Hi Dan,
I agree it would not be a good idea to try to include all the qualifications
you mention about parents in your last email.
The beauty of the rest of your article is its economy and lyricism. Complicated
musing self revelations would destroy that.
Rather than that I would simply delete any attempt at sexual stereotyping. It
does not surrender to the revelation of the essential that is the outstanding
feature of the rest of your short article. So I would delete the title and all
of the allusions to this so called pattern about father's and mother's
behaviour you have observed.
However your musings reveal an underlying and more essential theme - that of
the difficulty of reconciling ourselves with our parents' difficult behaviours
(perceived and real abuse and neglect) and letting go of lingering resentments
which only serve to poison our lives. Maybe you could find a way of running
with that in a succinct way that is consistent with the style of the rest of
the article. That may also lead you to a new title.
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh
Melbourne, Australia
webpage: www.cwalsh.com.au
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Booth Cohen
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 2:35 AM
Subject: RE: [ConstellationTalk] Some Mothers Do Their Best; Some Fathers Run
Away
Chris - Touché.
You are quite right that not every mother always does their best. Some
mothers sometimes do their best. A few mothers do the worst. Not every
father is preoccupied by his own loss at the expense of being present for
his children.
If I properly qualify everything, do I have anything worth saying? E.g.:
"In my experience, a swirl of overlapping and conflicting patterns emerge:
some mothers always do their best, others do not; some fathers often
disappear to the horizon, others express more "maternal" feelings for their
children than the mother does. Sometimes we cannot decipher any pattern or
can observe only a kaleidoscope of paradoxical dynamics occurring
simultaneously, or we must suspend any attempt to comprehend what we witness
and let the mystery wash over us."
Originally, I included text about my personal experience. My father was
always frightening, frequently enraged, and occasionally violent. My mother
was his match: always frightened, frequently depressed, and occasionally
insane. Before I encountered the domain of Constellations, my success in
healing my relationship with them revolved around trying to calm my father
down and build my mother up, so I could be with them without it being too
distressing and painful. But on the baseline, my connection to both of them
was always rattled and disturbed. These days, it is really quite different.
The transformation we seek, I have largely achieved.
In an earlier draft that included this material, it seemed like too much
self-disclosure, too confessional. It also exceeded the word-length limit
set by the editor. So I deleted those parts and made it general and
impersonal.
I am open to further insight and input from you and others.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Walsh
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 2:40 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Mothers Do Their Best; Fathers Run Away
Dear Dan,
I loved most of your article.
Especially the blues metaphor.
I also loved the description of transgenerational trauma, the contrast with
psychodrama, the description of the phenomenological method and the final
concluding paragraph.
Unfortunately I didn't like the title or the generalisation behind it . I
have seen plenty of constellations where the reverse summary cold apply i.e
a father doing his best and a mother running away.
The fact is at some level both parents often do both of these acts at the
same time. I think your summary is in danger of reinforcing a stereotype
which for most readers will confirm their predisposition to see fathers as
having a less important role in the family.
I think if you rewrite that central thread you will have an excellent
article Dan.
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh
Melbourne, Australia
webpage: www.cwalsh.com.au
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Booth Cohen
To: ConstellationTalk@ <mailto:ConstellationTalk%40yahoogroups.com>
yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 3:03 AM
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] Mothers Do Their Best; Fathers Run Away
A colleague asked me to write a short essay for an on-line newsletter. I
have pasted a draft below. I'd be grateful for editorial feedback,
comments, critiques, etc. Thanks in advance, Dan
The Family Constellation approach originated in Europe in the 1990s and is
gradually gaining recognition and acceptance in the U.S. In a Family
Constellation circle, one person presents an urgent personal issue, such as
"I can't control my anger," or "My marriage is falling apart."
With the help of a facilitator and the group, the "seeker" sets up
representatives, similar to a psychodrama. Unlike psychodrama, once the
representatives are placed, they do not pose, act or roleplay. Instead,
they stand silent and still. The representatives tune in to feelings and
physical sensations that mirror the consonance and dissonance in the family
as it relates to the issue.
By observing this simple "constellation" of figures, the seeker perceives a
hidden pattern that runs through the family. In many cases, it is an echo
of trans-generational trauma that influences the seeker to unconsciously
repeat or atone for events from the past. Once this pattern emerges, the
representatives are repositioned in a new configuration that relieves the
representatives, the family system, and thus, the issue as well.
The observations that follow come from my participation as a facilitator and
representative in hundreds of Constellations. They do not represent a new
theory or a proposed universal principal. They are simply a report of the
patterns I have seen repeated many times. The next time, something entirely
different may emerge that will expand the knowledge base without diminishing
what has been observed before.
For many of us who had unhappy childhoods, being the daughter or son of our
mother and father carries a heavy measure of pain. Not that this is not the
whole story; our feelings for our parents are multi-layered and complex. In
my experience, two predominate patterns emerge over and over: mothers always
do their best and fathers often disappear to the horizon.
Neither of these patterns is always visible. In troubled families, the
surface is like turbulent white water on a surging river. At this level, we
are in contact with our mother's behavior, which can appear like anything
other than "their best." Similarly, our fathers may be abusive in countless
ways that make us wish he would "disappear to the horizon" and thus finally
leave us free of his bad behavior and moods.
In a Family Constellation, we become still and silent while maintaining a
sharp level of awareness. This enables us to sink below the raging
disturbances of the surface to make contact with the currents below. This
is where these patterns emerge.
In Constellations, we often perceive how our mother's resources and capacity
were diminished, often even crushed, by the legacy of her being her parent's
child. The stories have nearly infinite variety, but contain common themes
of traumatic events, tragic deaths, and incomplete movements towards
healing. When we see our mothers in the broader tableau of her family
history, we recognize that the surface chaos is above a deeper systemic
current that moves steadily, irresistibly in one direction. In this
context, we can appreciate that despite everything that came before, and all
the obstacles and challenges in the moment, that mothers always do their
best for their children. Her "best" may be woefully insufficient and
terribly destructive, but in the larger context of her being, it was all she
could do.
With difficult fathers, there is also a dynamic of inexplicable chaotic
behavior above a relentless hidden undercurrent. The pattern is fathers
turning away from their partners and children to pursue something in the far
distance. In our lives, they may be present or absent, dangerously close or
long gone and forgotten, but underneath, first their attention and then
their physical beings are drawn far away. These fathers yearn to recover or
reconnect with someone who has been lost. Like knights in search of the
elusive Grail, they leave behind what is truly theirs to pursue what cannot
be reached. The consequences are devastating: once started this pattern
often repeats for many generations.
Constellations can uncover a healing movement for the worst problems. What
sooths all this discord is to hear the steady bass line that plays below our
particular version of the Blues. For better and worse, we vibrate with the
frequency of our mother and father as long as we breathe. There is no
choice and no escape, for our breath itself has its source in them.
Incapable parents hit many false notes, but this needn't be the dominant
melody we play over and over in our minds. In a Constellation we can
perceive and accept that mother always did her best - even if it didn't
sound like much at the time - and that father danced to a tune not of his
making, which remains embedded in our tune as well.
When we accept our life exactly as it was given to us, without accusation or
blaming, we can also take in the love and vitality that is our birthright.
Deep down, it does not matter how our parents behaved then or now. What is
more important is that we connect to them in a way that allows the love that
flows from far away to reach us.
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