What is not honoured is repeated

“The Force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And my sister has it,"- Luke Skywalker to Leia Organa

Leia's knowing and response to Luke-"Somehow, I've always known."

“Return of the Jedi” released in 1983.

What is not honoured is repeated. What is honoured is transformed. Through the lens of Family Constellations, this is not just a metaphor. It is a law of Nature, of birth and rebirth, of giving and taking, of the beginning and of the end. It is a systemic law of the order of life. The law of conservation of energy in physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Only transmuted.

In Family Constellations, developed by German Psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, Bert viewed the family as a living system, much like a body, and discovered that all life systems ( human or in nature) are governed by deep unconscious natural orders. They are-

Belonging- Everyone who belonged to the family must be duly acknowledged.

Order- Those who came earlier have precedence and a hierarchy.

Balance- Giving and taking both must find a state of equilibrium.

Family Constellations sees a family not as separate individuals but as a system connected through invisible threads and bonds of loyalty, belonging and love.

But when someone who is this part of the family system is excluded, forgotten, judged, aborted, abandoned, shamed or ridiculed, the system does not erase their entity. Instead, the system repeats them through generations. A later generation unconsciously represents what was denied expression earlier. Just as a body remembers injuries. The family system remembers events, losses, exclusions even when unspoken. These memories do not live only in stories but in patterns of events or behaviours exhibited by later descendants of the family.

When a family member is forgotten, silenced, judged, disowned or their suffering is minimized, the family system will ask someone else, usually a child or grandchild to carry what was not allowed. To complete what could not be completed. This is how repetition begins. And repetition is not weakness. It is loyalty. From the outside, it might look like depression, schizophrenia, fibromyalgia, heart disease, cancer, diabetes. Questions might be asked- “Why do I feel emotions that are not mine? Why am I living a life that does not seem like my own?” Let’s expand this with a few examples-

What was not honoured- A mother who was emotionally abandoned in childhood but told herself- “I was strong and it didn’t affect me”.

Repetition- Her daughter grows up with deep depression, despite having no reason to feel this way. She carried the grief the mother was never allowed to feel.

What was not honoured- A parent who grew up in chaos but insists that the childhood was normal.

Repetition- His/ Her child develops anxiety, depression or hypervigilance. Because the child’s nervous system stays alert for danger that the parents never acknowledged.

Other examples are-

A miscarried or aborted child never spoken of, a parent’s trauma dismissed, an addict sibling cut off, a grandmothers depression shamed, a father’s failure of infidelity hidden, a suicide never acknowledged. When all these are not given their due or honoured or plain acceptance, the system reinforces memory through repeating and allowing completion of that expression which was not allowed. The system simply says- “It must be remembered.” This is deeply embedded in the fabric of nature. And…..

Nature is a bitch! Sure, she is Mother earth, sure she is all giving and benevolent, but what she takes, she takes fully and what she gives, she makes sure it’s more, bigger and harder than before. And she expects full loyalty. Undoubtedly. Unabashedly. So, when a later descendant carries or repeats these gifts of nature, it can appear as similar emotional patterns, similar relationship outcomes, similar symptoms, similar illness or failures, similar anxieties or similar losses. All like that person/ group of people from previous generations who were disowned, dishonoured, rejected or kept hidden. The system repeats those only for one reason- to restore belonging and dignity. And this continues until someone finally turns towards what was hidden. This is why symptoms, conflicts or emotional pain appears in later generations who logically have no reason for them.

So, what is Honouring then? Honouring means to acknowledge what really happened, acknowledging who really belonged, giving dignity to what was excluded, giving everyone a rightful place in the family. Once someone or something is honoured, the system will stop repeating, the descendants stop carrying what is not theirs, the past patterns dissolve and the loyalty can be fulfilled. Re- distribution comes to a halt. The system then no longer needs a representative to carry what was left behind.

The therapy of Family Constellations reveals this implicitly of the system, not as a narrative but as a structure. Constellations often resolve with powerful voices of the body towards the end-

I see what happened.

You belong.

This is your fate and it will be honoured.

I carry my own life now.

This is not for me to bear.

Thank you for giving me the gift of life.

These are not just words. This is systemic regulation being bounced into the morphic field to heal what could not earlier. Once this is done, the burden returns to its rightful place, belonging is restored and hierarchy is respected. We have come from our parents, but we are not bound to carry their traumas. We are not them. What they have given us is the biggest gift ever- the gift of life itself. And to acknowledge this one simple truth can set you free. From the past. And its freight.

I think there's something you should know

(I think it's time I stopped the show)

There's something deep inside of me

(There's someone I forgot to be)

Take back your picture in a frame

(Don't think that I'll be back again)

I just hope you understand

Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

All we have to do now

Is to take these lies and make them true somehow

All we have to see

Is that I don't belong to you, and you don't belong to me, yeah-yeah

Freedom (I won't let you down)

Freedom (I will not give you up)

Freedom (gotta have some faith in the sound)

You got to give what you take (it's the one good thing that I've got)

“Freedom” by George Michael released in 1990