Our Emotional ‘Weather Patterns’
A thunderstormy kind of summer, it has been, here in the Hudson River Valley where I live.
I do like thunderstorms, inconvenient though they may be.
My inner world can be stormy at times so when the weather in the outer world feels congruent, I can feel a kind of calm.
Volatility is characterized by turbulent changeability…
energy that is moving, not static, thus full of many potentialities…
I grew up in a household whose dominant 'weather pattern' was characterized by volatility. Various factors influenced this pattern & I learned like all children do in their family systems to adapt & survive. These adaptations were the beginnings of my resilience, my defenses and my vocational life path.
Family constellations
As a systemic and family constellations facilitator, I've come to understand more potently how captured we are by our own personal narrative. It's as if we live inside our own egoic consciousness and yet we are born into a system, a family of origin, which is also informed by the systems of our ancestral lineages and the cultures, landscapes and way of being that informed those lineages. The volatility of my family's dominant weather pattern is not just about my own experience, it is a systemically informed perspective, meaning this pattern is representative of an entanglement of the past.
How do we heal?
How do we heal?
This question has been at the core of my vocational life.
The heartbreakingly simple answer to this question is Love.
Maybe that is why we choose to relive the past over and over, driven by the deep admiration and the subliminal love of those who have come before us. The betrayals, the departures, the losses we’ve experienced in our families, are the reasons we live them over and over again.
Rather than holding these generational attachments, we can ask ourselves how we can contribute now to those in our lives no matter what has happened in the past.
We can recognize that the past not only has pain but deep treasure we can mine and resource.
We can accept the consequences of our choices.
We can choose to commit fully to those people in our lives now in spite of our wounds.
When we give and receive love, we heal.
When we do this, those we love heal with us.
We can choose to live our lives forward, releasing the fate of our ancestors, knowing that we live now because they have lived.
The thunderstorm of my life has enabled my heart to feel all of its own fissures, breaks, griefs, and joys. It has made me a more dimensional being. And I've learned to dwell within the calm center of the storm (on good days).
What is your family’s dominant weather pattern?
To explore this weather pattern more within community, join our monthly Kaleidoscopic Constellations group.
Our next one is on August 24 from 3–6pm at Gateway House in Rosendale, NY.
If you are interested please contact me at this email or by phone at 845-417-5430
Upcoming Events…
Join Elizabeth Cunningham and myself for our third workshop in 'Our Lives as Prayer' series. We will continue our exploration of Prayer, using Constellation and other modalities.
Those who attended previously will have the opportunity to deepen their practice while also welcoming first timers.
Back by popular Demand. Learn more and register here.