By Kate Curran, Ph.D.
The more I am involved with Family and Systemic Constellations, the more I am convinced that if we want to shift the stuck, circular, fractal dynamics of racism and other divides in our country, we must first look at our own immigrant traumas. I write this article shortly after the incidents in Charlottesville, Va., and I know that by and large, this article will be read by a white, middle class, well-meaning audience – the immigrants and the settlers. Before we can look out and successfully affect the visible and the not-so-visible horrors of our own American situation, we must look within. A recent constellation session about chronic pain in my shoulder and leg revealed a woman keening over her dead baby in the Irish Great Hunger, intoning “Not another one,” with death all around her.
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“No one knows your name until you draw your last breath.” -- Rumi By Rosalba Stocco, MSW, RSW When I first heard this line from Rumi, it left me dumbstruck. What does it mean? It can’t be true. My family knows my name. My friends know my name. I knew my parents’ names. What in the world does it mean? “It means that people don’t really know you until after you are gone.” That’s what Jacqueline told me. And then the pieces fell together for me. How sad, my children will not really know me until I draw my last breath and then some? I then thought of my parents: Amalia Semenzin, my mother, and Luigi Cadorin, my father. When they died 20 and 30 years ago, I really thought I knew them. I knew them as their Canadianized youngest daughter. By Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP
For most of her life, Lucille had loved escalators – those amazing and efficient moving staircases that smoothly glided up and down in department stores, hotels and airports. She marveled at their construction and how they made life and travel easy and convenient. Then one day, there was nothing marvelous, easy or convenient about escalators. She was surprised – and shocked – that escalators suddenly seemed very scary. In fact, she found herself panic stricken when she stood at the top of the smoothly running steps of an escalator. Just the thought of placing her right foot on the first step as the stair moved downwards felt serious, like certain death. She knew that this frozen and body-tightening experience would be called a “phobia” in the world of mental health but felt embarrassed to discuss this strange experience with anyone. |
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