Who Sits at My Table: Your Family Lineage and Your Life Now
Imagine a large holiday table. Around it sit parents, grandparents. And behind them more generations, whom we may not have known, and whom perhaps no one spoke about. Each of them brought something to this table: love, courage, silence, fear, longing for the place they left behind.
Most of us grow up inside a story that began long before us, and we don't always know how much of it still lives in us. Perhaps in how we deal with money. Perhaps in the fear of succeeding more than our parents, or in a quiet loyalty to the pain of someone we never met.
In Family Constellation we look at a person as part of the system they came from. The question isn't "who's to blame," but: who belongs here, and who may not have been given a place? In the constellation view, when someone is given a place, things can settle in the whole system.
What can change?
Some people discover that a feeling they carried for years isn't necessarily theirs. Some feel a new belonging, or a first willingness to put something heavy down. Each person decides what it means for them.
A short exercise: a place at the table
- Sit quietly and take three deep breaths.
- Imagine a long table. Seat your parents at it, and behind them their parents.
- Notice: who sits comfortably, and who seems far away? Is anyone missing?
- If there's an empty chair, give it a name, even just "someone I didn't know."
- Say inwardly: "You have a place. I take my life, and I do my part with respect."
- Take a breath, and open your eyes.
If this exercise touched something you'd like to explore further, a constellation session lasts up to two hours, on Zoom or in person in the Algarve.