoir by January. The book fed something deep inside me, a ravenous part of me I had struggled to nourish all the years of my life.
I also began to experiment with Mexican cooking. I figured that in addition to reading stories, I could connect to my ancestral heritage by enjoying beautiful art and culture from Mexico and Cuba. I am an avid consumer of art and culture after all ;)
So I listened to many great Cuban and Mexican artists. And I cooked my heart out! With the help of my Day of the Dead cookbook, I taught myself to make tamales. I learned about the colorful festivities and rituals of my ancestors. I imagined what their lives might have been like. I spoke to the prized pictures I have long kept close of my two deceased grandmas, more often than usual. And that inexplicable thing in my bones just kept stirring and speaking to me.
Paying homage to my ancestors in these simple ways— learning about their cultures, cooking with them in mind, talking to them— began to activate a deeper knowing. An intuition. And— a restlessness. A desire to stand out from the crowd and create something amazing with my life…
II. QUETZALCOATL’S TAMALES
This is how Quetzalcoatl’s Tamales was born! In February I decided to quit “working for the man” (which I’ve never been very good at lol) and start my very own tamale business, as an homage to my Mexican ancestors. My vision was to make the most delicious tamales in the Carolina’s and build a beautiful altar to Mexico everywhere I sold them. I prayed from the depths of my heart to make it happen— I left tears, my sweetest words, and hot chocolate in the forest.
The nature spirits must have heard me, because in a month I got my first gig selling tamales at a local ecstatic dance event! I felt thrilled. It was happening!
I promptly threw myself into perfecting my recipes. It was a perilous, exhilarating, exhausting journey of trial and error: getting the masa, sauce, and fillings just right. Finding the impossible patience to tie every single corn husk together by hand, after the hours already spent laboring over the masa and cooking up the most flavorful fillings I could dream of.
My Day of the Dead cookbook became my best friend, and my hands, feet, and back ached every day I spent those hours in the kitchen.
But on the inside I felt so happy. I was creating something beautiful, meaningful, and DIFFERENT, that felt like it wasn’t only about me. My tamale business was also about all those people who came before me: my maternal ancestors from Mexico. The people who had stories and lives in a land long before my family got to the United States.
I can’t rationally explain it, only tell you the strange beautiful fact that I started to FEEL their presence around me. Even if I didn’t know their exact stories or names, I FELT their lives, their stories, their heart aches and joys, crowding around me like a familiar, warm, benevolent cloud.
As I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into my tamale business, thinking of them, in many moments I felt them— and somehow, their love and support.
My heart felt so moved by this that I cried many tears over my batches of tamales, feeling this warmth and love that came from the simple act of choosing to remember and nod to those who came before me.
Those tears cleaned me, even as I was going through intense challenges at that time in my life— being broke, and heartbreak to name a couple. Yikes.
Still, through the dark haze, there was a light and strength entering my heart that I had never felt before. I started to realize my lifelong grief around not belonging might be bigger than me…
And one day, as I cried over my tamales it dawned on me that how could I POSSIBLY not belong, if generations of REAL humans (real— messy, imperfect, beautiful, like me) created me, lived lives with unthinkable challenges and joys, and gave their lives and love so that I too could be right here, in my body, on this earth, right now?
III. THE TAMALE CRASH
Creating Quetzalcoatl’s Tamales was one of the best, and hardest things I’ve ever done! I have that classic problem that comes with being a dreamer: huge visions that my mere mortal self can scarcely keep up with. But I pulled it off!
For about 6 months I gave my whole heart to QT. I created a menu of 6 insanely delicious, healthy, authentic tamales. I built a vibrant, jaw dropping altar to Mexico. I sold out at my favorite ecstatic dance events. My community ADORED it. For once in my life, I felt truly cherished by my community— for something I created with my own hands.
It was magical!
And yet, underneath the magic and the joy, something was missing… something was wrong. I ignored this feeling at first. Until I couldn’t anymore.
No one had ever taught me how to build a sustainable business. I learned the hard way that one woman, needing to put in the average 6+ hours to make a single batch of tamales, needless to say all the grocery shopping and prep work, every single week, was NOT sustainable. I was selling out but the ingredients were expensive. I would have had to quadruple myself to make enough tamales to actually make a decent profit. I didn’t have the money or energy to hire help, my bank account kept growing smaller, and as the weeks went by, I became more and more exhausted.
I remember my birthday party that summer. Surrounded by beautiful friends, it could have been a really happy moment. But it wasn’t— because I was so damn exhausted, so depleted from running on empty for months, I barely felt present at all.
Something was WRONG. I was in love with the IDEA of my tamale business— but was it actually right for me?
IV. GRANDMA’S WHISPERS
Sometimes I can hear my grandmothers talking to me. I can’t explain this rationally.
One day towards the end of my tamale gig, when I was about ready to give up on my dreams of working for myself and felt very depressed, I heard my Mexican grandma.
(The first time I ever heard her voice talking to me like that was when I was teaching myself to cook in my early 20s. A familiar voice in Spanish rang out in my ear “FINALLY she’s in the kitchen!!” I’ll never forget that…)
That day she said to me, “it doesn’t have to be so hard. There’s countless ways to honor and love us. But your happiness and freedom mean the most. Don’t hurt yourself to honor us. We don’t want your suffering. Be good to yourself. Live the life you TRULY dream of living. Don’t be afraid! That’s how you can really make us proud…”
In the weeks after that my tamale business unraveled. I simply didn’t have the energy anymore to spend hours laboring and still lose money every week. (In the future I would love to keep making tamales for fun, for friends and family. But I have learned my lesson about what makes a business truly sustainable!)
It took some time after that but I finally began to understand something about ancestral healing. I realized that in order to heal my lineage, I needed to learn how to validate and love myself, and live out my own unique destiny, even if it was different than my ancestor’s.
I realized that in order to set them free, I had to love and remember them, yes. But I also had to set MYSELF free.
It was a paradox. Love them. Honor them. Yet, choose me.
Somehow it made sense.
So, I started pursuing a totally new adventure! I FINALLY found the courage to do things I’ve long dreamed of in my deepest heart:
Start an online business teaching about magic, alchemy and shadow integration.
Live in Latin America.
I would NOT have found the courage and strength to pursue my crazy dreams if it weren’t for my journey of ancestral healing!
I still make time regularly to honor my ancestors, and welcome their love and support.
…And I fall more and more in love with myself every day.
And that is the greatest freedom and belonging anyone could ask for :)
💜FIN💜
P.S If you too feel called to embark on an ancestral healing journey...
I shared this article to give my audience a greater peek at my own heart and story.
I also plan to share ancestral healing work in the future.
However, I am still learning and in no rush.
I am in the middle of this process myself right now!
It's been one of the most beautiful, supportive, healing experiences of my life.
I highly recommend ancestralmedicine.org and their life changing course Ancestral Lineage Healing.!!
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