Black Sheep
For this last post about success and family system dynamics, I want to talk about one of the strangest things that can happen in family systems:
Entanglement with another person in the system.
You see, one of the fundamental rules of family systems is that everyone who was born into a family, belongs to it. No exceptions. And a family also cannot just decide that someone does not belong anymore.
Cue the black sheep.
Often, these are people who are diminished, outcast and hidden by their family. They are the ones nobody talks about. The family secret. The ones that are forgotten.
Except the family system doesn’t forget.
Laura has a day job that she hates. In the evenings and on the weekends, she writes stories, and she dreams about making a living as author. She reads all about self-publishing and hopes that she can do that one day.
Her friends encourage her, they beta-read her stories and love them. She has been through several editing stages with her two novels. But every time she starts the formating process for her stories, something inside her seems to break.
She finds herself overwhelmed with sadness in these moments. Resistance is sky-high, and nothing she has done can break the block to actually setting up her novel for publication. She can’t even send it to a friend to get it formated – even though they offered. On some days, it feels like a curse.
And Laura is completely baffled by this massive reaction.
Until 4th of July comes along and her family gets together. For the first time ever, she mentions that she “writes some stories” to her grandmother. And to her surprise, Grandma tells her about the little sister of her mother who was always writing, even as teenager. But that great-great aunt of Laura eloped with a man when she was 23, and was never heard from again. And nobody ever dared to mention Louise to her father because he would fly into a rage. Grandma herself only knows because her mother whispered the story to her when she got engaged.
Grandma nods her head sagely and tells Laura that nothing good can ever come from losing one’s head in fantasies.
Back home, Laura starts digging, and she gets lucky. One of her uncles is into ancestry and has set up a family tree that includes a scratched black and white picture of young Louise. Laura prints it out and puts it on her desk. And funny enough, that slight, enigmatic smile of her great-great aunt seems to inspire her. Formatting and publishing her books suddenly becomes easy.
Of course, this story is constructed. But I have seen similar things happen in my work.
So why was Laura so blocked in her writing?
She was stepping into Louise’s place, as the system needed someone to honor that woman who was outcast from the family. And Louise’s writing talent was never recognized or honored, either. Laura was “giving space” to that experience by living it out herself.
The moment she could honor her aunt’s existence and fate, she was free from the entanglement, and free to follow her own wishes about her writing.
Weird, huh?
If you’re stuck in your writing, and you have tried everything else, looking at your own family system might really be worth it. Maybe there is a secret or a black sheep that needs recognition. But don’t worry too much about it if this article doesn’t resonate with you. Entanglements do happen, but are not that common.
Unfortunately, family systems are very individual, so I can’t give you a quick tapping round to dissolve an entanglement. Instead, I’m giving you some sentences that could help you open up to finding out what’s going on. Because that is in the interest of the system.
Even though this is the weirdest thing I ever heard about family systems, I’m totally okay the way I am, and I’m now open to looking into my own family.
Even though I never heard of this kind of entanglement before, I’m okay the way I am, and I’m open to discovering more about it.
Even though this is really weird and woowoo stuff, I’m totally okay the way I am, and I give myself permission to feel a resonance if I’m caught in such an entanglement myself.
Your Turn:
How do you feel about speaking and book signings?
How strong is your family rule about visibility and fame?
What happened while you were tapping?
And finally – what are you creating right now?
Would love to hear from you!
Image Source: F. Moebius
PS: You’ll find my personal experiences with these beliefs in the comment section. Because I am tapping with these very sentences, I’m inviting you to join me on this journey, and share your experiences.
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