Mending Ancestral Fabric:
Sitting at the River of Grief

Existential disillusionment, violence, and live’s finitude beset us with heartbreak, leaving us, in the words of the late Norman Wright, with a ‘tangled ball of emotions’.* Grieving seems to be a commonplace, and yet, how, when, even if to undo the tangle, remains elusive. Our imagination and skills fall short of metabolising a complex and time consuming loss, be it loved ones, dreams, certainties, worldviews, or a place. All too often, heartbreak gets muted, even as  emotional and bodily heartbreaks spell out the preciousness of what is lost and the painful need to live with what is missing. Its pain dwells, relegated to invisibility, inside ‘the personal’, bound by family traditions and modern cultures’ impoverished relationship to grief.

What needs communal presence, intimate companionship, wavelike rhythms, our shared breath of lament, in short, what needs respectful and ceremonial presence, remains tangled. We revert to habitual management of emotions. The styles learned, when we adapted to moments of ‘too-much-not-enough-too painful’, in infancy and childhood. Add societal pressure (‘just-get-over-it!) and  isolation and loneliness are enforced where connected lamentation may ease. Thus, families and culture(s) influence and form what is generationally passed on. Decades of diminishing, avoiding, and more recently pathologizing, have all but trapped grief in a bullet point list. Complete, with boxes to check. 

Meanwhile, tangled balls of emotions are kicked up our ancestral trees. Losses fester, they encapsulate and gradually are forgotten. Stoney representations of heroism elevate the loss of whole generations to sacrifice and martyrdom. As histories –and systemic constellations– amply evidence, the neglect of grief submerges emotions. Sooner or later, an offspring of a disappeared great-grandmother resonates and picks up the despair. A whole  people, generations later, picks up the tangled threads of rage and revenge. All ancestral fabrics are frayed by loss, pain, injustice, betrayal, and more, awaiting our grief.  

During our time together we envision, visit, and sit at The River of Grief that runs through human history for aeons. We invite the multitudes of historical, religious, cultural, social, familial, and bodily post-loss emotions, already in the room with us. We hold everyone’s ancestral and personal grief tenderly. We  receive each other’s narratives gently. We question personal and societal conventions that ask us to comply. We generously share our breaths in lament. We contribute to, and receive, the mending generated by Systemic Constellation processing and practice.

In short, we weave a unique Grief Tapestry, crafted from shared gifts, presence to what emerges, and joining in collective service to personal and ancestral grief. The take-away is renewed creativity and courage to “nurture, nourish, and evoke a [grief] consciousness and perception alternative to the dominant culture around us.”**

* The late Norman Wright, Ph.D., imagined grief as a “tangled ball of emotions.” A drawing can be found online.
** Quote from Brueggemann, W. (2001). The Prophetic Imagination, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2nd ed. (p.3,4)