Ancestor Guides: Can the People We've Lost Still Guide Us?
I'm a practical, pragmatic person. I've spent over fourteen years in a high-performance corporate environment where the standard is evidence, data, and verifiable outcomes. That's also, not coincidentally, why I do evidential mediumship the way I do — I need the proof before I'll commit to the claim.
So when it comes to the idea of my own loved ones guiding me from the other side, I find myself in an interesting position. I believe it's possible. I've seen enough in readings to know that the people we've lost don't simply disappear. I also do speak with my loved ones in spirit all of the time. But do I have a clean, verifiable, evidence-based relationship with my own ancestor guides?
Maybe? I'm still building it. And I figured that's a great place to start our journey together on this blog post.
The Idea Across Cultures
The concept of deceased loved ones becoming guides isn't a fringe idea. It appears across West African traditions, Japanese Shinto and Buddhist household practice, Celtic seasonal observances, Tibetan Buddhist lineage teachings, and indigenous frameworks across the Americas and Pacific. The theology varies enormously — what ancestors are, where they reside, how contact happens — but the functional premise holds across all of them: the people who came before us remain in some form of relationship with us, and that relationship can be a source of guidance.
I'm not aligned with any single one of these traditions. But I find it significant that human beings across vastly different cultures and centuries have arrived at the same basic conclusion independently. That kind of cross-cultural consistency tends to point at something real, even when the explanatory frameworks differ.
What I Actually Believe
I believe that the people we've loved and lost are almost certainly still interested in us. I've seen too many readings where a grandparent comes through with specific, verifiable information — information they had no business knowing and no earthly way of having prepared — to dismiss the idea that connection continues. And I have felt the DEEP love and yearning to connect not only from my clients, but from their loved ones in spirit. And there is always a message of love and connection and guidance across many of the readings that I do.
What's harder for me personally is trusting the guidance that comes through in my own life, as opposed to in a reading room.
When I'm sitting with a client and someone's grandfather comes through clearly, I can validate it. The client says yes, that's right, that's him. The feedback loop closes. That's how evidential work functions and it's where I'm most comfortable.
When I'm sitting quietly in my own life, wondering if the thought that just came through is my grandmother or my own wishful thinking — that's where my pragmatism gets in the way. I can't validate it the way I validate evidence in a reading. It requires a different kind of trust. A trust in the relationship itself rather than in the verification.
That's work I'm actively doing. And here's the best part that makes me sound like a total hypocrite. I am constantly telling my clients that there loved ones are there connecting to them and guiding them. I genuinely believe that down to the tips of my toes. But I also struggle with the trust that requires. So know you aren't alone. Even someone who speaks to dead people regularly can get caught up in doubt!
What Makes Ancestor Guides Different
There's a distinction worth making between ancestor guides and what people generally call spirit guides. Spirit guides in most frameworks are understood as beings who support your development — not necessarily people you knew, not necessarily human.
Ancestor guides are personal. They knew your family. They walked similar terrain to the one you're on. They carry relevant context about the patterns, struggles, and strengths in your lineage — because they lived inside those patterns too.
That's both the strength and the complexity of working with them. The closeness means they have genuine context. But it also means they carry the full picture of where your family has been — including the patterns you might be actively trying to move past. Working with ancestor guides isn't the same as uncritically following everything that feels like it comes from a deceased loved one. Discernment matters.
Not every inherited pattern is a gift worth carrying forward.
What I've Seen in Readings
In my own work, deceased relatives come through in readings without being requested far more often than most people expect. A grandmother shows up when the client came hoping to hear from a parent. A great-uncle appears with specific identifying information the client has to call their mother to verify. An ancestor from two generations back delivers something that reframes how a client understands their own family history.
None of that is planned by me. It comes from whoever has the most energy and intention to communicate that day. And what I notice, consistently, is that the people who come through tend to have something genuinely useful to offer — not just comfort, but specific context about the person sitting in front of me.
That's what shifts my prior toward believing ancestor guidance is real: not a theological argument, but the accumulated weight of what I've witnessed in thousands of readings.
And to clear something up. I think that all loved ones on the other side serve as a guide to those left in the physical. They do not need to be a great great great great aunt you knew nothing about to be a guide. I think people get wrapped up into the "specialness" of having a certain guide that their own ego can fabricate a connection. Or even Jesus being a spirit guide. Just be sure to check your ego at the door when you are connecting with your guides - ancestor or non-human spirit. If you think Cleopatra is trying to tell you how to rule a kingdom, you might want to question that.
Building a Conscious Relationship With Your Ancestor Guides
If this resonates with you and you want to begin a more intentional relationship with your own ancestors, I'd suggest starting simply.
Find a quiet moment and direct your attention to a specific person you've lost — someone you knew and loved, or someone whose photograph or story you carry. Not to summon them or make demands of them. Just to acknowledge that you're thinking of them, that you're open, and that you're paying attention.
Then notice what comes. Not what you construct deliberately, but what arrives — a feeling, a memory that surfaces unexpectedly, a sense of a quality or characteristic that belonged to that person. Write it down without judging whether it's "real."
Over time, with consistency, many people find that what starts as quiet reflection starts to feel more like conversation. I can't promise that's what you'll experience. What I can say is that the intention to be in relationship with the people you've lost is itself meaningful — and that relationship, however you understand its mechanism, tends to become more available the more attention you give it.
A Note on Verification
I want to be clear that there's a difference between personal ancestor practice — the quiet, internal, ongoing relationship with those you've lost — and evidential mediumship, where the goal is specific, verifiable proof.
Both have value. They serve different purposes. Personal practice builds relationship and trust. Evidential mediumship builds a case. If you want the case — if you need specific information that closes a feedback loop the way my readings do — that's what a session with a trained evidential medium is for. It's not a replacement for personal practice, and personal practice isn't a replacement for it. They're different tools.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have had a good relationship with an ancestor for them to guide me? Based on what I see in readings — no. People frequently receive meaningful contact from relatives they never knew, or from relatives with whom they had complicated relationships. The quality of the earthly relationship doesn't seem to determine the quality of the ongoing connection. However, you need to know something about the ancestor you never met. As an example, I consider my grandfather as someone who can guide me in this life, but he passed before I was born. But I've heard enough stories that I recognize his energy when he enters my space. If you trace your ancestry back to Lady Jane Gray and you decide she's a guide well..... I'd maybe scrutinize that belief a bit.
What if I don't know my ancestry? You are thinking about this too hard. This is a connection to your guides. And if you don't have a connection to parents, grandparents, great grandparents, sisters, brothers, friends, neighbors, a priest, a teacher, etc (which I doubt, but I'll believe you for a second), then work with the non-human guides that are always with you. I'll have a blog post about spirit guides too to help.
How do I know if what I'm feeling is really guidance or just my own thoughts? Honestly — this is the question I wrestle with myself. The honest answer is that discernment develops over time with practice and attention. What I notice in my own experience is that genuine impressions tend to arrive with a quality that feels distinct from my own internal monologue — a specificity, a tone, something that doesn't quite belong to my own thinking pattern. But I won't tell you it's always easy to distinguish. It isn't. That's part of why I'm still building this relationship consciously rather than claiming I have it fully figured out. I wonder sometimes if this is a constant practice meant to bring us closer to our own truths. This isn't a defect. This is the thing needed to build the trust at a deeper level.
This is territory I explore inside the Soul Alignment Collective — the relationship between our own intuition, the guidance available to us from those who've passed, and how to develop the discernment to tell the difference. If that work calls to you, the waitlist is open.
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