Welcome

 My site reflects the creative tapestry of a vibrant voyage.  I am a passionate systems constellator, faithful apprentice to trauma&neglect, and self-taught artist. If you find joy in what you see, I warmly invite you to return often. Whether you’d like to say hello to this mender of interconnected systems, schedule a therapy session, join one of my events, or seek information that eludes you, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Connecting Dots

Nearly seven decades of navigating my life’s unfolding have paralleled my apprenticeship with complex trauma. Around 1985, I began interdisciplinary studies in service of my personal healing. This journey has since expanded into various trainings, certificates, and degrees. In 1993, in Weinheim, Germany, I opened the doors of my private practice. Since then, I have been privileged to serve others who long for meaningful change.

Along the way, I have learned invaluable lessons about our human experience: we are conceived and gestated inside a human body, born to parents, met by kin and friends, become known to our neighbors, welcomed into institutions, and eventually exposed to the greater world. The reception we receive in any of these contexts can be nurturing, but it can also present challenges.

You might wonder, “What’s the big deal? This is common knowledge!” And you would be right! However, it seems less known (and much more demanding) that we also need to understand the nature and quality of these experiences. Neurobiological research has well established that “the first 1,000 days from conception” (as Alan Schore notes) are crucial. Therefore, having a better understanding of that time will be helpful when we struggle.

Inquiry may connect some ‘dots’ of early life reality: How was I welcomed, nourished, protected, and guided—or not? How, if at all, were mismatches repaired? These ‘dots’ are the building blocks of how we learned about human relational life. They have shaped how we—far beyond the early years—relate to ourselves, others, and the world at large.

When we experience a balance of welcome, goodness, challenge, and repair in early childhood, we are likely to develop fluid ways of relating to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Conversely, if that balance was unpredictable or lacking, we are likely to struggle. Bodies and identities—our body-selves—are molded by a mélange of events. Some we remember, others are stored in our bodies, and still others, if we were neglected, are experienced as nothingness. Much of what shaped us has no explicit, knowable narrative. Whatever we were handed or what was missing, 

“… we will, we must, we [did] attach.”
(Ross, 2009, Trauma Model Therapy)

 Perhaps that’s why you find yourself reading my page(s): To learn about me and my work with developmental trauma and how i  connect the dots.

A bit about Language

The socio-cultural earthing (Erdung) I received from my place of origin (Odenwaldian-German) combined with the language blend I gradually acquired (German, English, some Latin, and a bit of French) Living were I did, during my childhood, came with the felt wisdom that the more-than-human world so richly bestowed on me. Each, in their own way, contributed to my knack for words. I express what I see and hear through language that I can sense and feel. Sometimes, therefore, I use a simple word replacement that feels to offer a more precise meaning. At other times, true neologisms are born.

As a result, my playful use of language deviates from the typical terminology used throughout “healing professions.” For example, I refer to you (and me) as “change-seekers” instead of “clients,” and I’ve transformed ‘witnessing’ into the much richer word and concept of withnessing; a shift my inter-language brain simply could not resist when I facilitated a group and needed to name an intentional gift of participation in a state of voluntary inter-, and intra-being.

I also, you might notice, have a (lifelong!) desire to share myself through story-making, and storytelling; in words and through art. So, when something screams “spell-check malfunction,” it may not be! You might find an in-depth explanation of unusual words elsewhere on this site. Behold, I will begin right here by annotating the word healing.

Mending & Healing: Human Agency Meets Life’s Grace

Three decades ago, while studying and practicing acupuncture, I felt the placing of needles at points of qui stagnation and the moving of moxa (heat) over areas of qui emptiness, to be an invocation of life force. Nourishing the yin, and moving the yang, would unblock and awaken life force into renewed degrees of flow and wholeness. A person’s life (force) is the healer that responds to their agency and desire to heal. Their (and my) actions became a joint invocation for life to respond.

So, I needed a word that honours the distinction. 
It was, and remaines, mending.

Trauma, was initially understood as a wound to the physical body. In emergency rooms wounds are cleaned and stitched together, then, covered to heal; they literally are mended. Thereafter, life force —and the patience of the ‘patient’— facilitate growth of tissue that reconnects the severed parts. Leaning into this, I use mending when I speak of skills, agencies, and practices in service of reconnecting broken connection to self, others, and the world at large. This terminology also emphasis sustained engagement by which a change-seeker invokes (and supports) the healing of frayed, broken, or severed connections in their system(s.)

...mending is patient, steadfast, often unglamorous work 
— it is the work of choosing kindness over fear, 
again and again, in the smallest of everyday ways, 
those tiny triumphs of the human spirit which converge 
in the current of courage 
that is the only force by which this world has ever changed.
–Maria Popova–

Constellating Systems, the multi-facetted method I facilitate, is  such an invocation of life force through courageous mending; a force that joins the change-seeker and the withnessing community in moving (all their systems) toward whole-ing. In this communal space of invocation

 … the world’s radical aliveness comes to light in an entirely nontraditional way that reworks the nature of both relationality and aliveness (vitality, dynamism, agency).” *

Within systemic constellating I include a variety of actions: ceremony, journaling, movement, dance, laughter, conversation, resting, walking a maze, times of stillness, communal lament, joined exultation, and more. These invocations are offered in service of shared healing into wholeness.

In this spirit, please accept my warmest regards and consider joining one of my events or counselling offers.

Karin Dremel, m.t.s., hp

* Barad, Karen, 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Function). Kindle Edition, loc 830