A woman had always had a warm relationship with her mother as a person, but had never felt nurtured by, connected to, or truly mothered by her. It was as if the mother had been more of a friend than a mother to her daughter, and the client felt this as a sadness and loss in her life. She particularly wanted to shift this relationship since she had recently become pregnant with her own first child.

The mother’s family had left Poland and emigrated to the United States, fleeing the violent persecutions of Jewish citizens there. The constellation roles included representatives for the client, her mother, and her grandmother.

The grandmother immediately sank down and began looking longingly and sadly at a place on the floor. The client’s mother sat down next to her. The grandmother said she felt she was looking over the edge of something at some horror that she felt compelled to pay attention to. The facilitator intuited (from the history of the family and experience with other similar constellations) that the grandmother could be staring into a mass grave. All the grandmother’s emotional energy and devotion was focused on the bodies in the grave, making her not fully available for the living. This included her not being fully available for mothering her daughter, the client’s mother.

The grandmother indicated that she wanted to shield her daughter from the horror, and, at the same time, felt it was her responsibility always to remember the dead ones. She said that part of her wanted to join them there, as if by doing so she could save them from their fate. Unfortunately, her intense devotional remembrance was keeping the dead ones from passing on peacefully and could do nothing to change what had already happened. She was effectively keeping both herself and her daughter from fully participating in life, since, in honor of, her daughter was not fully living either.

The facilitator then had representatives lie down in the mass grave area. A spokes-representative for the dead ones said to the grandmother, “This is our fate, not yours.” There was no way the grandmother’s devotional attention, no matter how sincere and loving, could change their awful deaths. “Leave it with us,” said the dead one, for all of them.

The grandmother then felt she could relax her vigilance, and she spoke to each one of the dead ones, acknowledging what a great loss it was and her desire to remember. Once the dead were fully seen and acknowledged, one by one, they were able to rest peacefully, and the grandmother could leave the edge of the grave and rejoin the living. The grandmother was then able to be available to her daughter, the client’s mother, who was then able to be lovingly available for her own daughter, the client. She looked her daughter in the eyes as if for the first time and said, “I am your mother.  Now I see you.”

The client reported that her mother emailed unprompted the next day and said that somehow her usual empty feelings were turning into feelings of more fullness and that she was feeling “blessed and more and more connected to life.”

A woman had been date-raped and become pregnant when she was a teenager. Despite her desire to keep the baby, she had given the child up for adoption in response to parental pressure. Decades later, she was still unable to think of her child without intense feelings of guilt and shame and tremendous anger towards the father. Her family had a history of previous incidents of rape, illegitimate children, and loss of children. In the family constellation setting, a recurring theme of loss and tragedy can be seen to reverberate over several generations through similar circumstances.

The facilitator began with two representatives, the client and “the one-who-raped.” The roles were done “blind,” meaning that neither representative knew what role they had. The client’s representative felt extremely anxious and then ashamed and at fault. The client informed the facilitator that during the rape experience she had been terrified, had lost all sense of volition, and had frozen up, unable to fight or strongly verbalize a protest against the other’s actions. The representative for the one-who-raped felt anger, disgust, and then shame. It soon became apparent that he was confused and seemed to be not fully aware that what he had done was considered rape.

The facilitator had the one-who-raped state what had happened so that it could be fully seen and acknowledged: “I took you because I wanted you. I wasn’t really looking for whether you wanted it or not.” At these words, the high anxiety the client’s representative was experiencing began to relax and release somewhat. After a few moments, the one-who-raped was then able to feel some compassion and sorrow, and he said, “I’m sorry for what my actions cost you.”

The facilitator then brought in a representative for the child. The client’s representative moved toward the child and said, “I was afraid, and I was angry at your father, so I gave you away. I see you now with love.” Eventually, both parents were able to stand next to each other, acknowledging their parenthood despite the original circumstances. What had happened had been clearly stated and seen for what it was, the consequences had been faced and acknowledged without blame, but with full responsibility. This enabled the pain and loss to be released. Both parents were then able to reach for the child who had suffered the loss of both of them in its life.

The next day, the client reported feeling immense emotional relief, a release of blame towards the father and towards herself, and more inner peace. The constellation had not erased what had happened, or made it “all better,” but had helped the client move through and complete a very painful experience that had become frozen in time so that now she could experience more joy and self-acceptance in her life.