Immigration (Part 3) discusses the transgenerational emotional impact of immigration on individuals, families, and communities. I have just returned from a trip to Germany where I enjoyed my second intensive training in systemic constellations with the faculty of the International Systemic Constellations Association at Bernried, Germany. I followed that with a vacation touring a number of eastern European countries. Country after country I heard from locals about the impact of communism on their lives, their families, and their communities. I travelled through areas of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Croatia (part of former Yugoslavia), Hungary, and Slovakia and the Czech Republic (the former Czechoslovakia). Communism restricted immigration. Various factors including the lifting of the iron curtain in 1991 opened this region to mass emigration. The mass immigration of people around the world on the scale witnessed today is unprecedented. Violent conflict in this region forced immigration. It’s only today that we are understanding the need to heal the emotional wounds that accompany immigration. These unresolved emotional wounds may be travelling down epigenetically through the generations of your family undetected. However, their impact may be devastating if left unacknowledged and unaddressed.
Impact of Immigration
Immigration does play a significant role in the energy dynamics of family systems even if the immigration occurred generations ago.
https://www.peacefulpossibilities.ca/family-constellations-calgary-immigration-part-1/
https://www.peacefulpossibilities.ca/family-constellations-calgary-immigration-part-2/
Individuals immigrate to new regions of the world and they frequently, whether consciously or unconsciously, choose to leave their emotional trauma behind. What they don’t realize is that leaving the emotional trauma behind is not an option for them; the emotional trauma travels with them in their body to their new home. It doesn’t matter if you feel like the victim or the perpetrator, the cells of your body are carrying the unresolved ancestral and personal trauma of the past, waiting to be healed in the present. Openly addressing this suppressed emotional trauma is the way to keep the children and grandchildren of your family from continuing to carry this emotional legacy.
Family Guilt
It doesn’t matter if you feel like the victim or the perpetrator; you still need to address your family’s transgenerational emotional inheritence around immigration. If you feel like a victim, don’t be lulled into thinking that your family system has never been the perpetrator. The reason for coming to life is to explore the dualities as both the victim and the perpetrator and everything in between. You carry the DNA of both the victim and the perpetrator and your wellbeing requires you to acknowledge it, accept it, and have compassion for all those before you in your family system. Just as you benefit from and willingly accept the successes of your family system, it’s time to recognize the emotional burdens you may be carrying for your family system as well. Once you accept life as it was given to you, you will be able to release yourself from the burdens you carry for others. You will be free to live your own fate.
By releasing yourself and your family members from the energetic entanglements you carry or share with your ancestors, you will all be energetically stronger. When you learn from the past, let go of worrying about the future, and use your new healthy emotional responses to live in the present, you will find life balance and wellbeing.
Colonization
Immigration had a huge impact on the indigenous peoples of all regions of the world. In many countries or territories, people were massacred, oppressed, treated as slaves, starved, exposed to disease, displaced, and frequently, the women were raped and treated as spoils of war. The oppressed in one region of the world often moved on to become the oppressor in another region. The colonized moved and became the colonizer. The idea that ‘might’ makes right was lived by many peoples. Today we are watching many developed nations struggle to come to turns with immigration. It appears that fate is coming around full circle. Those who were once oppressed and colonized by the empire building developed nations are coming back to live in the homelands of their “former” oppressors (The use of the word “former” is problematic because many scholars argue that colonization still continues today). Where fear once stood in the hearts of the oppressed, it now stands in the hearts of the oppressors.
Impact of Immigration
Let’s look at an example of the impact of immigration. If you have trouble making decisions it might be because you are being pulled in different directions by the energy of different ancestral family members. Don’t ignore any of your family systems. If you know little to nothing about a family system then you likely have emotional healing work to do with regards to that family line. What is behind the silence or the secret? Sometimes parents attempt to protect children and intentionally don’t share the past. If this is the case than respecting the parent’s wishes is important. You can still do healing work even if you don’t know exact information. You can look up the history on your own. It will help you gain compassion for the emotional journey of your parents if it was so bad that they could not share it with you. They may have suppressed it so deeply that the thought of retrieving the information raises great fear. That doesn’t stop you from doing some research into the time period and the region of the world that prompted their immigration.
