Steven LaChance Blog

I had a dream once that I have written about before. In it, my paternal grandmother stood before me, calm but fierce, her eyes filled with a truth that felt ancient. She looked straight at me and said, “It’s in the bloodline, honey.” There was no softness in her tone. She said it sternly, with emotion and determination, as if she needed me to truly understand. Then, without another word, she broke apart into a hundred ravens that filled the sky, a storm of black wings rising into light.

When I woke, those words stayed inside me like a pulse. I could feel them moving through me all day. For a long time, I thought she was talking about family resemblance, the easy kind of inheritance. The way we share a smile, a gesture, a certain look in our eyes. But the older I get, the more I know she meant something much deeper.

We carry more than DNA. We carry the weight of stories. We carry what was left unsaid. The joy, the heartbreak, the fear, and the dreams that never found their ending. Our ancestors live inside us, tucked into the quiet corners of our minds, whispering through our habits and reactions. The things they never healed, we are asked to face. The courage they never found, we are meant to uncover. And the love they could not speak aloud, we are finally allowed to live.

Some inherit music or artistry. Some inherit an instinct for healing, for building, for creating beauty where there was once nothing. Others inherit a connection to the unseen. A sensitivity to energy, a pull toward the veil, an awareness that the world is far more layered than it appears. I believe my family carries that. The pull toward the other side. The sense that the invisible is always near, watching, guiding, reminding us that this life is not the whole of what we are.

There is also the inheritance of identity. In my family, there is a long line of gay men. I did not see it clearly when I was young, but time has a way of revealing the truth that silence tries to hide. It was always there, hidden in gestures, in the softness of a voice, in the way someone lingered too long in their loneliness. Some could never name it. Some never had the chance to live it. I feel them beside me still, those men who carried a truth they could not speak. My grandmother’s words were for them too. It’s in the bloodline, honey. The truth, the love, the courage to be who we are. Passed down until someone could finally say it out loud and without apology.

We inherit more than the shape of our faces or the sound of our laughter. We inherit our sensitivity, our strength, our wounds, and our grace. We inherit the lessons that come back around until they are learned. We inherit both the pain and the light. It all moves through us, waiting for recognition, waiting to be set free.

When my grandmother turned into ravens and rose into the sky, it felt like she was scattering her message across time. Each bird carried a piece of truth, a fragment of memory, a promise that I would remember when the time came. Blood is not just lineage. It is story. It is energy. It is everything that has ever been lived, still moving inside us.

The blood remembers. It hums with the songs of those who built us, those who suffered, and those who dreamed of something better. It carries their voices and their longings, their love and their unfinished work. It carries their magic too.

It’s in the bloodline, honey. And it always will be.