Constellation Journeys

No Contact: Some Considerations
[This is the short essay I included in our recent email newsletter. It was inspired by reflection I've been doing lately on the movement I see called 'no contact.' Because Family Constellations healing is involved with reconnecting what has been separated so that the love that got restricted somewhere in the family lineage can flow again through the generations, I have a lot of thoughts:]

There’s a trend called No Contact I’ve been watching for the last year or so, in which people consider or choose breaking off communications with their family, or certain family members. I have many thoughts and feelings on the subject as I continue to think about it and reflect on it. I plan to share more in future essays. This first one might serve as a brief overview of some of the terrain I’ve covered myself as well as in exploring with hundreds of clients their own painful challenges with family dynamics.

I support each person’s choices and what gives them their best sense of autonomy and agency. There are times when creating distance and separation in order to heal from abuse is necessary for healing. At the same time I’ve seen how that decision might be a part of the longer process of coming to peace, and that there are additional considerations we might not know about without further exploration and guidance through the dimensions of the family soul.

In the healing we practice there is an emphasis on seeing one’s self in the larger picture of the family system and the ancestral lineage. It’s hard to understand the influences of the ancestors’ lives from the limited perspective of the individual self. It might help to think about the way a hologram works. An original holographic image is produced using a laser beam split into two parts. One part- the reference beam- is directed by mirrors onto a photographic plate directly. The other, called the object beam, is directed onto whatever’s being photographed- let’s say a coffee mug- in a way that scatters the beam so it lands on the same photographic plate while carrying all the information about the mug. The way the two beams interact on the photographic plate creates an interference pattern. When a clean reference beam is passed through that plate, the illusion of a three dimensional mug appears floating in space.

Here’s the part I find fascinating, and relevant to family healing. You could break the original plate into pieces, choose any broken piece- whatever the shape and size- and pass the reference laser through it and still recreate the 3-D image of the mug. The difference is, it wouldn’t be as sharp as the image from the original plate. You’d have to put all the pieces back together to get the clearest picture of the coffee mug.

In my experience, it’s just the same with us and our part in the family. We can only see from our place and from a limited understanding until we include in the picture all the lived experiences, memories, loves, struggles, losses, strengths, and healed wounds that reside in the ancestral lineage. And in almost every case I’ve seen, underneath all of the burdens, somehow, there is love to be found and restored. I’ll give one personal instance from my life that I didn’t understand until I was in my 40’s.

I was 15 years old, loved music, and wanted to go to my first rock concert with some of my best friends. I didn’t need money for the ticket, I just needed permission- and my dad said no. There wasn’t an explanation. Just no. The next summer I took driver’s ed in preparation for getting my driver’s license when I turned 16. When I did, I asked my dad to take me to the DMV to take the driving test so I could get the license, and he said no again. He didn’t think I should rush into it. I shared this disappointment with one of the older guys at my summer job, and he offered to take me on our lunch break. It felt transgressive, but I was willing to risk the guilt that would come from defying my dad in exchange for the freedom of driving. Thanks to Mark Chism, I got my license, and I felt like I outsmarted my dad. It didn’t help our relationship.

Years later, thanks to our Family Constellations training, I came to understand my dad better. When he was in his 20’s my dad’s older sister Angie died in a car accident. She had gone on a road trip from Detroit to Florida with friends. They were driving at night, the driver fell asleep, the car went off the road and rolled over and my Aunt Angie was killed. She was the first to go to college. She worked at a law firm and from what my dad and others in the family told me, she was the academic star. It was expected that she would become a lawyer. It devastated the family. The pain of that loss came from the deep love the family had for her, and that love got translated into a fierce protection my dad had for myself and my sisters. He didn’t want to lose one of us. As a teenager I only felt anger, frustration and judgement toward my dad, but as an adult, seeing more of the picture, I found compassion and understanding.

There’s a risk we may take by trying to separate too fully from the family. Going no contact may be helpful in the short term by providing relief and the space needed to stabilize and grow. In my experience, there is further to go and more to explore to help us keep open the heart of compassion and find deeper healing and understanding.

A Family Constellation is a slow, respectful process that proceeds without judgement, and includes space for every family member and for everything that has happened. It creates an opportunity to take your inner image of your family and bring it into the room to explore the memory fields within it. Along with your DNA, you also inherited the values, beliefs, loves, strengths, losses, and unresolved difficult fates of your ancestors. You may find that out of love and loyalty, you have been unconcsiously trying to carry something painful that belonged to someone else- that was part of their fate, and not yours.

By looking at this material with the guidance and support of an experienced facilitator, you may be able to see that it's out of a child's pure, innocent love you've wanted to fix something that's not your responsibility, and is impossible to change anyway. This sacred practice can help you come to more understanding and more compassion for what your ancestors lived and struggled through while still having the strength to pass life on to another generation and ultimately to you.

Registration at www.constellationjourneys.com

Last reminder! TONIGHT
FREE Zoom Preview for
September - November Ten Week
Family Constellations Online Study Group
Thursday, August 20th, 7-8pm

I will offer a free, online preview session for the Ten-Week Online Study Group on Thursday, August 20th, from 7-8pm Eastern U.S. time. I'll cover the outline and format of the course, some of the principles underlying the practice and healing potential of Family Constellations, what you can expect and how you can prepare, and I'll take questions. I'll record the session and make it available for those who register and can't join at the time. Pre-registration is required.

