What if the way forward is inward?

Do we have permission to do what we are trying to do? Many times from our personalities we say we want to achieve a certain goal, but unconsciously we boycot ourselves. Things just don’t seem to flow, we feel stuck and our only solution is to try harder. But what if the way forward was inwards? What if it was about looking at ourselves and our family of origin and those unspoken mandates instead?

Many times we might have decided on a major or to follow a certain path, unconsciously trying to take care of an ancestor’s unfinished business. Maybe one of my parents could not finish college and become a doctor, so I become a doctor. This will feel right and we will feel “good”, at least for a while. Yet if it was not what my soul wanted or I don’t have a passion for it, it might end up feeling heavy and difficult to carry. It is important that we give ourselves grace however, knowing that it came from love and the “magical thought” every child has, from that belief that somehow we can save our parents/grandparents.

Family Constellations invites us to make those unconscious decisions conscious, but without judgement knowing they came from a place of enormous love for our own. Yet unless we do the work of looking at it, we will not be living our own lives and choosing freely. We look back not to get stuck but to become free. Even if we are coming from a place of rejecting something from our system, that does not yield freedom either. What we reject is what has the most strength in our lives. Instead we need to look at all of it, try to understand it, honor the difficult destinies the people that came before us had, and leave it with them. Always knowing that If they could have done it differently, they would have.

Judging anyone that came before us, like our parents for example, puts us above them, taking the place of one of our grandparents. Instead what gives us freedom, is to claim our place, as their child/as their grandchild. From that place of “order”, where they are the “big” ones and I am the “small” one, we do not have to carry things for them. That movement which seems simple, is one that needs to happen in our hearts. We need to make that movement not to excuse them, but to free ourselves. From there stems our freedom, strength, and the permission to do it differently.