Let Your Tears Flow: Transforming the Transgenerational Trauma of Your Family Tree: Exploring Systemic Healing, Inherited Emotional Genealogy, Entanglements, Epigenetics & Body Focused Systemic Constellations

Let Your Tears Flow

Transforming the Transgenerational Trauma of Your Family Tree

Exploring Systemic Healing, Inherited Emotional Genealogy, Entanglements, Epigenetics and

Body Focused Systemic Constellations

Series Book 2

Copyright © 2017 Patricia Kathleen Robertson

Published by Peaceful Possibilities Press (3Pz)

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN (Print) 978-1-54391-360-6 (Ebook) 978-1-54391-361-3

Front Cover: Painting Transgenerational Trauma by Patricia Robertson, December 23, 2015

Front Cover Design: Laurine Fillo Photography, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Back Cover: Photo of Patricia by Laurine Fillo Photography, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

www.peacefulpossibilities.ca

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patricia Kathleen Robertson

www.peacefulpossibilities.ca

Patricia Robertson brings a diverse background to the field of transgenerational trauma, seeking to understand the trauma that passes down from one generation to the next within family systems and societies. She is currently a candidate in the Doctor of Social Sciences program at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC, Canada. Patricia is researching transgenerational trauma and how a lack of inner peace keeps people from creating greater peace in the world.

Her interest in transgenerational phenomena came by naturally. At age 12, Patricia inherited the role of seannachaidh - the family genealogist and storyteller - from her maternal and paternal grandmothers. For decades, she engaged with dozens of lines of her own family system, embracing traditional, emotional and genetic genealogy.

Gathering with Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians for a decade, Patricia became aware of the inner woundedness of both the First Peoples on the land and the Settlers - the immigrants. She wanted to understand the emotional healing work needed to address the transgenerational trauma legacy of colonization and immigration.

Through Royal Roads University, she completed her master’s research project entitled Healing the Personal Wounds of Colonization: Utilizing Third Party Consultation to Transform Canada’s Post-Residential School Societal Conflict. Patricia has also completed a BCom and a BA(Hon) in the religions of the world through University of Calgary. Concurrently, she followed her passion and researched the spiritual and cultural practices, ritual and ceremony within Indigenous communities throughout North, Central and South America.

Patricia gained a broad understanding of trauma through her own adult life experiences, including travel to 63 countries. This provided a strong background in the contextual nature of systemic healing and transgenerational trauma. As an Integrative Wellness Practitioner at Peaceful Possibilities Consulting, Patricia guides clients through the unresolved transgenerational trauma of their family systems. She trained with first and second generation world renowned systemic constellation facilitators, and leading professionals in integrative energetic body practices. This book is Patricia’s way of integrating and sharing what she learned while transforming the transgenerational trauma she carried for her own family system.

I dedicate this book to all the clients who have passed through my life,

you know who you are,

trusting me with your deepest emotional family transgenerational trauma and teaching me about life, death and the resilience of the human spirit.

The words in this book were written with much love

& deepest respect, honour, compassion

& gratitude to all my ancestors, who passed down

to me immense strength & resilience,

to my parents, James & Kay,

for giving me life, love, guidance,

& always being there to support me,

to my siblings for sharing the journey,

& to my greatest teachers,

providing me with many profound life challenges,

Tristen, Nigel, & Scott,

& the little ones that never came to life.

Children often have difficulty in honouring their parents

because what they are looking at

are their parents’ personal characteristics or actions.

What parents have or have not done, however,

is a limited, narrow perspective.

Parenthood, in and of itself, is much more than this.

Respect and honour are possible if we look at our parents in their totality,

and also beyond them,

at their families and their fate.

This is a reverent and humble attitude

that leads us to healing.

It also counters any impulse

to carry our parents’ ill-fated needs.