A key thing to remember as you look back at your family is that the family member may be a whole group of people who are not related to you through blood. They may be those who suffered at the hands of your blood relation or those who were harmed in some way. They too belong in your family system and they too want to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. This is where you might have to imagine the scenario experienced by your ancestors and ponder who might have harmed whom at any given point in time.
Time for Reflection
Take the time to sit with each new piece of insight that you gather. Talk to other family members to get the big picture as complete as possible. If you know nothing about your family system, perhaps you were adopted and have little information, then just know you have healing work to do and be creative and listen to the messages coming from within you. Maybe you only know the family ethnicity and approximately when they arrived in the new land, then do some research online about that time period in that part of the world. What was likely going on to impact your family system?
The ancestors are not looking for forgiveness. Forgiveness flows down from the one who came before to the one who came after, not the reverse. When a child attempts to forgive a parent or ancestor, they put themselves energetically in a superior position of power above their parent or ancestor and the child will end up suffering in some way. The parents and ancestors want to be understood and accepted, not forgiven. They want you to look back long enough to understand what they lived. They want you to look back long enough to gain compassion for who they were. They could only be emotionally what they were taught by others before them and around them.
The ancestors want you to understand and accept them just the way they were. This is not the place for wishful thinking. There is no place for blame or judgment. You create a deep soul movement or shift when you change the inner image you hold of your family members, family system, and all those who had to choose immigration as their most desirable option.
For the descendants, and by that I mean you or your children or grandchildren, to embrace life fully and with joy honours your ancestors who experienced immigration. Any heavy emotion you are carrying for your ancestors needs to be released from the cells of your body. It was their fate to struggle, however, it may not be your fate. It is your fate to create the best life for you and your family and to live it fully. This is emotional and spiritual healing work that is usually not accomplished in the head. Light a candle for the ancestor(s) or other family members you want to learn to embrace, no matter what ghastly things they may have had to endure or survive, and do your best to take them into your heart. This is how you learn compassion for the journey of others. Remember that everyone has a right to belong in the family system regardless of what they may have done or not done. Also, be aware that it is possible to carry the emotional wounds of the bystander who stood by and did nothing. Be open to whatever feelings and emotions that arise when you explore your ancestors and learn compassion.
Healthy Pot of Soup
If you are carrying heavy unresolved ancestral emotional responses and the soup for your cells is filled with unhealthy malignant ingredients, it’s time to start creating a new pot of soup. This is your emotional and spiritual healing work and it doesn’t have to be an unpleasant chore. Be creative and enjoy the process. It won’t likely be as easy as dumping out the old pot of soup and starting fresh. I wish it was but that’s not usually the case. The ego of the human being does get attached to the old status quo and it feels safe with what it knows, even if it is unhealthy and dysfunctional for you. Be gentle with yourself in the process of renewal. Name the unhealthy ingredients you want to release and have a picture in your mind of who in your ancestral family system that emotion belongs to rightfully.
For example, where does that unexplainable anger, pain, sorrow, grief, shame, guilt, fear, oppression, resentment, rage, or terror come from? The list of heavy emotions is just as long as the joyful light emotions. Some families have a fear of joyfulness. They will sabotage themselves to avoid that scary entity called joy. The family members feel within their deep inner world that they have always been the victims. They feel no inner connectedness to power or joy. Be aware that the pendulum swings both ways on the emotional spectrum. Picture yourself releasing and replacing unhealthy ingredients with healthy ingredients and go from there. What healthy ingredients are you bringing forward to replace the old malignant ones? Name them one by one and understand what they are healing in your family system. Find a way to tangibly release these heavy emotions – create a list and bury them, freeze them, burn them, or lock them in a box. Be creative with your release ritual. Be aware that addressing immigration is just one more layer of your healing journey.