Family Drama And The Misfits
Healing the wounded family
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A family’s black sheep are actually liberators of their family tree.
….Those who choose roads contrary to the well-beaten paths of family lines, those who are criticized, judged and even rejected.
These are called to free the family from repetitive patterns that frustrate entire generations.
These so-called ′′ black sheep “, the ones that don’t fit, the ones that howl with rebellion, actually repair, detox and create new thriving branches in their family tree.
Countless unreal desires, broken dreams or frustrated talents of our ancestors manifest themselves through this revolt.
For inertia, the family tree will do anything to maintain the neutral and toxic course of its trunk, which will make the rebel’s task difficult and conflicting…
You are the dream of all your ancestors.~~
~Bert Hellinger
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There is only one important point you must keep in your mind and let it be your guide. No matter what people call you, you are just who you are. Keep to this truth….So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?
~ the 14th Dalai Lama
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If we are attached to petty concerns and never aspired to anything great, we won’t accomplish much. What is petty and what is great? Petty is for oneself alone, for immediate gratification, and for harmful deeds, while great is for the many, for the long term…
— the 17th Karmapa
Now is the time for eccentric people to come to the aid of the world soul, I believe, and one way to do that is to heal the family soul. I saw the conflict between our culture’s social and survival demands and the individual creative longings of my family members as I grew up. As one of six kids I was able to slip through the net that you usually get trapped in, that is meant to kill your original self. I see now that I was no more or less eccentric than anyone else in my family but I was left alone enough to pursue my natural bent. Of course, there were criticisms and grumblings that I always had my nose in a book or that I always went missing when another hand was needed.
I stepped away from the family group early, but as a middle child, I always felt that my parents had forgotten I existed. That actually had its advantages in my case. I was able to create my own world. I found inspiration in art and books and could hardly tell the difference between reality and what I imagined. I was eccentric without knowing it and that has produced a life that has been well tailored to who I am.
Not that there haven’t been catastrophes, of course, but that’s as it should be.
I see now that my energies and abilities are very much in my family’s tradition but perhaps developed a bit further because I claimed them for my own and refused to set them aside for propriety’s sake. I managed to wrangle a decent enough survival in spite of opposition and disinheritance. I adjusted to both affluence and penury fairly easily because I always had a creative project going. My focus has been on creating something beautiful.
I know that’s what both of my parents wanted and, in a sense, I feel I’m doing what they secretly longed for but were prevented from doing because of circumstances, fear and lack of confidence. Their admonitions and criticisms of me were conventions they had incorporated growing up. I saw the effects of these beliefs on them and consciously decided to reject them. It took decades to fashion a better way for myself but I was oriented by love, beauty, creativity and a pursuit of larger meaning to living.
I’m not much different from what I was as a child. I esteem that my family inheritance is being fulfilled, that somehow the family soul is finally getting its due. I’m probably just getting started.
“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?”
~Thomas Merton
