Worship
Chosen family and ancestors of care
The dead who loved you, and the living who acted like kin. Blood is not the only ballot.
Ancestor reverence is ancient in more than one culture, and it is not one practice. This page does not teach you to copy someone else’s rites for their dead. It offers a household way to honor people whose care made your life more possible, especially queer elders who were not your relatives and relatives who actually behaved like elders.
Who is invited
- Dead who loved you, protected you, or taught you a skill you still use.
- Public dead you refuse to forget: a writer, an activist, a neighbor. Be honest that they did not know you, and do not conscript them into agreeing with your opinions.
- Living chosen family, honored with their consent and not as if they were already ghosts. Ask before you put a living person’s photo on an altar.
Who is not owed a seat
A relative who harmed you is not entitled to reverence because a genealogy app says so. You may acknowledge they existed — history is not improved by pretending — without offering them water, apologies, or access to your dreams. “But they’re family” is not a theological argument here.
A simple honoring
- 1Write one name, or “the unnamed queer dead of my city” if a name would be a guess.
- 2Set a glass of water and a chair. The chair is so you remember this is hospitality, not summoning.
- 3Say what they did that was care. Specific is better than “watch over me.”
- 4Do not ask them to haunt your enemies or to manage the living.
- 5Sit quietly for a few minutes. Close by pouring the water on a plant or down the sink, and say “the visit is over.”
- 6If grief surges, eat, text a living friend, and stop. An ancestor rite is not an obligation to drown.
You who cared, I remember a true thing and not a flattering one. I do not bind you to my plans. I live the part of your care that was actually good.