a mother sits beside her daughter

The forces of a larger magnitude pluck the mother up

And place her right down beside her daughter

Just an inch back

Just enough to place her hand on her youngest’s back

She remembers patting her back

When she was a newborn baby

Over her shoulder

Before she pulled her hair

In the backpack carrier

Asking are you my mother?

Do you even want to be here?

It was hard to bear that her daughter wanted to be near her

Aren’t I making it worse?

Just by existing here?

In her big Need

She couldn’t understand how much she was needed

She understood today, however

Because her body told her

The bottom of her lung cavity

Filled with air

For the first time in 38 years

It was then that her father died

And just like that, went all her resources

She hadn’t realized that she was holding on to him from way down there

She hadn’t had a breathe of fresh air in years

After the lung-chucking grief

and her never-ending tears

complete

all goes from static to conducted,

the flow of life runs through like a current!

in her awe-some surprise

she widens her eyes

moves proudly in place

behind her daughter

Determined to protect her

She had stayed out front

Facing backwards

Hips forward

Shoulders and gaze backwards

She realizes now

It’s facing fully forwards

That provides the most

For everyone’s secure-yet-surely-doomed future

The daughter can now be rightly responsible

With the feeling of this privileged weight

Comes a rush of tears

A babbling brook, embodied

That will never end

But allows a continual cleanse

Right within her

Sourced endlessly from those who came before her

The patting isn’t a “stop those tears!”

It’s a “keep that tap going now, dear!”

“That’s it!

Let it all out now

I’m not going anywhere.”

The grandmothers are in chorus above, back and down

Singing out and clinking glasses, “oh my goodness, finally!”

Balance Praxis

The two core principles of family constellations practice are balance and order. In my experience, the closer we stay to the profound simplicity of that space, the better we facilitate sustainable movement.

The parents are too close. No room to breathe, stretch and expand.

The parents are too far. The children are lost.

One sibling is very anxious and can’t step out of parental entanglement to create her own life.

One sibling feels freedom in their avoidance but their children make up for it.

The parents face one another and one thousand things occur in an instant. That’s quite a lot. Enough, even!

The mother is very sad. Her daughter, pollyanna to compensate.

The father is full of rage. His son terrified of any potential misstep.

The siblings are too close, neither can live freely.

The siblings are too far, they can’t find any forward-faced belonging.

-

One friend longs for more contact with people after a childhood of loneliness and neglect.

One friend longs for more space for themselves after a childhood of constant closeness and abuse.

They learn something from one another.

One student’s blood pressure raises. While another student feels galvanized bearing witness, another courageously checks them with a request to slow down. The teacher reflects after class how her parts are showing up and making sure it’s in service to their students.

Learning from one another. Practicing together.

In family constellations, we are practicing.

Of course none of us are just one thing or the other but as we all practice together in our co-creative stew of funky concoctions, we lean lightly on one another for this alchemical temperance effect.

No matter the degree of participant or witness, things happen. Something’s remembered. Something’s felt. Something’s accepted. Something’s seen.

We practice noticing. We practice bearing life and love. We practice stepping toward and away.

We practice tapping into the elemental forces of life and love, the elemental principles of order and balance.

We pause to fully experience the wet-eyed tender miracle of life.

We recollect ourselves, again and again. We practice gaining and losing, gathering right momentum and traction.

we all have our limits

Sometimes it’s just too much.

Sometimes the hurt and harm is too much for one, two or three bodies to hold.

The ground was already broken and now, with this too, well, it’s simply untenable.

Too much for this period or lifetime.

Sometimes the soul says no, or not now, or too late. Goodbye.

Sometimes something says we’ve got to focus over here now…as we accept what’s dead over there now.

Sometimes the entanglement is too complex.

The weight of what’s uncared for in us and them, too heavy.

The vibes are too off.

Then what?

Our work is the thankless work of having our clean say.

And from that place that’s both kind and assertive,

We step away.

Thanks the laps in the bush of your unconscious ambivalence!

With help from our lionhearted part, we say a little about what hurts and what’s not been acknowledged,

Grinning about what went well without losing our bowed-head humility.

Where do we go? What do we do? What about closure?

We go as far away as we need to maintain the love we still have for them.

Closure happens in the postmortem!

Even though our world inevitably shrinks without them in it.

Even though the contraction is quite uncomfortable and painful.

And so we, although quite cliché, we return once more to ourselves and repair within.

And later, with another and others, try again, more wise, more gorgeously imperfect.

And when even the whole broken into parts is too much to collect, we begin smaller… with just the particles.

Breakup turns into anger and sadness turns into that moment when we were little and they dared say and do that to us.

We practice our microcosmic orbits of rekindling and renewal.

Small steps of review and reclamation.

Medium steps of revamp and reconnection.

