On my recent birthday, I traveled to the location of the Wilmington General Hospital in Delaware where I was born. This was also the hospital where I gave birth to my daughter Jessica, who was accompanying me. The hospital had been demolished in the mid 1980s. In its place stood a complex of town houses and several acres of open space.

As Jessica and I walked around the block, we dodged sidewalk litter and stares coming from upper-story windows. At the driveway entrance to the grassy area, a chain link gate secured with a large metal lock stopped us from going any further. What a perfect place to stop and practice Qigong, and what better move than Energy Gate #1. After all, we were standing in front of a gate and we did need to be discreet. What we didn’t need was someone calling 911.

After a few minutes of massaging our hands, my daughter said, “I feel something.” She said she felt an energy surrounding her. I experienced an opening in my chest and a tightening in my upper back. It felt like my mom and her mother reaching out through the locked gate to embrace me in a powerful hug. I never met my grandmothers; both died before I was born. And Jessica never had the chance to know her maternal grandmother. But for that moment, at that location, I could sense a longing for connection and the strength of their lineage and love.

Sharing it all with Jessica was the best birthday celebration I could have had. The experience offered an opening for us to talk about our invisible lineage, about women we never knew and know next to nothing about, and to imagine aloud what their lives could have been like. Standing in front of that locked gate–engaging in this simple, yet profound Qigong movement–gifted us both a portal to their unconditional love.

– Paula Graham

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