“Honor What Is.” That is the first Order of Love in Family Constellations Work.
What does that mean? Most of us have a sense of this – understanding that whatever is true, it’s best to acknowledge it for what it is, and to find a place for it. Whether it is a war, a natural disaster, an enormous violation, systemic oppression, a personal loss – no matter how strong the impulse to turn away and ignore these kinds of things, human systems cannot thrive when what is true is not given a place.
This is fairly easy to see when it comes to some things, like secrets, grief, and suffering that deserve our attention and respect. We go to family therapy to finally be able to name the “elephant in the room,” we go to community observances to honor the costs of war, and we attend the funeral of our friend’s father so that we can share in the acknowledgment of the loss. These all put us in better relationship to heavy life events, and free up our energy to re-connect with life in a new way when we are ready.
But for some things, it may not be as natural for us to honor. Painful events we wish we could stop remembering, or things we don’t like about ourselves, or terrible perpetrators who should perhaps be shut up somewhere and forgotten. Isn’t this kind of “exclusion” inevitable, natural, and perhaps even useful?
Even Bert Helliger, the founder of Family Constellations, in his early years argued that murderers (many of his early clients were Germans with SS officers in their lineage), lost their place in the family, and should be ritually excluded as part of the healing work. But after a few years of working with this issue in families with his other German colleagues (including Sneh Victoria Schnabel), it gradually became clear that to function properly, families needed even perpetrators to have their right place.
For instance, if a father had been an SS officer, and lost his right to be in the family, what would that mean for his children, who somehow need to be able to own their place in the world and embrace the life that their father had given them? The children needed to have a place for their father in their heart, somehow, even while acknowledging the awful things their father had done and also honoring his victims.
“You are our father. We see what you did. We see your victims, and honor their suffering. We leave the burden of what you did with you, and we thank you for our lives.” With this, it all has a place. Not without pain, of course, but it’s a way of honoring it all, with room for the children to be able to live a different life from their father, and in that way honor the life that was given them.
None of this implies having to “hang out” with perpetrators, by the way. This is often misunderstood. As one teacher said: “You can have a place in your heart for someone without going to Thanksgiving Dinner with them.” Separation is often critical, including for certain serious situations, complete disengagement. But everything in the family still needs a place.
Nonetheless, there is a very understandable pressure in the family, or in us as an individual struggling with painful relationships, to seek to banish violators from any impression of having a place in the system. The problem is that explusion is itself an “attractive” energy. (As a parent, what happens when you tell a child, “never do that”?) For instance, frequently, a person who has banished an abusive parent from their heart finds that their child ends up seeking them out, either literally, or perhaps unconsciously by repeating the perpetrator’s patterns. Systems do not put up with anyone in the system un-belonging – it’s nearly physics.
One client of mine found himself massively under-powered in life. He had an abusive father, and he was desperate to not be the kind of man his father was. But when the client was able to find a good place in his heart for his father and the best of him, he could accept the life he got from his father; commit to being the kind of man he wanted to be; and trust himself into his powerful birthright as his father’s son. He couldn’t do that as long as he simply tried to not be his father.
Another client had a system with a pattern of dangerous and abusive mothers. She, too, was committed to be a different kind of women, and she found that over and over, her family members kept turning to her to be the kind of women the others had not been. It was exhausting! All this responsibility for everyone, and to be the one good one! Instead, we connected her with all of those mothers who had preceded her, and she said “I am a women who is like you and not like you. I have the heart of a good woman, and I know I got that in part, somehow, from you. Thank you for my life.” By including and honoring all of these women, and not so distinctly defining herself over and against them, she was freed to be herself with her various other family members.
This is tender work. We have to take our time and be very careful, since it inevitably references extremely painful, real experiences, which need to be included, too! In fact, this kind of including usually only follows the clear and thorough acknowledgment of suffering and hurt.
And, it tends to arise naturally when a client has hit the limit on how abundantly well or empowered they can feel, and sense that something other than re-iterating old hurts is necessary. What’s missing? What hasn’t been included? How can we find a place for everything, so that we can, in a way, relax and truly move on with our lives?
What have you found needed to be included in your family? What happened when you were able to do that? Or, what exclusion do you sense might still be causing imbalance in your system? I invite you to share your stories on my blog, below.
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