I’ve read a few articles lately discussing young people choosing to have ‘no contact’ relationships with parents and family members. I thought I would share some reflections I have on this through the lens of Family Constellations and ancestral healing. Whereas it’s possible to stop communicating with your parents on the physical dimension while they are alive, it’s impossible to break the energetic connections we have with those through whom life came to us. We might turn our backs on our family and move halfway around the Earth and start a new life, but the unresolved issues we have with our parents will move right along with us and have a strong influence on the relationships we make in our ‘new’ lives. The energetic cord connections we have with our parents may be the most durable and important that we’ll have in this lifetime. Just as our parents...

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.” -Wendell Berry One of my favorite visionaries is Michael Meade, who often tells the story of the old woman in the cave who is weaving the most beautiful garment in the world, and the black dog who comes in while she is stirring the pot at the back of the cave and takes the garment in his teeth and shakes and pulls at it until it completely unravels. Meade teaches that the dog and the unraveling are necessary for the ongoing cycles of creation in the world, and that what we need do in times of confusion and despair is take...

When you are at peace with your parents, there are two powerful openings that occur in your life. First, you’re able to look at your mother and father and accept them just as they are, without judgment, and without wishing they were or had acted any differently. This allows for you to be receptive to the full power of the life force that they passed on to you, with all the conditions to which your soul agreed in order for you to have your life. You can experience all the strength that comes through your ancestral lineage without any dilution. Secondly, when you’re free from any entanglements with your parents’ fates, the choices they made in their marriage and their parenting approaches, you no longer have to use any of your energy in secretly trying to change anything about them or any of the ways that they have acted in life- either...

One of the strong medicines in the healing method of Family Constellations is the valuation of acceptance of all that has happened in our lives, over the practice of forgiveness of another. Before I came to this work I had more understanding of forgiveness than of acceptance, both at the cosmic level through the sacrament of confession in the Catholic Church and the forgiveness of sins, and through my socialization which impressed upon me the necessity to do what it takes to eventually forgive another who has hurt me. When younger, I felt that the compulsion to bestow forgiveness came from a place of superiority, and the vague sense that I would prevail as a better person than the bully who insulted me if I didn’t hold a grudge against him. I would rise above his unworthy level. It’s clear to me now there was a twisted sense of revenge...

My sun sign is in Cancer, which has given me a sensitive attunement to the energies of family and community. In this lifetime, the positive expression of group cohesion, creative expression and serving a community first budded for me when I began playing music in rock and roll bands in Detroit, and bloomed in a much fuller way when the music of West African drumming found me in the spring of 1992 at a dance class with the Uhuru Dancers in Decatur, Georgia. The exchange of joy and celebration between drummers and dancers set my life on a completely new and energized path that I still walk today. It wasn’t until later, when I began to study the drumming in depth, that I learned how to be informed by the ancestral lineage through which the music, culture and history passes over centuries. Thank you Brother Yusef, Stone, Mohamed Diaby, and dozens of other teachers for including me. I’m also aligned with the ideals of equality, freedom and opportunity embodied in the ideals of the U.S. Constitution, and understand the responsibilities we all have as citizens to hold those in power accountable to manifesting those ideals to the best of...