Collective Memories – Online Short Group Constellations

Who we are in the present is knowingly and unknowingly influenced by the energetic field of influence that we belong to and that we come from. Our history lies coiled within us. The untold stories of our ancestors are present in our blood.

For me, constellation is a way to access the hidden stories and the silenced voices of the ancestors. It is easy to accept a version of events that is passed down from one generation to the next, from one person to the next, but with each telling the story can change and those missing parts of the story can be held unknowingly by us.  

The collective memory classes are powerful ways to break open the ‘single story’ that we may be holding of our ancestors and give voice to the voiceless within the untold stories. As their silence is broken you begin to release your own voice too.

Stories are powerful. Giving language to a silenced story gives a place to it.

In these online constellation gatherings we will be working with collective memories within a created constellation field to explore the entanglements within our family and ancestral dynamics. We will be stepping into collectively themed stories that are relevant for each one of us.

The classes will be on zoom and will be a combination of group and paired constellation. Your zoom link will be sent to you after booking your place.There is more information about what to expect from online constellation events here.

Institutionalised Ancestors – Voiceless Descendants
Monday 19th June, 7-8.30pm UK (1-2.30pm Central)

Many of our ancestors who lived their lives in ways unacceptable to the culture of the community found themselves punished for doing so. Those who grieved too loudly, women who pushed to be heard, to learn, to create and be free, men who wanted to live a different kind of life all found themselves consumed into a system of institutionalisation.

In the 1800s women who read too much, who spoke out against their husbands, or who refused to submit to society could be placed in an institution on the say so of their husband or father. Men who were deemed too sensitive or feminine also found themselves there.

There was no treatment as such, these were places were souls learned to conform to being ‘good’ or where they languished in the darkness.

There is a legacy of this that flows through the generations to us, the descendants. Those often forgotten and unseen souls, made voiceless and displaced can be lingering in the shadows of our own lives.

Our silences can become tangled with theirs, our voices, our dreams, our hopes can weave with the loss and suffering of theirs.

When the safety for a culture comes from locking up and rendering parts of the community that are ‘difficult’ or ‘different’ voiceless and invisible it leaves a mark. Not only for the descendants of those souls who found themselves shut away and unseen, but also the descendants of those who placed them there, oftentimes family members, as well as the descendants of those who worked in such institutions. Women were bt far the largest section of the institutionalised populations, and for reasons that seem ridiculous now.

As we come up against challenges to our own safety in our individual lives, culturally and collectively, the whispers from the shadows of those trapped in these institutionalised entanglements make themselves known.

We will be sitting with some of the whispered stories from then and tending the spaces where they weave with each of us in the present.

I didn’t know you were there – I feel you now
I feel where you lost yourself
I feel what was taken from you
I feel the punishment placed upon you for grieving 
I feel the punishment placed upon you for loving
I feel the punishment placed upon you for wanting to live
It was wrong
You are no longer bound to this place
I am not bound to this place
Your grief was never shameful
Your wounds were never shameful
Your love was never shameful

I Thought We Would Have More Time – The Legacy of the Unspoken and the Unfulfilled
Monday 21st August, 7-8.30pm UK (1-2.30pm Central)

Sudden loss can be fracturing, whether it is the loss of someone we love dearly, the loss of a dream, or the loss of safety and stability of the familiar.

As we attempt to reconcile the before and after that has opened up unexpectedly within our lives we can easily become tangled up with other points of the past – our own past and our ancestors. The yearning of ‘if only’ and ‘I wish’, the sharpness of regret, along with the denial of what now is instead of what once was.

This class is a gentle space to lean into ancestral and collective stories within the legacy of the unspoken and the unfulfilled that weaves through us as descendants in the present. The intention is to witness the unspoken, the yearning – then and now, and to gently disentangle.

You can book your place here.

The prison of a dying marriage – Till death do us part
Monday 25th September, 7-9pm UK (1-3pm Central)

The intense ache of loneliness that creeps in when your partner cannot see or understand you, and you cannot see or understand them… The sharp pain of indifference… The yearning for the warmth of loving touch…

There are many reasons we and our ancestors linger in a marriage that is not working. From religious and cultural beliefs, financial constraints, a belief that staying for the children is better, to divorce being held as shameful. For our ancestors, and some close generations, there was little to no choice, particularly for women. The vows of marriage were (and are) held tightly – ‘till death do us part’. Sometimes the marriage dies before the spouses do… What happens then?

There is a cost to staying, or being held, within a marriage that has died. Not only for the couple in question, the cost and entanglements also ripple down to the descendants. We feel the shadows of what was, the chill of what could not be, and the yearning for something different within our own experiences of love and passion.

The threads can weave in to how able we are to be heard in our “NO!” and in the setting of our emotional boundaries. A sense of sacrificed love can wait in the shadows of our own relationships. And that is when we are entangled with the couple. What of the children? Those innocents that grew up in a home that was cold, devoid of dreams, or perhaps filled with anger and anguish? Those children that learned to live in the shadows themselves, who learned to numb their emotions, or to carry the wounds and scars of their parent’s marriage. We can be entangled with them too. And the patterns that grow from that place are often silent, hidden, and destructive.

You can book your place here.

Listening to the voices of the generations yet to come
Monday 23rd October, 7-9pm UK (1-3pm Central)

What did you yearn for yourself and the world in your childhood and youth?

What did you beg the generations before you to see?

Do you still remember?

Can you feel the innocence of the connection with the earth, nature, and the belonging with the land?

We can lose parts of ourselves in all of our wounded places as we move through life. With each wound we can numb out a little more of who we once were, the sense of trust and joy can be left behind with who we once were. It can be hard to remember or witness our childhood selves and dreams. However when we cannot do that, and when we cannot sit with what we have lost we also lose touch with the children and generations that come after us.

What are the children in the present asking of us?

What are the generations yet to be born asking of us?

We will be sitting with our own childhoods, the children now, and those generations yet to come as an offering, a deep listening to the voices that can so often be dismissed or ignored.