- Stephan Hausner, Even If It Costs Me My Life:

Systemic Constellations and Serious Illness

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

JANUARY

Drawn to the Dead

Energetic Separation from the Dead

Child Born to a Woman in Mourning

FEBRUARY

Former Intimate Partner

Energetic Impact of Parent Separation on Children

Adopted Child (Part 1)

MARCH

Adopted Child (Part 2)

Adopted Child (Part 3)

A Twin Dies (Part 1)

A Twin Dies (Part 2)

APRIL

A Twin Dies (Part 3)

Immigration (Part 1)

Immigration (Part 2)

MAY

Immigration (Part 3)

JUNE

Live Life Fully

JULY

Eastern Europe

Epigenetics

FINAL REFLECTION

SOME SUGGESTED READING

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

Each of us is confronted with a series of challenges in life. How we respond to them prepares the way for what comes next in our life. If we respond in a healthy way, we will move forward toward new challenges. One door will close and another will open. If we respond in an unhealthy way, using the same old childhood emotional response patterns, we will experience repeating cycles of similar issues, whether they are relationship issues, financial concerns or physical, mental, emotional or spiritual challenges. Something in life will need to shift or change to create balance within our body, mind, heart and spirit, or healthy relationships with others. Once we are open to transformation, we will move beyond the old repeating patterns and take in new insight that has been presented to us over and over, likely many times before, allowing us to move forward in a healthy way. This book gathers together numerous themes related to the topic of systemic healing. I am a lifelong learner, educator and practitioner seeking to understand transgenerational trauma within the greater context of systemic healing.

I have learned that regardless of what the life challenge is, a wholistic approach is highly beneficial and revealing. When a whole system is taken into consideration, fresh insight and new images are possible. By whole system, I mean we look at the big picture. The life challenge becomes part of a much greater whole. Rather than focus on the individual and their issue in isolation, we begin to explore all the layers and systems that surround them. Issues and concerns do not develop in isolation, so their resolutions won’t be found in isolation either. We move beyond a compartmentalized or piecemeal view of human concerns. We eliminate specialization that focuses on one aspect of the body or one concern. For example, health issues of human beings are considered within the vast web of interconnecting systems that surround them. The issues of each human being are considered systemically, within a spiral of greater organic and human-made systems. We begin with your authentic inner core Self and look at the systems that surround you. First, there is the physical human body you occupy - which has a biological mother, a biological father and a family of origin. This is surrounded by a greater extended family of relationships, which is historically placed within an ethnic, cultural and/or religious group. The spiral radiates out to a community of friends, acquaintances, associates, mentors, colleagues and coworkers. Beyond that group is a regional or national society of beliefs and norms, which is interconnected with the global village. The global village seems to be getting smaller as the world advances technologically. Finally, these systemic layers are held within the multidimensional universe, the environment within which we live and share life with all other creatures of planet Earth and outward to the great mystery of the unknown. Within this great spiral of expanding systems, we are encouraged to consider the needs of both the living and the dead.

If that list doesn’t seem complex enough, we are also going to bring in the transgenerational trauma of our parents and ancestors. Transgenerational trauma is held in every cell of the body and it passes down from generation to generation, sometimes skipping generations. If emotional trauma is suppressed or swept under the carpet by one generation, attempting to move on as if nothing traumatic occurred, it just means the transgenerational trauma that passes to the descendants will be that much more powerful. The trauma becomes frozen in time, frozen into the bodies of each person and frozen into the bodies of their descendants. In the past, our ancestors didn’t have the resources to address transgenerational trauma. That is no longer the case today, as we continually find new approaches to address systemic trauma.

Over the past decade, I have discovered that many people experience the healing work of different practitioners within Western, Eastern or alternative healing practices, and yet, they are left without the resources to ground the healing work into their own daily lives, or to release the deep emotional trauma held in the cells of their body. They experience the practitioner as an expert and for a time they gain insight into their issue. Afterwards, they are left feeling inexperienced and outside the system of healing. They wonder where to go for more information, or wonder what is the next step. The practitioners may have the individual return over and over, addressing one small piece of the puzzle at a time. The big picture gets lost or overlooked. The transgenerational threads, patterns, links and connections are missed entirely.

Using the old adage about fishing, the practitioners sell the client or patient a fish each week but never teach them to fish. Being taught to fish provides the individual with life skills that will feed them for a lifetime. We need to learn the life skills to address our own systemic healing for a lifetime. Layer after layer will be revealed to us as we complete some healing work on one issue, only to find there is another layer to be addressed.

