Paying it Forward: Family & Systemic Constellations

For almost 20 years, family constellation work has called me into action across nations as a facilitator, educator, host, consultant, and Cowichan Tribes foster parent.

Constellation work has the potential to help us humanely explore historical events in our lives and backgrounds — and the marks they leave — with powerful new perspective and understanding. It’s a group process that attunes to an individual’s experience, while creating awareness and discernment about their family, extended collectives, and the impacts of their ancestral experience.

We inherit great resilience, and we also inherit generational wounding and necessary ways of coping with those wounds. Systemic Traumatologist, Karin Dremel describes the basic conditions for trauma as our “nested experiences of: too much, too soon, too sudden and too little.”

Trauma affected attachment between children, their parents and grandparents, between siblings, spouses, and extended families include secrets, exclusion, silence, perpetrator-victim cycles, and illness. These coping mechanisms are rooted generations back in greater forces and events – such as poverty, war, genocides, displacement and immigration, climate change, and technological revolutions.

In group constellation circles, people “stand in” as representatives of family members and other key aspects of the family field. The movement of standing in “an other’s” shoes is essential to the process, and often a catalyst for deep insight and compassion.

“Standing in” as a representative, is a relational practice that allows us to learn more about social, historical, and cultural contexts through direct, embodied and heartfelt experience. And, as a natural response to the process, the individual and their system begin to seek new patterns of connection between forebears and descendants – mobilizing new opportunities for mending and creative resilience.

Gloria Nicolson, Dzawada’enuxw Elder whom I’ve had the honour to work with, says “I would recommend Systemic Constellation Work to anyone who has experienced any type of loss (for which) they have

not found a resolution. This would be a most effective tool for those who have gone through the Residential School System which robbed us of so much, and still does through generations of our children. I personally have witnessed many types of healing and find this a most gentle and effective process.”

My year long Systemic Constellation Exploration Program, is now 70 alumni strong on the South Island, including people of diverse ages, cultures and professions. Each person takes a more cohesive understanding of complex human dynamics back into family and community. Next Systemic Constellation Exploration Program start: March 4th, 2022

Next Advanced Exploration Program w Karin Dremel MTS – for people working in Human Services Fields: September 2022 Jan Hull: www. coastalconstellationshub.com

Jan Hull Bed JIBC HSI - serving communities on the West Coast of Canada and the USA for 19 years

Offering INDIVIDUALIZED ASSESSMENTS AND LESSONS since 2014, including work in developmental and therapeutic areas for children who are STRUGGLING TO LEARN TO READ.

KATE WOODLAND, BEd BC Certifi ed Teacher

readnow180@gmail.com