I’ve been thinking about a statement I sometimes hear from people who are confronted with something offensive or shocking that they have said or done: “That’s not who I am.” Many times this can come from celebrities or athletes embarrassed while caught in the brief flash of the ever-judgemental news cycle. I’ve also heard this from everyday people who have unleashed public tirades on a person they have identified as other or less than, after the scene was video recorded and posted to social media. As a defense, explanation or excuse, “That’s not who I am” may bring some short-term comfort to the idealized self-image we carry within. A more honest refinement to the declaration might proceed this way: “That’s not all of who I am.” We contain multitudes- of songs, friendships, drives, questions, beliefs, and the memories of our own lived experiences, as well what we’ve inherited...

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...

After our relationship with our parents, the connections we have with our brothers and sisters are among the most formative and significant in our lives. It is with our siblings that we traveled to life through the same portal that was created through the union of our mother and father. In the case of twins or triplets, that journey happened at the same time. With our other siblings, it’s likely that the life situations and interpersonal dynamics between our parents were similar over various birth years. At the same time, our siblings carry their own soul programmings and individual lessons they came to life to study which may be very different from our own. Navigating those differences as we grow, mature, and develop our own adult power while building on the same shared early foundations of inherited family loyalties and values is challenging for all of us. Our siblings...

I’LL HURT YOU BACK A LITTLE LESS We learned the sad news of the death of Bert Hellinger, the creator of Family Constellations, on September 19th, 2019. While Kelly and I never got the opportunity to study directly with Bert, we will always be grateful to our teachers, Peter and Jamy Faust, for integrating what they learned from him and passing it on in their program they named The Constellation Approach. Peter and Jamy studied directly with Bert for several years in the first cohort of students in the U.S,. and they have trained many facilitators in the ways to heal through the family lineage, working with the numinous energies of the family soul. Through Family Constellations, Bert brought great wisdom gained through his observations working with thousands of individuals and families. He also embodied his life’s many profound experiences, growing up the son of Catholic, resistant parents...

"Vulnerability is not weakness, and that myth is profoundly dangerous." -Brene Brown "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." -Carl Jung One of the purposes of shame is to keep secrets hidden; a healing response is to look bravely at what happened until its power to restrict is gone. -Constellation Journeys In one of our recent seminars I was asked to represent toxic shame in someone’s constellation. In addition to key family members, important phenomena that the client has inherited as part of the family consciousness are sometimes represented in order to have more of the energies of the family soul acknowledged and included in the transformational process. Once I was placed in the constellation as toxic shame, I found I had little personal connection with the other people in the group. Their presence was not that important...

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...

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...

An Elder Blessing I’ve just returned from a three-week trip to Guinea, West Africa with one of my teachers and good friends, Mohamed DaCosta. Mohamed got married over what was Christmas holiday weekend for Christians, although it’s not much celebrated in Guinea as it’s predominantly a Muslim country. There were three days of ceremonies, gatherings and celebrations for the wedding, with all the family members very involved in the planning and preparations. I was able to attend most of the events with some other American friends who were on the trip, and we were always given prime seating at the very front of each gathering. There was a party called a sabar that was just for the women; there was a religious ceremony in the bride’s family courtyard; there was a short legal ceremony with a lot of humor in a really hot government hall; and there was an enormous traditional ceremony in a big park with hundreds of people, lots of food, a band and a famous praise-singer. It was all exciting, colorful, and joyous. During the religious ceremony there were praise singers, drummers, and a DJ all performing. There was a period of time when...