I have learned that systemic healing comes through emotional body focused practices. If we stay in our head trying to find solutions, engaging in traditional talk therapy perhaps, we tend to have difficulty shifting the transgenerational trauma out of the cells of our body. Talk therapy has many uses, but transforming body held transgenerational trauma isn’t one of them. If we are talking, then we aren’t at the deep emotional level required to release suppressed emotions. Releasing trauma that has been stored for one or more generations, trauma that couldn’t be expressed or released by the generation that experienced it first hand, requires new body focused approaches. In the natural world, animals release this pent-up energy by shaking it out of their body, and then they move on with their day. Somewhere along the evolutionary trail, human beings lost the strong ability to shake off their trauma. Perhaps it never was a strong inherent human skill. By engaging in body focused systemic healing practices, sometimes we do find we can actually shake the trauma out of our body. I have experienced firsthand, and witnessed many others, shake uncontrollably during systemic constellations that are highly emotional. This book refers to systemic constellations frequently, however, it does not go into the concepts and structures of systemic constellations. That information can be found in the many books suggested as reading at the back of this book. Sometimes deep ritual healing experiences shift us to a different level of consciousness to address the deeper transgenerational trauma held in our body. Releasing trauma from the body is an emotional experience. The original trauma was stored emotionally and the way to resolve the issue is also emotional. That’s why we can’t think the trauma out of our body. The pent-up emotions need to be released from the body – and ritual will help each of you Let Your Tears Flow.

Each of you carries within you the source of your healing and wellbeing. The answers to many physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial or relational issues are within you. Learning how to access this information is key. You are continually encouraged to go within for insight and for self-nourishment, and to go within to connect with your ancestors, who are your source of life and your source of healing. Your ancestors live on within you. Within every cell of your body are your ancestors’ greatest emotional achievements and their greatest emotional challenges. Their triumphs become your triumphs and their traumas become your traumas. We are meant to address these big family imbalances that are currently unresolved. We are meant to integrate the journey of our ancestors with our own journey. We are not independent of our ancestors. Choosing to address the transgenerational trauma of your family system means that the repetitive patterns and cycles will stop with you. They will not pass down to your children and grandchildren with the same powerful energy force.

Book 1 of this series is entitled Connect With Your Ancestors, and it covers many topics related to systemic healing. It has an extensive discussion on inclusion and understanding how you fit or belong in your family system. It helps you understand the role you are expected to fulfill in your family system. The book discusses how a family system becomes unbalanced when someone or something connected to unresolved emotional trauma is excluded, missing, forgotten, shunned or silenced. This exploration involves an analysis of the living and the dead. It involves those connected by blood and DNA, and those who were not, but who were greatly impacted by members of your family system. It also includes those who have greatly impacted members of your family system in a traumatizing way that are not connected by blood and DNA. Powerful emotional experiences link us all together. The first book encourages you to hold space in your heart for both the victim and the perpetrator, embracing radical inclusion. You are encouraged to explore the many spectrums of duality that can be experienced by spiritual beings on a human journey, including the light or joyous side and the shadow or dark side of issues.

Connect With Your Ancestors also looks at what to do if you feel stuck in life or if you are confronted with symptoms, conditions or behaviours that seem chronic in nature. It explains what to do if you are overcome by fears or you have difficult relationship challenges. There is an emphasis on emotions, emotional wounds and emotional entanglements. Some sections of the book explore the emotional wounds of men and the relationship of the child to the father. We begin with father relationships since the spark of life comes from the father (as sperm) and then the breath of life – or life force energy - flows through the mother (during pregnancy and at birth). Life is given to you through your mother and your father. Accepting life as it was given to you is essential to wellbeing. This is the place where many people get stuck in life. The book emphasizes that each of you have one biological mother and one biological father even if they are not present physically in this lifetime. Their lives and family systems are integrally interconnected with your life and vice versa. Your wellbeing is entangled with their wellbeing.

Book 1 explores the concept of give and take in family relationships and intimate partner relationships. It discusses the flow of love downward in the family system from grandparent to parent to child to grandchild. It reveals that when the flow of love is reversed, flowing from child to parent,