Family Constellations, a PhD in Not Knowing

Client: I can’t look at future partner stuff yet, I need to do something about valuing myself. I think I’m almost there. There’s something missing though.

Facilitator: Ok. [Has no idea what to do.]

Client: Oh! So sometimes I feel superior and sometimes I feel inferior to these men. 

Facilitator: [Oh!] Would you like to look at the part that feels superior and the part that feels inferior?

Client: Yes.  

Facilitator: You said the green one was you. Which ones are the inferior and superior parts? 

Client: The yellow one can be the inferior one because that one feels inaccessible. The brown one can be the part that feels superior because that one feels dull and boring. Who are those two behind me?

Facilitator: Hmmm. 

Client: Oh, my parents, ok. 

Facilitator: Which do you want to go to first?

Client: The inferior part.

Facilitator: Go ahead, what do you sense?

Client: I’m immediately feeling waves of nauseating rage, feeling a whirlwind of times when I was put down by my family members. I don’t feel like they can take me down this time though. I’m furious I let them then. [Client continues to express anger.] Whoa, sorry, could you follow that?

Facilitator: Yes, it was an honor to witness. Thank you.

Client: ::smiles::

Facilitator: How does it feel to acknowledge this part?

Client: Really good, the rage feels tempered down now and there's clarity…my head is clear. I want to go to the superior part.

Facilitator: Ok.

Client: I immediately feel something hollow. The brown is like a mud encasing. It’s not good or bad, just hollow. 

Facilitator: I feel the hollowness in my belly.

Client: Me too. The mud is melting now and becoming ground beneath me. It feels stabilizing even if uneven. Both of these parts are so isolated. 

Facilitator: Well-noticed.

Client: [::narrative::] …confidence… [::narrative::]

Facilitator: I heard you say confidence. Does confidence belong here?

Client: [Starts to cry] Confidence integrates these parts.

Facilitator: Wow.

Client: My heart is here. I want to express my love.

Justin’s Favorite Things

My emergently-abled older brother Justin loves celebrations. He loves weddings and holidays - particularly Halloween and Christmas and their corresponding catalogs. My dad says “Justin’s a wrapping paper guy.” He’s also a tree lights guy. If you called him up to talk Christmas, he would ask you if you prefer colored lights or white lights on your tree. Most of all, he likes Christmas trees. And from his love of Christmas trees, he likes tree branch clippers and chainsaws. He lives to supervise my dad chainsaw the bottom of the Christmas tree to fit properly into the tree stand. He wouldn’t ask you if you use a real tree or not. If you use a fake tree, I would suggest you keep that yourself. I once revealed that I was considering going without a tree in my apartment. I’ll just say that Justin’s “Come on!”s are very compelling.

Once, when Justin was 9 years old, he got up in the middle of the night and untied our ten foot Christmas tree from the post. He still recounts the story and how he yelled out, “tiiiiimbeerrrrrr!” He got in a lot of trouble. I’m still impressed.

Justin would also ask you if you’re aware of the various Christmas catalogs out there. He recently asked me if I was aware of a new catalog that he was due to receive in the mail that was the same Christmas catalog that our Grandma Mary liked. He knows that I perk up whenever I hear about anything about our Grandma Mary who died before we were born. Justin is always connecting people to one another. He’s also always bringing relatives and ancestors into the conversation. Over the years, I’ve overheard him reciting the family litany to himself while making red and green paper chains. “Does your friend Ashley know our cousin Emily?” “Do you remember when Grandpa John was out on the boat with us and there was a big thunderstorm?” “I sure do miss our Grandpa Doug.”  “Can we make Grandma Martha’s fried chicken recipe next time you’re here?”

