ON RESPECTING DIFFICULT PARENTS:

One of the principle tenets that a constellation facilitator holds is that a child needs to take each of their parents into their hearts - regardless of what that parent has or has not done.   A few months ago, I sent out a newsletter about what happens when a father is excluded and some readers, mothers who had been left to raise their children alone, were annoyed by the subject line.  How could I talk about excluding fathers, when so many exclude themselves and leave mothers to pick up the pieces?

A recent session I held was different: there were many constellations where the mother had been violent and or abusive and the fathers had done their best to pick up the pieces.

The principle lesson from this is not about who is better than whom, or about how unfair it is for the parent burdened with financial hardship or most of the responsibility for children. The lesson is, despite how “good” or “bad” a parent is, how we best enable our children, or ourselves to live a life free of the burdens of parental destruction, absence or neglect. A child is both their mother and father, both matter and if one is excluded the child feels smaller or incomplete. When a supportive parent holds (understandable) resentments to the difficult parent, the child feels it and secretly or unconsciously tries to find a way to ally with or connect to the missing parent, in order to feel more whole.

This was very much alive in the workshop I ran last week.

Two of the sessions were for men who had married incredibly destructive wives and who had done their best for their children, despite the havoc wreaked by the troubled mothers.  The men were navigating their best place in relation to those mothers, to find a way to respect who they were, despite the trouble that they caused to their children.

Hellinger - the founder of constellations says that when a parent can see the good from the other parent in their child, it frees the child from following that parent and this was one of the qualities that we worked with in different ways in all 4 constellations.  I can’t go into too much detail to respect the privacy of those who participated, but suffice to say that we saw time and again the impact of deeply troubled, if not violent parents and how that passes down the generations.

When we looked at the wider system, we were able to see some of the influences that had made the difficult parent so challenging and I think each participant was able to lay to rest at least some of their resentments for the violence, abuse and difficulties each had wreaked on partners & subsequent generations.  Ultimately what each wanted was to stop the violence travelling into the next generation, and I hope that was something we were able to do.

It was a deep day and all testament to the courage, tenacity and steadfastness of all those who participated.  The courage of participants to hold those destructive people in better light - to leave their destructiveness and causes of destructiveness with them and to more easily stop it flowing down the generations and live with more grace.

I had been told to be careful who I work with, because it is easy to join a constellation workshop and leave with more than you came with, this has not been the case today. Despite the depth of what we have looked at, I have felt completely safe and held all day."

If this resonates — whether it's your own parents, or your children, or both — there is another day long session on Sunday 2nd August, in Westmeston East Sussex. There are still spaces. If you'd like to join us, book above or email me if you have questions/ have transport issues.

And for those of you women who have challenging relationships with your mothers or daughters — I'm running Standing in the Line of Women on Saturday 29th August, in Westmeston, just North of Brighton.
It's a chance to look at what has passed down through the women in your family, and what you might choose to carry forward, or lay down. The day is very powerful and gives huge understandings of the impact of the limited choices available to our female ancestors. Something you can kind of know intellectually but when you spend a day addressing this, you leave with new respect for your motherline, as well as understanding of why things might be so challenging between mothers and daughters.

29 August: Standing in the Line of Women
Saturday 12th September
Saturday 3rd October
Sunday 8th November

Saturday 5th December