We keep close the big saying “it’s about the journey, not the destination!”

love and loss go hand in hand

gatekeeping and gategiving

are you gatekeeping from us around you, gathered?

fearful that your well-woven wounds might cheapen in the hands and mouths of shallow artifice?

thrown around flippantly like a freebie?

aghast! the hungry ghosts clog the psychopomps

greed enters the field.

the wave scatters into particle

resonance collapses

greed sniffs out what’s been dug up by somebody else

“it’s my turn, damnit!”

greed, scarcity and incompetence’s consort,

forgets that nothing vibrates without, first, a ferment

fixated with safety,

greed glances left and right, looking to grab onto anything

generosity enters the field.

particles recompensate into waves

parts no longer seen in their small form

formlessness precedes everything!

greed scowls in unrighteous indignation

generosity laughs with too much love, “how adorable!”

still stuck in dyadic gatekeeping

gratitude enters gallantly

gifting a current that with levity, lessens gravity

when witnessed in plentiful approval

recognized

both become right-sized, fervent in their creativity

next arrive 4, from 7 generations back

from the formless, an arc, a gateway is formed

content turns essence

love and life flow through

a six-sided star, sextiling

people, parts, and waves trine, serving simply

the chaos agent signals

great mother stabilizes

the line collapses surrendering to what’s cyclical

do you want to try again?

“Do you want to try again?”

A question that hums without a “you versus me.”

A prayer that the dyadic impasse between us has collapsed.

There is a tune of “time and space have worked their magic.”

You’re stronger and you’re assuming that I am too. Thank you!

You might even be saying I didn’t irrevocably fuck it up?

You’re confident enough to take a risk to try and love me again?

You still consider me, my impact on you?

There’s no “are you ready to pay penance for the error of your ways?”

More of a “have the errors of our way settled?”

A “I found all of those parts in me, too.”

I’m not a total terror-inducing doom and gloom boogey man?

Try what again?

Something generative, something life-giving?

You want more of me?

Wow.

Too bad I’m too stunned to speak now.

I love to love you baby

People love to humble heroines instead of doing the humbling repetitions of integrity required to heroine correctly.

Repetitions of taking responsibility, of not blaming everyone and everything.

Repetitions of doing it not for adulation but for self-respect.

Repetitions of realizing that it’s not about you but the quality of your presence in the lives of others.

Repetitions of friendliness from a commitment to self-warmth and not repressed lust or performance.

Repetitions of staying in dignity whilst being dismissed for basic ornamentality.

Repetitions of not taking the come-drown-with-me bait when cursed in projective contempt.

Repetitions of putting yourself last, not from shame but from ongoing gratitude resourcing.

Repetitions of creating the interdependent glow of illuminating others’ strength.

Repetitions of emanating a bath-worthy solar generosity, a field of tolerance and mercy.

Repetitions of doing it for the regenerative joy of photosynthesis.

very serious instructions for how to attend constellations

for tending to your anxiously-styled parts:

Take your piece, place, and peace…and run!

But first, show up a little bit late!

Flip your hair a little flagrantly!

Get all that you need in one fell swoop!

Selfishly!

Make no friends!

Be distant and discreet!

Hide in the bathroom on the breaks!

Say “thanks everybody!” in the middle of running out with your shoes barely on your feet!

for tending to your avoidantly-styled parts:

Show up early!

Ask if you can help move the furniture!

Maybe a little myofascial release for the host and facilitator, even!

Whatever serves everybody!

Hope to represent everyone’s very mean and bad mom and dad…an unresourced ancestor even!

At break time, make everyone a cup of mint-infused tea and make sure they get a couple cookies each!

Say “I’m just happy to be here with you people, not here for anything in particular, really!”

Practice completing courageously in front of everyone by repping the dead again and again.

Coordinate the Avoidant Collective’s giving flowers to failure praxis!

Ask who wants to go to dinner after and say that you’ll coordinate the appetizers, with pleasure!

How my Grandma Martha holds me

My Grandma Martha holds onto me from right behind.

Her arms wrapped around me.

Me. Me just as I am. Just as I am.

She follows me. As I dance around.

First she just sways right there right there behind me

And then she dances with me.

She dances with me. From right behind me.

She’s been trying to get in there for some time right behind me.

“I want to hold you with nourishment and nurturance, my sweet wild Mattie dear!”

It’s the holding I’ve been missing! I do declare!

She doesn’t leave me when it matters.

When does it matter?

It matters when I’m doing well.

It matters when I am succeeding.

It matters to me to be held when I am doing well.

She knows success intimately.

So she isn’t intimidated by my success.

She birthed six children, you see!

She created a garden, home and big family.

She was taking care of all of her kids, husband and mother at the same time!

May the embodiment of her success flow down to us all more freely!

Especially to her great-great grand daughters!

She’s right there with me, holding me in all of my and life’s complexity.

all the complexity.

Success is the face of my father’s mother.