What brought you to this work Lucy?
Family Constellations and Ancestral Healing
As some of you will know I now offer 3 healing modalities of working with pain and trauma. Alexander Technique, Family Constellations and Resonant Language.
Over the next few blogs, I’ll be sharing with you more about the deep therapeutic work called variously Family Constellations, Field Work in Russia, Systemic Constellations and Ancestral Healing.
A lot of names dealing with the same material and working with the Field. The field connects us all – like air – the effects of this energy can be felt in the ways which deep undercurrents steer our lives.
I came to the work because I needed to. My finances were in a mess, my relationship with my son’s father had gone particularly badly, my health was suffering, and I just wasn’t getting on with my family or getting ahead in life.
My family history and background has directly and indirectly affected me.
My father was a Captain in the Indian Army, leading a mobile engineering workshop in the jungles of Burma in WW2. He saw some horrific sights and experienced true terror. He carried the effects for most of his adult life.
My mum’s dad ‘Pop’ had fought in the Somme during the Great War and was mustard gassed. He also won various medals for unspoken bravery. Both men were forever changed by their war experiences. They came back physically in-tact. But emotionally traumatised. Neither one could speak of their war experiences. Who could? It’s not the kind of talk you can have over breakfast.
My dad had PTSD – though it wouldn’t have been called that – he had recurring nightmares and night terrors. He held a lifetime of hate and animosity for the Japanese brutality in the concentration camps and on the Burma Railway until he made peace and went to meet Japanese teachers and students in the UK and shared his experiences with them. He was determined to dilute the impact of this for his children. He eventually healed from this through writing, sitting quietly and other spiritual practices.
The legacy of these men and their war experiences is also matched by the fate of women in my family. One grandmother was adopted out of her birth family who couldn’t afford to feed another mouth. She carried this core wound of being ‘given away’ through her life and of course it will have affected how she parented my mother, and how my mum subsequently mothered me and my siblings.
My other grandmother had a child out of wedlock in her teens, she had to leave this child for months at a time to find work in the city. Eventually she married my rich Grandfather, became step-mum to his four children and together they had my Dad Peter. There was so much un-held trauma and unsupported pain in this branch of my family too. The majority of my Granddad’s money was lost in the Wall Street Crash, and then subsequently given in a will to a family companion, not my Dad.
My childhood looked fine, some envied me the close-knit family who ate together, took day-trips most Sundays and went camping together. And we were pretty poor. My mother was tired and busy with work and 5 children and not able to support me with the difficulties I suffered as a sensitive youngest child.
My father was devastated when his active sporty life came to a halt by a diagnosis of MS which left him sitting in a chair for hours, and using walking sticks or crutches to get around.
These events and traumas were also unspoken, unsupported and un-healed. Of course, some of these difficulties rubbed off on me. My journey into Family Constellation work came from my personal struggles in relationships, love, money, belonging and a certain inability to get ahead in life. And my strong desire not to pass on these burdens to my son.
I had the sense that some of what I was carrying was not all mine. I have found a way to return what is not mine, with love and respect.
The path of discovery I have experienced from Constellations has opened my heart to all that my family have gone through. Compassion rather than judgement. Fullness rather than lack. I feel supported by my ancestors, I feel seen and able to receive their blessings.
These are not just ideas and words – more a very visceral embodied experience – which I carry with me as a resource in my life. I have seen aspects of my family life through the Representatives (more about these soon) in a Constellation which have given me such clear insights and lifechanging understanding of myself and my path.
This Constellation work has helped me get these experiences out of my body and head, and into a shared 3d space with my Facilitators and group participants mapping it out for me. Seeing how the dynamics are affected by words and gestures, the interconnectedness has been breathtaking to see and feel.
One aspect of healing trauma is to be witnessed with warmth. To be accompanied. To be resonated with. Group healing can be particularly powerful to create a safe container for these big themes of illness, war, adoption, early pregnancy and missing men to surface and be healed.
This trauma can be experienced as exclusion, anxiety, feeling stuck, repeating relationship issues, poor mental health, illness, disconnection, financial difficulties, and a sense of not thriving.
As you can see from what my family and I experienced, the impact of trauma can run through the family lines, being passed from one generation to the next. I am doing really well now. I’ve got a great house, a lovely community of friends, wonderful fulfilling work and much more peace in my heart. I’ve had a complex set of issues in my family which have taken various pieces of Constellation work to disentangle. Some people only need one session. Others enjoy support for different issues affecting various aspects of their lives over time.
Family Constellations with Lucy offers you a chance to change your family tree. To make peace with the past. To change your historical family patterns. To step forwards into a bigger, freer life. To leave a different legacy for your loved ones.
Book a free 15 minute phone consultation here.
If you are ready to heal yourself and start to make peace with your past, please see what workshops I am offering here or send me an email to express your interest lucy@lucyascham.com
More details of what we do in the workshops, coming soon.