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...

Our Relationships With Our Bodies I had a milk allergy when I was born, and instead of gaining, I started losing weight in my first few weeks on Earth. A pediatric doctor prescribed a hospital stay for a week in an oxygen tent. That profound experience of isolation at such a young age formed what I came to know as a schizoid defense characterology in my energy field. My pre-verbal consciousness decided that it was less safe here in the physical than in the realm of spirit from which I had just traveled. My energy body probably stayed only loosely seated in my physical body so it could leave quickly to cope with the time in the oxygen tent where I was deprived of touch and emotional contact with anyone. I’m thankful for the four years of study and healing I received through the Barbara Brennan School that helped me...

There’s an old idea that, before incarnation, the soul makes agreements and is seeded with a gift of purpose and direction entirely unique to itself- and then that purpose is forgotten along the journey to conception. In the flash of the union of egg and sperm, cells paradoxically and simultaneously begin to divide and multiply, the ephemeral spark of the divine anchors in the physical dimension, and a human being starts to take on flesh and bone. The womb-enclosed initial days on the life path start out in tension between the eternal longing that will stay with the individual, and the inescapable limitations of the myriad agreements into which the soul agreed to be born- choices regarding family members and their circumstances, inherited patterns and unresolved material; health and illness; historical era; societal values; location on Earth; and other elements related to the decision to come to life. It might...

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...

““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...

“Learning lessons is a little like reaching maturity. You're not suddenly more happy, wealthy, or powerful, but you understand the world around you better, and you're at peace with yourself. Learning life's lessons is not about making your life perfect, but about seeing life as it was meant to be.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, author of “On Death and Dying” Experiencing the recent death of a close friend and colleague has expanded the space around me for the last week, and filled it with something undefinable. There’s a portal through which we come to life that is created by the union of our birth parents, which is somehow nested within and part of a greater passage that includes the ways they came to their lives through their parents. I imagine this mysterious passage existing in no-space and no-time, connecting us through our family lineage to our life’s source with the divine....