Recently, in ReRooted Rebelles, we used representative figures from our surroundings to acknowledge what is, bringing warmth to unfelt and unseen parts within us.
Loyalty to others’ pain arose in our shared field.
We collectively exhaled when it surfaced,
as if naming it was already an act of setting it down…
and returning more fully to ourselves (as part of our 90 day endeavor to repair self-betrayal through self-regenerative constellations and community (dot.com!) ).
When we give back what is not ours to carry,
we return respect and dignity to the true bearer of the burden.
We are dignified when we take responsibility for what is ours.
We are strengthened in our own gifts
when we carry what is ours
and stay in steady, same-plane accompaniment to the burdens of others.
In part one of letting the enemy rest,
we acknowledged the larger field of the victim–perpetrator dynamic,
including bystanders, loyalists, and witnesses as well.
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part two
Feeling, listening, looking…
staying in contact with what is
until the field can exhale.
Constellations are radical empathy:
walking through every role in the system,
even those we fear or despise,
until none are excluded.
The enemy isn’t only those we oppose. It's also where we refuse to enter, where we dare, not even in imagination, inhabit. Where we fear proximity might ruin us or undo the story of our being innocent and complete.
But a system cannot find peace
until every role rests and grows up and out of eternal innocence.
People once possessed by positions
become aware
and consciously choose place.
The bystander rests when no longer frozen in distance:
I acknowledge the cost of not acting.
I return to my place in life.
I do it differently. Visibly.
The loyalist rests when they no longer fight to prove worth:
I honor the dead without following them. With my systemic awareness and my own gifts, I create.
The perpetrator rests when their humanity is seen beside the harm:
I see what I did here. I have impact. I take responsibility for forces that move through me. I take my place among the living.
The victim rests when their suffering is witnessed without weapon:
I acknowledge the full extent of my pain and allow myself to be accompanied in it. I let life flow imperfectly through me.
And the witness, too, must rest,
step down from the mountain lookout,
let the wind die down:
I step into the mess of the everyday.
Nothing is left out.
Even the enemy is folded back in,
rest itself
becomes a transformative act
until the next resistance-growth edge.
We bow.
Unbound,
yet prismatically woven in,
in honor of all the dead.