The Endurance Lives in Us: What My Ancestors Taught Me About Resilience in the age of ICE
Image credit: Marcos Ferro
I snuggled into the crisp sheets of our downtown Chicago hotel room this past Sunday with a mix of excitement, calm and skepticism (anyone else feel weird about hotel sheets?) when my life partner, Sebastian, showed me the headline that made my stomach drop:
“Things to know about federal law enforcement activity in Chicago, Portland, Memphis. In Chicago on Sunday, dozens of armed federal agents, in full tactical gear, walked the streets of some of the city’s most prominent tourist and shopping areas.” — Associated Press
These armed, mostly white kidnappers were right down the street from us. They were open about using racial profiling to detain anyone who looked brown or of Hispanic descent. Fear rippled through my entire body. Heat rose from my belly to my head and hands. Dizziness followed as I mentally ran through all our plans for the week—worst-case scenarios playing out like a bad film you can’t stop watching.
I took a deep breath and tried to observe the sensations with compassion. Sebastian and I comforted each other with safety planning and love. We got awful sleep and vowed never to stay in a hotel again. It’s not our vibe at all.
The next day, the feelings lingered as we got ready for a full day of work and play. It felt divine that I had already scheduled a full-body massage with my favorite therapist, Jasmine, at Sanctuary Health in Pilsen. Driving through Pilsen, I reflected on our community: the joy, love, care and constant struggle.
I arrived still tense and fearful, talking about our proximity to these thugs and their reckless lack of humanity. Jasmine tended to the physical symptoms of fear while also speaking life into my heart and soul. She reminded me of two key points:
Endings of this magnitude have historically been messy, violent and loud.
The current systems of oppression are unraveling and becoming obsolete in a naturally evolving world. And,
Everything we need to stand in our resilience lives in our ancestral lineage.
Jasmine shared about her own lineage, which moved me to tears, and then invited me to learn about my ancestors: where they came from, how they lived, how they fought, what brought them strength.
“Lean on what lives in your body to gather strength to continue,” she instructed.
I left that table feeling renewed, supported and called to action. The invitation sat in my lower belly like a warm stone as I drove back through the city, past the very streets where those agents had been.
That night at the hotel, I sat down to listen. I learned that my maternal Indigenous ancestors are the Rarámuri, and they are still alive today. My mother’s side comes from Chihuahua, Mexico, home to the largest canyon on this continent: The Copper Canyon. Deep within it live the Rarámuri, which translates to “those who run on foot.”
They’re known as some of the world’s best long-distance endurance runners, often running in brightly colored chanclas and skirts. Their philosophy can be summed up as: We are all related. We must share. We must endure. We must run—not away from life, but through it, together.
Rarámuri cosmology centers on korima, a profound concept of reciprocity, sharing and communal support that goes far beyond charity. It’s about interconnected responsibility. The universe requires balance, and humans maintain this through right action, ceremony and respect for all living things.
The Rarámuri also never fully submitted to Spanish colonial rule. They maintained their language, ceremonies, and governance systems by finding refuge in the canyon.
During multiple uprisings in the 1600s–1700s, they fiercely defended their autonomy. They developed agricultural innovations in extreme environments, such as terraced farming, diverse crop cultivation and sustainable land use.
My ancestors hold sophisticated knowledge of:
Hundreds of medicinal plants and their uses
Sustainable land management in harsh terrain
Weather prediction and astronomical observation
Communal governance without hierarchical authority structures
You might also see the name “Tarahumara” used to describe the Rarámuri. When you do, call it out for what it is: a colonial distortion. Spanish invaders in the 1600s couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pronounce “Rarámuri.” They corrupted it into “Tarahumara,” a name that stuck in colonial records, maps and anthropological literature for centuries.
I also began exploring my father’s side, a story for another day, which deepened my sense of grounding and strength. I cried tears of relief, sacred pride and power. I cried those spiritual gangster tears and felt my body align to truth, rooted in my center.
This ancestral knowing is what we need right now.
As these violent systems thrash and flail in their death throes, as armed agents patrol our streets, we need the memory of those who survived worse. We need the endurance runners who never stopped. We need the wisdom that says: We are all related. We must share. We must run through this together.
So, here is your invitation,
Take time to learn about your lineage. Dig deeper. Read between the lines. Feel into the strength that lives in your bones.
Your path to this knowledge may look different than mine. Some of us have clear family stories and names. Some have fragments, whispers, DNA tests or gaps where violence tried to erase us. Some are building chosen lineages, learning from elders who aren’t blood but are absolutely family. Some are connecting to the land itself as ancestor.
All of these paths are valid. All of them are forms of remembering.
The strength lives in you regardless of how clearly you can trace the lines backward. Because you are here, which means someone survived to make you possible.
I’d love to hear what you discover. As we lean on the power of those who came before, we propel collective healing forward.
Here’s to endurance, love of life and communal care.
To read more from Dahlia, subscribe to her Liberated Body substack, where she frequently shares liberatory somatic guidance on unraveling cycles of harm.
