Lineage Repair

Walking. I am listening to a deeper way.

Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me.

Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

~ Linda Hogan

We all have ancestors — we are all decendants. When your grandmother dies, she becomes your ancestor. Each of us could/should have a long line of souls standing behind us, supporting us from the other side. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have that. It may be many generations of rupture and entanglement before one finds that one who knows what it means to be good. And by good here, I don’t mean popular, or kind or …

I mean authentic and visionary and loving and wise.

If you go back far enough, every single person has an ancestor like this. Knowing this can be a really powerful thing. But even more powerful is making the repair between and across generations that allows love to flow, that allows each ancestor to stand behind the next, supporting their decendants to live better, to live well, to live in their honor.

A big influence of Myth Mending is family and systemic constellation work.

Constellation work was developed by Bert Hellinger after spending over 20 years living as a missionary among the Zulu people in what is currently called Africa. Constellation work is essentially Indigenous wisdom, as understood and re-imagined by Hellinger – German missionary turned psychologist. (*note: I am working on a long open letter to depth psychology and related healing paradigms addressing the inadvertent theft of Indigenous wisdom and the obligation/debt that remains in its wake. I will let you all know when this is done.)

When love flows, we are supported.

According to Hellinger, there is a necessary order across generations that allows love to flow between individuals in families and freindships, between nations/cultures, and between generations. And when it doesn’t flow, our energy gets bound up in intergenerational ruptures and entanglements, so that we cannot be free. We forget who we really are. We begin to identify with patterns of behavior and coping strategies that … work. But also that bind us.

So, I can’t get into the method exactly of how this works in a Myth Mending session or group process, but I can say, it’s possible to repair the ruptures and unravel the entanglements so that the stories of our lives can unfold in a way that feels congruent with our deepest calling, our passions and our dreams – as individuals, and as communities.

Myth Mending

Myth Mending is a combination of what we talked about yesterday, trauma resolution in one’s own body and life, but it also includes going back through our lineages and making repair. Intergenerational images that are stuck in patterns of disorder (disorder is great as long as it is a phase, not an identity) can begin to shift toward the kind of order that allows love to flow, that allows us to feel that our ancestors have our back, that we are loved and supported beyond the world of visible stuff.