A systemic perspective
My client is 2nd born of 3 siblings.
Her father was adopted. He was also second born of 5 siblings.
When her father was 6, he was given in adoption to his maternal grandparents. Life, completely changed for him. He went from a life of luxury, to a home where everything was controlled. Including the amount of food he was given to eat. His adoptive parents were known to be stingy. Not enough to eat, not enough to spend and worse still he was given the hand me downs of his biological siblings. In my clients own words she said “Father could not fulfil his basic necessities as a child. My father always felt that when I have money, I will spend it, show it, buy good cars etc.”
Bert Hellinger, who developed constellation work, has observed that there cannot be a good enough reason to give a child away if both or even one parent is living. Even if the parents are poor, children prefer being with parents. The sense of belonging and identity in the family of origin, is very important in order to succeed in life.
My clients father, who was adopted by his own grandfather, his whole life was driven by his need to prove himself. He worked hard to make money but spent it on excesses. He owned many cars and watches, he overspent, to prove himself better than his brothers
When his brothers cheated him in business, he could not get over the shock and went into a depression. He was 42 years old. My client has memories of her father in that period of his life. She was 14 years old. She saw her father struggling for money. “He sat at home day and night, watching movies. When he got angry he threw things. But most times he was like a dead body lying on the sofa. We had a fear of surviving the next day” said my client.
At 42 – the same age that my clients father went into depression – my client is also going through money struggles. She has no means of earning, feels money is blocked and there is no flow, no source of income.
But the case gets more interesting. The maternal grandparents who adopted my clients father, were both themselves adopted. The grandfather belonged to a very poor family where they did not have enough for one square meal. He was adopted by a rich stranger at age 6.
Even though he went from poverty to wealth, he remained loyal to his family of origin. He lived a miserly life, was famous for his stinginess and never enjoyed any of the wealth of his adoptive parents. Nor did he allow his adopted son, who is my clients father, to live a good life.
The maternal grandmother was adopted by her maternal uncle. She was taught to work very hard. She was not given any time to play. She never rested. She married for money. She just wanted to escape from her hard life. My client had memories of this adoptive grandmother crying everytime she prayed. She always complained that she got no recognition and no love.
So not only was my clients father separated from his family, both his adoptive parents were also given away by their own parents for adoption.
My clients was imitating the fate of her father. She was duplicating the same lack of money and at the same age as her father. She felt unseen by her siblings, just like her father had. And she felt unacknowledged by her parents.
In childhood, when we see the pain and trauma of our parents, we want to do something to help. But we are helpless as children. When we grow up, we carry this subconscious loyalty to our parents and we may recreate similar situations in our life, as a way to feel closer to our parent or even as a way to find a solution to that past situation, where we felt helpless as children.
My client was 2nd born, so was her father. He struggled to make ends meet at 42 and my client was struggling in a similar way at the same age.
With this systemic perspective on the issue, the client can understand why her father never saved for a rainy day. Why he spent all the money recklessly. This helps her to be more understanding of him. She does not blame him or hold resentment towards him for his actions. This frees up my client to take a fresh look at her life and make better decisions, not coming from a place of resentment and anger but rather from a place of understanding and love. It allows love to flow in the system. Love which was blocked by anger and resentment in the client towards her father.
The effects of these adoptions carry on for generations if they are not dealt with. The child is excluded from his own family of origin, his parents and siblings are excluded from his life, he loses his sense of belonging to his family of origin, he loses his place and his identity and may have a lifelong struggle of trying to figure out who he is and where he belongs.
Finally, what does adoption do to the parent child relationship. Even if the child is in the same family, he is now disconnected from his parents. There is a physical separation and an emotional separation. The mother cannot express the same love that she did for her child and the child feels abandoned and rejected. the family that they go into, they need the child to fill a void, because they cannot have children, or because they don’t have a male heir and so the child is serving a purpose. His purpose defines his life.
We also worked with the stories of the grandparents, which brought shifts in the clients understanding of her grandparents. Our lineage is our identity and when we judge our ancestors, we also judge the part of them we carry in us. We see our parents in us, and when we do the same things, for which we judged our parents, we also judge ourselves.
Constellation work resolves not only our trauma, it also brings peace to the system. As the clients understanding and perception changes, the way they perceive their life and the story they made up about themselves changes and this allows shifts to happen in the clients life.
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