Family Constellations – How blind love can become sighted
by Monika von Wietersheim
Family Constellations – How blind love can become sighted.
Hidden patterns run through generations, often out of blind loyalty to the family system to which the members belong. Their binding force is the common conscience, which creates a sense of belonging. Often a family member unconsciously steps into the place of a person who has left the system either voluntarily or involuntarily through a sudden death, or by being expelled, or other traumatic events. Filling this gap does not necessarily fulfil its purpose, since being a place holder lacks a frame of reference and with this insecurity, the place-holding family member can feel lost or experience other symptoms which show no clear origin. In constellations we speak of blind love drawing the person away from his/her own life path into a space which is not conducive to them. How blind love can become sighted is one of the major tools family constellations offers when looking into the concealed family lineages.
When the ‘orders of love’ became my path.
Twenty-five years ago, a friend gave me a book to read, with the words “Here! This book is just the thing for you.”
The book, Ordnungen der Liebe, which brought Bert Hellinger to prominence as a family constellation facilitator, captivated me. So much so, that I wanted to learn this method. I wrote to Dr Gunthard Weber. He recommended that I attend an international conference on systemic constellations in Würzburg on the topic of ‘Fields of Conflict – Fields of Knowledge’, at which around 1,700 therapists, social workers, politicians, and spiritual leaders from 31 nations were represented. Following this, the first international Bert Hellinger training course for English-speaking participants from non-German-speaking countries was offered, which gave me, as a Namibian, an opportunity to get started. One hundred participants from twenty countries received a week of intensive training from Bert Hellinger himself, as well as six of his closest colleagues at the time. The years 2001–2003 were decisive years in my life.
Bert Hellinger – Who was he, and how did he become a family constellation practitioner?
Bert Hellinger arrived in Natal, South Africa, in 1953 as a Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Missionaries of Mariannhill. He served here as a catholic priest in the 1960’s, among the Zulu people, overseeing ten outstations with a total of around 10,000 parishioners. He spoke fluent isiZulu. Later, he became principal of ‘… St Francis College of the Mariannhiller Missionaries, one of South Africa’s leading elite schools for indigenous people.’
Pupils such as Bernard Chidzero, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance from 1985 to 1995, and Steve Biko, the well-known civil rights activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, who died violently in South African custody in 1977, were among the college’s alumni during his time there.
At the end of 1969, Bert Hellinger returned to his home monastery, Mariannhill, in Würzburg. He soon realised that his work in South Africa had changed him. Anglican clergy colleagues, with whom he had collaborated at various levels in South Africa, based their missionary activities, amongst other things, on group dynamics methods that transcended racial boundaries. During those years, missionaries were sent to the then-called developing countries to work with the local communities. Group dynamics as a discipline was unknown in Germany at that time.
The development and practice of Family Constellations
One of the lineage roots of systemic constellations is one that is common to many indigenous spiritual perspectives, and originated out of Hellinger’s experience of communal practices in the Zulu culture: That is a practice of allowing all in the circle to have an equal say, as well as the right to speak without interruption until the very end. Other lineage roots are to be found in the work of Fritz Perls’, Laura Perls’ and Paul Goodman’s Gestalt therapy, as well as family reconstruction and sculptural constellations by Virginia Satir. It is beyond the scope of this article to go further into detail about these modalities. Hellinger himself was well-known for returning to the facts: That is that every person is born into a family system and that they are, as a consequence, limited by the realities in which they are born into. The entanglements within family relationships bring challenges that we all experience to varying degrees.
My first constellation
I remember it all so clearly! I had no idea what lay in store for me. I’d watched a couple of constellations and had participated as a representative in others. But as far as I was concerned, I hadn’t the faintest idea what issue was deeply affecting our family.
The representative for my grandmother, who lived with us on the farm, stood there weeping for the lost homeland she would never see again in her lifetime. Although this feeling had never been spoken of in our family conversations, I realised instantly that my parents, too, carried the same pain. The grief over the loss of a bygone world had thus shaped me from childhood onwards. An inner door opened. Questions arose. I began to ask my parents questions and received answers. A new chapter about not only my parents’ childhood and youth, but also the lives of their parents and grandparents gradually was introduced to us children. For until then, the longing for the old homeland had still been unspoken in our family.
In 2003, my husband, Anton, and I embarked on a journey into the past. For him, it was to former Silesia (now Poland); for me, to West Prussia (now Poland). Apart from my maternal grandmother, all our direct ancestors lived in the West Prussian region within a radius of about 300 km. My maternal grandmother came from Rastenburg, formerly in East Prussia (now Russian Federation).
With this journey, our ancestral homeland took on a tangible, real quality. Until then, the homeland of my parents and grandmother had seemed unreal and far away.
Every person carries the history of their parents and ancestors within them. We are all connected to – and sometimes entangled in – the experiences of our family groups. The metaphor of a kinetic mobile helps us visualise this interconnectedness a little better. Every part of a mobile hangs in its place. It gives the whole a certain stability. If one link is removed, the mobile loses its balance. Sometimes the system (the kinetic mobile family) can remain unstable, or when the vacated space is filled by a substitute, balance is restored.
Blind love fills the gaps – paths to liberation.
Blind love fills the gaps in a system. To stabilise the balance within the family system, children sometimes, out of blind love for their parents and/or loyalty within their system which ensures their belonging, assume the empty space left by, for example, a former partner, or they carry unresolved traumas of past generations.