Justin is a Christmas guy. He loves his family. He loves the rituals, carols, food, faith and mystery. His joyous presence is my favorite present.

thanksgiving, uncapitalized

make room for mournful contemplation

in your gracious celebration

to make worthy impact of your appreciation

gratitude does not hide what is - in people pleasing platitudes,

delaying weight and responsibility

make your acknowledgments larger than your denials

to make evolutive your blindspots

We need gratitude now that brings us to our knees in devotion to reconciliatory motility. We need gratitude now that is deep enough to re-enchant us with wider inclusivity of what is human. Gratitude that weighs so much that we bow to what came before, what made us what we are now.

Earth. Experiences. Events.

Contributors. Creators. Creatures.

identity and affinity mental fields

ground us in solidarity, humanity and the body

and when fixated on those limitations,

our lens on reality gets too narrow

find your body again and again to find regulation for your freedom

Objection!

objection builds agreement

and evolves the whole room and system

Order!

disorder and imbalance uncorrected builds oppression and injustice

in family and system

Peace!

is change: active and dynamic.

Real safety found only in collective liberation.

The Privilege of Relief

I want to write about how I feel disillusioned.

But then I’m relieved to see things the way they are.

I want to write about this grief.

But then I’m relieved to let this grief have no language.

I want to write about systemic guilt and innocence.

But then I’m relieved to focus on my own maturation.

I want to write about nervous system activation.

But then I’m relieved to rest.

I want to write about the enemy within and without.

But then I’m relieved to not cast my fear out there.

I want to write about the power of denial.

But then I’m relieved to keep getting out from under my own.

I want to write about my blindspots.

But then I’m relieved to know we all have them.

I want to write authentically.

But things are moving so fast, it’s hard to stay rooted.

I want to write about finding escape velocity.

But I’m afraid if I name it, I’ll lose it.

I want to write about the intrusive image of taking cover.

But then I’m relieved to take better my mother.

sweet moss

three sweltering hours west

steel, rubber, asphalt

discourteousness to earth

no one bows

three more hours

bone, blood, tissue

content fades

essence fills the domain

almost-moist moss contours to her feet

pine cones collect and cradle

in the curvature of sweat-dripping fleshy fingers and palms

insights stick

like humidity to skin

mushrooms sprout

in their bold perseverance, they whisper

fat venus envy

a chorus of elements that unbind arrive

out here

she hears herself think

feels herself feel

knows herself clear

naked and subsumed

in the reflexology of slippery rocks

in the acupressure of pine needles

a girlish giddy, a squeak

when her toes squeeze the grass

below her feet

above, a hot sun

a canopy of branches and leaves

protection from the heat

grieving most greatly

losses of tender exchange

flies swarm a rotting fish carcass

a hundred years from now

she’ll fade, relieved even from memory

an invitation

back towards a mission-necessary tenacity

what is begging to be complete!

tracking ripples and waves

leaves floating and settling

birds and bugs blending into the breeze

the streams converging!

the pointers still and mute

release, let go

she just knows

Shame, shame, go away!

Shame of the victim.

Shame of the perpetrator.

Shame of the enabler.

We enact these roles to varying degrees as we’re swept up in various systems of oppression in different places and contexts.

Victim of child abuse

Perpetrator of gender violence

Enabler of colonizing empire

Shame is human. Emotional maturity includes capacity to feel shame. Composted shame expands what we are able to confront and contain. When our roles as victim, perpetrator and enabler are illuminated, we can practice sitting wider on our sit bones. More practice, less flight, fight and freeze response when shit gets realer and realer.

I’ve known I live at the seat of exploitative empire and now I know more deeply.  I’ve known that I’m intimately entangled in christian and white western supremacy and now I know more deeply. I’ve known the media is often corrupt propaganda and now I know more deeply. I’ve known that staying close to the Black radical tradition supports mental clarity and now I know more deeply. I’ve known I must stay cautious of aligning with milquetoast white liberalism and now I know more deeply. I’ve known Land Back is central to collective liberation and now I know more deeply.