Registration For Zoom Session at This Link:

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Free Preview, Family Constellations Ten-Week Online Study Group. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting. Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Free Preview, Family Constellations Ten-Week Online Study Group. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

The next full day seminar is August 29th, at The Well of Roswell, and the early registration discounted prices are good through the end of the day tomorrow, Friday August 7th. Prices are even lower if you attend with another family member. Spaces are still available.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2239837440118376

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Last reminder for the group seminar, "The Three Levels of Healing," Saturday April 18th at The Well of Roswell. I'm making up the family questionnaire now and will be sending it to participants this weekend. There are still several spots available. Contribute to world peace by coming to peace with your family. https://www.facebook.com/events/1276969327672995/

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Today is the last day for the early registration prices for this April 18th group seminar at The Well of Roswell. Register by midnight for the lowest prices: $120 per person, or $100 each for multiple people in the same family. Regular prices of $150 per person, or $130 each for multiple people in the same family apply after tonight.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1276969327672995/

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Don’t Let the War Make You Abandon Yourself

Once again we are plunged into the despair of war, in which there are always at least two losers, and no winners. This descent comes after the betrayal of repeated promises the leader made to bring troops home, to end forever wars, to give up nation-building, and to put our country first- our country, in which so many claim to follow the teaching of one who commanded us to put down our swords and to love our enemies. The blindness is obvious in those who boast of protecting us from others around the world who do violence, by raining what looks like indiscriminate lethal violence from great distances with the most advanced technologies in order to bring about transformation in people far away- people whose histories, beliefs and values our leaders know very little about. The moral injuries are deep from these arrogant actions, and our hearts are heavy.

The current situation is challenging, and yet there are additional layers to what we are experiencing that come from our ancestral lineage. We all have family members who have direct experience of war- if not among those who are still alive, then in our ancestors from generations past. The faint echoes of their experiences that remain in our ancestral inheritance can start to ring across the decades and come into our unconscious awareness, below the level of our everyday attention. Our muscles tighten slightly, our breathing becomes a little more shallow, and we don’t notice. The unresolved residues of the parts our ancestors played in the vortex of the victim-perpetrator cycles are stirred in us and begin to awaken anxiety, fear, dread.
Larger forces of conflict and war we didn’t personally choose can begin to take up space within us and crowd against our heart.

In a state of contraction, it’s difficult to dream. It’s very hard to make contact with the depths of the soul and to search consciously for our purpose- to keep discovering the gifts we brought with us into life, to develop and expand those gifts, and to learn the ways we are meant to give those gifts to our communities and to humanity. In the absence of safety the energies of our consciousness move into defense, and our creative impulses can be diminished. And still, there is another way to look at it.

Fear can be a great teacher. Not the kind of teacher from whom you can learn a skill, but a teacher that can help bring about deep transformation at the level of the soul, and provide an access to new strength. The change the soul seeks is not one that involves politics, or status, or laws. Fear can take us down, into the depths of the unknown, where we come closer to what is under the fear. It’s in the center of our wounding that our greatest gifts reside. Carl Jung wrote: "The descent into the depths will bring healing. It is the way to the total being, to the treasure which suffering mankind is forever seeking, which is hidden in the place guarded by terrible danger.” Other teachers with whom I’ve studied, either directly or through their writing- like Barbara Brennan, Joseph Campbell and Michael Meade- have all taught a similar approach to healing.

In our seminars we often mention the indigenous idea of Buffalo Healing. Numerous Plains Indian tribes observed the buffalo walking directly into the path of a storm, rather than turning their backs to it, in order to come through to the other side faster. They hold it as a metaphor for developing the courage and strength needed to manage life’s difficulties. In Family Constellations we often invite participants to go to the heart of the matter- to look directly at what's not at peace for them in their lives and with their families. The root of the word ‘fear’ is from an Old English word ‘faer’ which meant ‘to journey,’ to pass through, as in a thoroughfare. We invite you to consider what still holds fear for you in life, and what new gifts of your soul might await you on the other side of passing through that fear.

[For more essays like this one please see the Brief Teachings page at our website www.constellationjourneys.com]

In preparation for our upcoming seminar dealing with the influences of war and immigration on families, we share this poem.

War

Old age in the towns.
The heart without an owner.
Love without any object.
Grass, dust, crow.
And the young ones?

In the coffins.

The tree alone and dry.
Women like a stick
of widowhood across the bed.
Hatred there is no cure for.
And the young ones?

In the coffins.

-Miguel Hernandez

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There are still spaces available for our upcoming weekend seminar, "The Influences of War and Migration In Your Family Lineage." https://www.facebook.com/events/3362001013955855

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Thank you to Paul Chen and Diane Eaton for publishing this article on our Family Constellations practice in the February issue of Natural Awakenings of Atlanta magazine. Our next group seminar is February 20-21 in Roswell, GA. Kelly Lyn

Family Constellations: Coming to Peace With Your Place in Your Family | Natural Awakenings Atlanta Trauma, loyalty, love—passed down quietly through generations. Family Constellations explores what’s hidden in your lineage and how to finally let it rest.