This is such a beautiful way of expressing it, William, and matches my
personal experience and the experience of people I have known intimately.
I've heard there are so many different combinations of gender identity being
documented now. I believe that as we tune into these parts of ourselves and
have a society that supports it, we can live closer to our true self.
I personally have felt within that I have a gay male/drag male inside of me
- I don't know if that's from an ancestral place or from early influences in
my life, a past life or if it's my inner world - but I'm at home with the
gay male culture that is refined with art and food, loves to cross dress and
has empathy for women. I have an identity within me that lives there. I
have no need or desire to change my body and I know it's just one aspect of
myself, but I enjoy it and need friends around me who can relate or are
queer positive.
Constellations is a great way to sort through these elements with total
acceptance.
Thank you for your eloquent description of this!
Heather
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2017 11:10 AM
To: Constellation Talk <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Re: Constellation experience with
transgender issues?
William - I really like how you write about his. Can you offer an example of
having worked with gender in a way that helped a client feel that congruity
you speak of? Feels like fertile ground.
The Rev. Leslie Nipps
Convivium Constellations - Founder, Practitioner & Trainer
"Trust as a Way of Life."
www.conviviumconstellations.com <http://www.conviviumconstellations.com>
"Hasten to that which supports." - The I Ching
On Feb 18, 2017, at 7:46 AM, wmedw21@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:wmedw21@xxxxxxxxx>
[ConstellationTalk] <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Dear Anne,
I am appreciating your post. Gender is such a significant definer in our
embodied world; and in my experience, the phenomenological field of
constellation work can be of great service towards issues of gender - and
not just "trans" issues. I have worked within "the field" with gender fully
and often.
My experience is that we know our engendered selves internally. It is an
implicit knowing. And then there's the body. The field and constellation can
offer the client CONGRUITY - a matching between inner and outer experience.
The felt discrepancy, especially given our general cultures and family
systems, can be tremendous. For the client to be able to "see" their
engendered self through the grace of the field and its representatives
externally as the client feels into the engendered self internally - to have
the realities open and revealing and matching (or not matching) - can be of
great assistance. As with all things in our human development, to be seen
from without that which we are knowing within is of great help.
And, of course, what could arise in the field is the incongruity of it all
allowing the client and the field that experience. In the overall, I have
the suggestion as a facilitator to have a special awareness here that body
and gender are not necessarily one and the same. One's physical-ness and
one's felt-sense of gender could be represented individually. Nowhere in our
human lives does the insufficiency of a binary explanation for things arise
more as it can with gender. Duality as we usually think of it, is
challenged. A client could be male-embodied and have a clear knowing of
being female - and not necessarily feel that the embodiment needs to be
changed.
I have found that the most important thing with gender is that we are able
to know our internal experience - and to know this with others and as part
of our tribe and world. I think that in our current cultures, for the most
part, we are just beginning to really understand and allow gender, and I am
happy for the dialog here.
Thank you.
William E. Thompson
Tucson, Arizona, USA
