Families hand down more than stories. We inherit ways of making sense of the world, ways of protecting ourselves, things everyone talks about and things nobody talks about.
And our families lived inside history. Racism, migration, displacement, exclusion, economic injustice, violence and survival can all become part of a family’s story, whether later generations know the details or not. These things do not stay in the generation they happened to. They move through families, they land in bodies, and they show up in the rooms we walk into now.
Systemic Constellations is one way of working with that. It is not talk therapy and it is not a history lesson. It is a way of putting the whole system in the room, the people, the losses, the things nobody spoke about, so that something can move that has not moved in a long time.
This hour is for your questions about that terrain. What constellation work actually is, and what it can hold. What it means to look at racial trauma and family history as one piece of work rather than two. What comes up in you when you consider looking at your own lineage. You do not need any prior experience. Curiosity is enough.
Sarah Peyton, my co-author and longtime collaborator, joins me for this hour.