We heal or even new-age-style-expand! to widen capacity to be more and more with startlingly reality. The realities of racial capitalism bring us deeper into the legacies of our family system. The legacies of our family system bring us deeper into systemic understanding. Disruption and discomfort are part of change and growth.

With practice, we know when and how we can engage and when we’re spiraling into nervous system burnout. We learn from our mistakes and failures here. We know how to refuel and resource. We know where and how we tend to make errors.

It’d be nice if our cultural soma around spirituality and pleasure wasn’t so toxic because those are part of how we develop capacity to feel tough things and eventually do it differently. It’d be nice if we all had equal access to the tools that are available.

Stop shaming people they say. What if people need to feel some repressed feelings like shame? What if feeling shame is part of feeling more authentically some of the more popular emotions? What if we can playfully release shame instead of shame ourselves for feeling shame? What if our failure to properly feel shame is part of the trance of performative white liberalism? What if a perpetrator’s refusal to feel shame is what keeps the cycle activated and perpetuating? What if a victim’s refusal to feel shame keeps them stuck there instead of telling the perpetrator to shut up and fuck off? What if the narcissism of the enabler prevents them from realizing their essential role?

From Family to System

We don’t heal ourselves and our families and then simply go on with our own aims for growth. No. If the motivation and context for reconciliation in our family system isn’t to then apply it to larger systems, it’s not likely to complete. It’s not likely to complete because there isn’t enough weight to our endeavor without the larger human family system in mind. Having a motivation outside ourselves and our own family system is what keeps us humble. We realize that the work won’t be done in this lifetime. People were working for international peace before our time and will continue what we worked towards after we die. If we don’t have that frame of reference, we’re being insular.

We don’t do family constellations to change family members or get them to see us. We do family constellations to change ourselves and see ourselves. From there, we might take new inspired action and reconciliatory movements of our family soul’s might occur.

We heal in order to have more capacity for ourselves, our families and also, to confront systemic issues. We heal to have greater impact. We heal to discover and hone untapped talents gained from how we navigated our first system’s complexity. If we are focused on how wrong and bad the other out there is without seeing how we are that too, we have more work to do.

To change and see ourselves, we often need some or a lot of physical or emotional distance from our family system or members. We get enough distance from the system in order to do some work on the legacies and inheritances that we embody. The part that’s too selfish, too selfless. The part that’s too angry, too sad. The part that’s frozen, the part that’s impulsive. The pattern of pushing people away and the pattern of pulling people in too close. The parts and patterns need space to breathe, too. In family constellations, we gently find this right space and distance with the tenderizing power of compassionate witness.

Conflict often begins with notions of superiority and inferiority. If we read about war and despots in the news, we can reflect on our own imbalanced notions of superiority and inferiority within. We can learn to greet and include these parts with curiosity and tolerance. We can feel the rage. We can acknowledge the shame. We can include the pain. We can grieve the loss. We can build momentum towards reconciliation part by part.

An odor in the nitrogen

Two students enter

As the field starts its spacetime equations,

The leaves on the trees whisper in the wind

Nervous yet cheerful, they rattle “here we go!”

The worms beneath the soil burrow

There’s an odor even in the nitrogen

Jupiter and Mars square off above

Generating a hum; a cosmic accompaniment

The two take their stance

As they widen their shoulders and hips,

Bend their elbows, knees and necks

In opposition, only to relish in one another's gravity

They nod their heads in fellowship

Recognizing that they both breathe the same air

Displaying themselves in proud humility,

they raise their eyebrows in agreement,

“I’m in.”

Their stomachs quiver

And then settle

Symmetrically bewitched, tremors thrill the air

The field intensifies

Unconfined electricity provokes a step towards one another

As they move in,

an irrepressible grin

Forward, Back

Hot, Cold

Bound, Free

Intrigued, Disgusted

High-harmonic generation

Anharmonic stagnation

Rejoicing. Suffering.

Death. Rebirth.

Life means keep surrendering.