Mother and Daughter: A constellation in private practice
Mother and Daughter: A constellation in private practice
Mother – Nira
Daughter – Gale
Therapist – Zohara Shalev
All names have been changed for the purposes of confidentiality.
Gale in her early 30s, the daughter of Nira, has contacted me requesting a practical solution for the conflict, the ‘last straw’ that arose seven months ago between her and her mother. They have not spoken during this time. Gale has been in therapy for long periods in which her relationship with her mother was a central issue. She doesn’t want to embark on another ongoing therapeutic process. She is looking for a different answer.
I suggest to her that she set up a constellation to see the hidden dynamics that do not allow her mother and her to have a relationship that is open, allowing and sensitive.
2. That same day sometime after this conversation, Gale receives an email from her mother where she suggests resolving the conflict and attending any therapy or approach that Gale suggests.
3. Gale phones me and tells me about this email, and we understand that the constellation has already started.
Both Gale and her mother arrive at my clinic for our first meeting, and I plan to do a constellation with them. However, the energy between them is overwhelming and I decide that it would not be right at this moment to do a constellation with them, but rather to hold the space for them to express what they need to say to each other first.
4. At the second meeting, the field seems ready for a constellation. I ask Nira to look around and to stand in a place where she feels right. I then ask Gale to do the same.
Nira stands on one side of the room, and Gale stands more or less opposite her with her back to the wall. Gale looks straight ahead. She can see her mother out of the corner of her eye.
5. I ask Gale to choose one of the objects in the room to symbolize what stands between them that does not allow the contact. Gale selects a huge cushion and places it between the two of them. The colour in Nira’s face changes and her body begins to move. I ask her what is happening for her. “It is difficult for me; it makes me sad to see this – that this is between us. I would have liked it to be moved away from here.”
6. I ask Gale what is going on for her. “This is what I feel we have between us. I chose to stand by the wall because here I can defend myself; actually I would like to move further away.” Gale moves to the corner of the room and curls up in the corner. “Here I feel safer.”
At this point Nira tells how tired she was when Gale was born. She already had five children.
7. She hadn’t wanted the pregnancy at the beginning, and then she had decided she would summon all her strength so that her new child would get what it needed. She tells Gale that when she was young she would find ways to draw her attention. She didn’t know how to express emotions with her daughter. She only knew how to attend to her basic needs. Gale now understands why she has felt rejected all her life, and why she experiences frustration in many of her relationships.
8. At this point, I ask them to choose something that will represent the origin of the issue which I name: ‘the inability to express emotions’. Nira places a piece of felt diagonally facing herself. I ask her to stand on it and tell me what she experiences when she does this. “I feel alone, I feel difficulty, there is no support, I feel it is like my mother (Gale’s grandmother) and I need to bring her mother in too.” I ask her to bring in Gale’s great-grandmother. Nira places the great-grandmother behind her mother.
9. Nira then stands on the place representing her grandmother, Gale’s great-grandmother, and says: “Life was very difficult, we were poor; there wasn’t enough to eat. We had to work hard to survive; the most important thing was to survive; to find food and clothes. There was no place for feelings or emotions in this life; I gave my kids all I could, all I knew. I made it possible for you to carry on living.”
10. At this point it seems to me that Gale is screaming: “I want a relationship with love, where feelings can be expressed and be talked about and where life is not just about surviving!” She seems to me to be awakening the longing for what has been lacking from generation to generation in the mother’s line.
I ask her what is happening for her: “I can see how love is given through material things.” This is not what she wants; she wants a loving closeness.
I tell her that somewhere in the past this kind of relationship was available, where the women in her family were able to express their feelings in intimate relationships.
11. I sense at this point that Gale is suffused with love; there is something about her that is full of light and goodness. So I ask her to join in, to represent this place where there was an emotional connection in the past. I ask her to stand behind her great-grandmother, in the past, where she feels right.
She stands three generations behind her great-grandmother. I then invite Nira to go back to her original place, where she first stood as Gale’s mother. Then I ask Gale to walk down through the generations and offer this love energy to each generation as she passes it.
Gale asks for a bowl; she stands upright, beaming and open, and starts a slow and beautiful movement walking through the generations, from the past to the present, pouring light and love from the bowl.
When she arrives at her mother’s place, they fall into each other’s arms and sob. After a while I ask Gale to stand in her place as the daughter of her mother, with the previous generations standing behind her mother. I ask Nira to look at her daughter and tell her: “I am your mother, and you are my daughter, and I open my heart and pass love to you.”
I ask Gale to say to her mother: “I am your daughter and you are my mother and through you I receive life and love and will pass it to the next generations that will come after me”.
This is where this constellation ends. We all feel that there is a new opening on the way to healing this mother/daughter relationship.
Follow-up
Gale and Nira continue attending consultations for another eight meetings. The final meeting is very emotional; there is a meaningful exchange between them. We discuss what new resources they now have in place to enable them to deal with any difficulties that may arise and I then ask them to stand again at a place that feels right to them in the room and to choose something that symbolizes what they have between them now. Gale stands in the middle of the room and invites her mother to stand with her. They choose a huge stone in the shape of a womb, that has openings with shining crystals inside it. They hold the stone next to their heart and say that the bonding between them is as strong as the stone and that inside it is clean and shiny and there is room for new things to be in it, after all the dirt has been cleared. It is a very emotional moment with lots of tears and happiness. They remember how they were when they first came only nine sessions ago and how they are leaving now.
Nira says she is thinking of undertaking such a process with each of her five other children, but right now shejust wants to enjoy her new time with Gale. Gale says: “It is so great, I have been given a mother for life.” Nira replies: “I am happy that I have been given a connection of love with my daughter.”
After the end of the final consultation I feel full of joy myself and a little sad to say goodbye to Gale and Nira and to the process we have shared.
They both agree to my request to share their story with others.
I would like to thank these two amazing women for being willing to take such a complicated path together towards a loving and supportive relationship. And thank you to this constellation that was so moving and so precise.
Zohara is a Family Constellations Therapist and a Graduate of the Institute for the Study of Systemic Constellations in Israel founded by Yishai Gaster.
She has a wide experience of working with women, motherhood and the Feminine.