“Why should families go unchallenged by the reality that comes to them through their children?” -Rachel Cusk, essay entitled ‘The Spy: On seeing without being seen’, Harper’s magazine October 2023 How is it that different family members are impacted very differently by the family wound? How is it that several siblings may appear to thrive in life, while another seems to struggle and may become, in an unspoken way, the identified problem by the rest of the family? What does the different child bring to life to show the family, and how can that sensitive child find the gold in their individual wounding? These are not easy questions to answer. With the hundreds of people we have worked with we can say that most are sensitive, empathic people who have a deep longing for something to be different, in their own lives, with their place in their family,...

““If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” -from the Secret Gospel of Thomas, part of the Gnostic Gospels found in a large clay jar by peasant Arab farmers at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, December 1945. I was recently discussing with a friend my relationship with money. She was in town visiting Kelly and I, and staying with us while attending a conference called “Master Your Money.” She admitted that, when invited to reflect on some of the questions raised at the conference, she had never considered having a relationship with money, and was exploring what that meant to her and what inner images related to money she carried in her unconscious. We ended up having a long exchange about the elements in...

Unconscious loyalties to groups to which you belong, whether they be through family, religion, co-workers or other sources, can influence you in the way magnetic lines in the Earth’s field pull the needle of a compass to orient northward. The forces are invisible and subtle, and can exert a low-level background influence on your life and choices. By examining your loyalties, you can become conscious of which values are helping guide you along the path your soul chose for you in life, and which may be creating resistance and uncertainty. It’s a perilous thing to write about your family members while they’re still alive, and about your own formative experiences as a child. And in writing that sentence, the ocean of feelings behind it tell me I’m approaching the depth of this topic. The loyalties I developed to family messaging when very young are being challenged to do their job- to...

Loyalty is one of the themes explored in the work of Family Constellations, and more specifically the energies of hidden or unconscious loyalty. In the adult world loyalties are easy to see in reference to one’s nation, ethnic group, religion, family, political affiliation and sports teams, among others. Loyalty is one aspect of belonging to a group, and it can also be a measure of the intensity of belonging. Different groups require and even demand various proofs of loyalty. A powerful exercise you might consider is to make a list of all the groups to which you belong. Think about the intensity of the loyalty you have to each, and under what conditions your loyalty may change or be tested. It’s impossible to be loyal to all of them equally and at the same time. When a child is conceived and newly incarnated, her spirit has just arrived in...