Hi, my name is Dr. Jemela Macer and I’m from La Canada, California, and this is my story. It was a balmy summer day on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I lay down on a large flat rock hidden in a wide green meadow. Out of the blue. I heard my paternal grandmother's voice "Heal me," she said. "Heal me," she repeated.

"Live the life I could not live." What did that mean? How could I possibly heal my dead grandmother? A grandmother I had never met, but after whom I am named. Shamans believed that by healing ourselves, we healed generations long past and those yet to be born. My grandmother, Jemela, had emigrated from Turkish Armenia in the early part of the 1900s, fleeing the Armenian genocide. Family lore has it that a friendly Turk, knowing what was to come, warned her father to take his family and leave. The Turkish government had proclaimed that all Armenians residing in Turkey must be killed or driven out. Heading south from central Turkey to Syria, lore also has it that my father's family passed a ship headed to America. Grandmother and two of her sisters were booked passage on the ship and came to America. Arriving in Ellis Island, Grandmother Jemela was married off to an older man she hardly knew, who had been her shoemaker in the old country. He had fallen in love with her feet. Like many survivors of trauma and genocide, my grandparents remained silent about their experiences in the old country, and told us a little of what they experienced, both in Turkey and during the emigration process. They came to the US seeking a new life and wanting to leave the past behind. As an adult, I learned to know more about my ancestors and their ancestral homes. So I took a journey to ancient Armenia now located in central Turkey. What I found there shook my soul. All Armenian homes and churches had been turned into mosques or cafes. The only remnants of my ancestors were small hidden crosses etched into stone,s and a few Armenian lines scratched on the walls of former Armenian homes. 1.5 million of us, most of the Armenian population of Turkey, had been killed or driven out on starvation marches into the Syrian desert between 1895 and 1915. There was little left of us in our ancestral home. Upon my return home to California, I became traumatized and went into a deep depression. Dead Armenian souls from the genocide haunted my nights, begging for help in their journeys through the veil to the light on the other side. I helped them climb a ladder to the other side, freeing them from the traumas they'd experienced. I began a journey to learn more and incorporate more of my Armenian culture into my soul. I read Armenian books, listened to Armenian music, and watched carefully the Armenian people around me. I sought to retrieve and to heal that which had been lost, not only in my soul, but in those of my ancestors.