Carrie Link

FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS

I don't know a lot about generational dynamics, professionally speaking, but I am having all kinds of "fun" watching them play out in my life.

I first heard the term, "Family Constellations," from Ruth King. Ruth trained with Bert Hellinger, and uses his system in some of her Healing Rage work. It's powerful. That, I do know, first hand.

"I swear, the healthier I get, the crazier my mother gets," I told a trusted friend, also a trained therapist.

"That's exactly what happens," she went on to explain. Then she gave me the quick and dirty Family Constellation explanation, that I had forgotten since working with Ruth.

Hellinger speaks of the Orders of Love He says, "The solution to life in family occurs when each of its members takes his/her appropriate and actual place, takes upon his/her roles in life, taking care of himself/herself and avoiding intervening in other's destiny."

"Intervening in other's destiny" has me chasing my own tail.

Wow.

How many of "my" decisions really have been mine? My mom was a teacher, I became a teacher. My mom had a daughter, then a son, I have an older daughter and younger son. My mom always wanted to write a book. I've written a book. And on, and on, and on...

The question is not whether our two lives are dysfunctionally fused, the question is how am I going to take my own/appropriate/actual place in my own destiny?

I have a friend that is adopted. She's known forever that she was adopted, and has grown up issue-free with that fact. Her adoptive parents loved her, adored her, ate her with a spoon, she couldn't have, and didn't, ask for better. She is now married, happily, has three amazing kids, a beautiful home/life/church/community/friendships/etc. This is a highly functioning, funny (should totally be a comedian), confident, got-it-all-together woman.

Enter the birth parents...

It's her story to tell, not mine, but through a fascinating turn of events, she first met her birth mother, and then, eventually, her birth father.

She looks like her birth father.

She has siblings that look like her.

She has mannerisms that resemble her "family."

She's freaking out.

There was nothing "missing" in her life. She was happy! Now, Pandora's box has been opened.

We sat under her grapevined arbor, drinking espresso from matching demitasse cups, two women with "enough," talking about nature versus nurture.

"But why does it matter?" She asked. "Why do I care? Why do I need to know these people? Why do I need to meet my siblings? Why is any of this important?"

"Because it is," was my not-so-great response. "It's not that you don't have 'enough,' you do, or that your adopted family wasn't great, they were, but you are part of another family, whether or not you ever meet them."

She may be (and is) fine with her lot in life, but a system was broken when she was given up for adoption, and that family is affected. It is not her job to fix them, heal them, rid them of guilt or blame, but it does "matter."

Doesn't it?




* Photo from www.c-blyth.com, entitled "Earth-love-hug"