Family members, often the children in a subsequent generation, thus sacrifice their own unfulfilled potential in the process. Family constellations is a method by which this blind love can be recognised, thus freeing the member who is carrying it to make a different choice, to release what does not belong to them to return to their own life flow. What has been forgotten, hidden or overlooked can, with the help of family constellations, be examined, addressed, acknowledged, respected and thus returned to its rightful place. There are specific methods, healing phrases and rituals for this, such as the respectful returning of what we have carried on behalf of another. For the person who has returned this burden that they were carrying unconsciously, they can now be connected to the strength of that ancestor who survived that burden and that experience. This then becomes an inner strength they can draw on in connecting back into their own life work and path.
Ways out of blind love include looking at, honouring, showing respect, acknowledging what was, returning, bowing, and turning towards the future.
My constellation led me recognise how I had been pulled into the gap created by my ancestors’ unacknowledged grief at leaving the homeland. Even as a young girl, I was marked by a certain solemnity. A veil of sadness was ever-present. It was only much later that I realised that this intangible sadness did not belong to me.
The latest findings on transgenerational trauma
“Once you have recognised the bigger picture, you can no longer see the part as a whole.” Ursula Le Guin
Imagine your pregnant grandmother. Everything she experienced, everything that brought her joy or sadness, everything she consumed, her sleep and wake cycles – she shared it all with her unborn child, your mother. You were already present as an unfertilised egg within the embryo’s developing foetuses. This means that your grandmother’s experiences have to some degree influenced at least two generations. Around 3% of DNA handles the transmission of physical characteristics, whilst 97% is referred to as non-coding DNA. Non-coding DNA transmits the emotional world of experience to one’s own children and their children.
Epigenetic research suggests that unresolved family issues may be passed down in this way. People often sense a subtle emotional stirring that they cannot put into words. This is where family constellations can make this stirring more visible. With this method, imbalances can be brought to light.
Influences such as wartime experiences (e.g. the Second World War in Europe), deportations (e.g. internment camps in Africa and Australia) and border conflict experiences (e.g. so-called terrorist attacks in Namibia) continue to affect subsequent generations as secondary experiences. Above all,
unspoken and unprocessed experiences are passed on without the context in which they were lived, meaning that external reference points are missing. This can, under certain circumstances, trigger inexplicable fears or cause other illnesses.
In her book, ‘War grandchildren: The heirs of the forgotten generation’, Sabine Bode describes how war children, who now belong to the grandparents’ generation, were only able to talk about the traumas of their childhood and youth with their grandchildren. The experiences had a profound effect on their souls. To survive, it helped to remain silent, look away, shut things out, overwork, and perhaps even drink. This survival mode was a mechanism by which the traumatised generation would distance themselves from their emotions, and with this, vacated their inner presence. Their children sensed the empty space, and by standing in for their parents took on some of the silent memories.
Being a descendent of emigration trauma, the theme of ‘descendants of immigrants’ has become my area of special interest within the field of systemic constellations practice. Connection to this ancestral trauma through my own constellation has helped to better understand the challenges of millions of displaced people, and my heart reaches out to all families who are forced to leave their homesteads due to the current conflicts in the world.
Hellinger’s orders of love include the right to belong. People who are forced to leave their homelands involuntarily, will take the feeling of displacement into their new homes. Family constellation can assist these persons (or their descendants), to get in touch with their deep-rooted feelings of loss, helping them to re-connect with their ancestors who are ever present within them. With this new knowledge, survivors of traumatic evictions, will be able to re-connect with their original inner strength again. The new consciousness creates a space for new life, new beginnings, new strength. A transformation from ‘blind’ love into ‘sighted’ love will help their children and grandchildren to grow strong in a foreign environment.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe recognised this truth in his time, and it holds truer today than ever before.
Give children roots, and they will grow wings! JW von Goethe
Bibliography:
1 Hellinger, Bert, Ordnungen der Liebe, Carl-Auer-Systeme Verlag
2 Hellinger, Bert, Mein Leben. Mein Werk pg 69, Ariston Verlag
3 Hellinger, Bert, ditto pg 69/70
4 Hellinger, Bert, ditto pg 80
5 Nazarkiewicz, Kirsten /Bourquin, Peter (Ed.), Einflüsse der Welt – Individuelles Schicksal im kollektiven Kontext – Praxis der Systemaufstellungen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht pg84
About the Author
As a Change Consultant, Monika von Wietersheim spends time with descendants of immigrants. Namibian-born, she feels her roots are in Europe, and at the same time, her heart beats to the African drum.
As a descendant of immigrants, she experienced the challenges that came along with both parents’ relocation to Africa. The systemic approach has made her aware of the opportunities lying in constellations when addressing the difficulties immigrants face during the process of trying to find their place in a foreign environment.
She underwent training by the International Bert Hellinger Association in ZIST, Germany, Talent Manager & Systemic Management, Bilbao Spain in organisational consulting, and more recently by the School of Life Family Constellations & Order of Love through Vlado Ilic.
She is married, has children and grandchildren, and currently holds a Change Consulting assignment in a senior retirement home, with frail care and hotel business.
Monika offers individual counselling, as well as group workshops, and online consulting.
She has also trained interested candidates in the art of constellations practice.
