CHAPTER 1 - Your Birthright to Belong

“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.” - Maya Angelou

I first heard this quote from Brené Brown during a podcast she was on. She described the meaning of it by saying, "true belonging is a spiritual practice. It's the sacredness of both being a part of something but also the courage to stand alone. And for the people who have the courage to stand alone, we know we're at risk [of connection]. It's a sense of being a part of something even when we disagree, have a difference of opinion, or we love something different - that's the mark of true belonging. To be able to say, 'yes I am a part of something bigger but I also can stand alone when I need to. You belong everywhere and nowhere and that is liberation."

This struggle is especially true in families. We are individuals, yet deeply tied to those around us. And, the same is true for our family members. Sometimes, we will do whatever it takes to get the connection we need so we feel we belong - even if it costs us something.

Belonging is defined in the dictionary to be a member or part of a community or rightly placed in a specified position.When I define belonging in family systems, I use it to describe someone’s inherent worth. If you were born into a family system, you belong there. If your soul chose this family system to be a part of for 1 minute in the womb or 100 years, you belong there. Nothing and no one can take away your belonging to a family system. It’s intrinsic and doesn’t waver. But we tend to confuse belonging with fitting-in. Fitting-in is flexible, it can change from day to day, and rests on the concept of interests, beliefs, ideas, hobbies, etc. Things that can change over time. You can find a group of people to fit-in with for anything. And while you belong with any group you’re a part of, your worth of being a part of it does not depend on if you decide to leave the group or not.

Our roots are a deeply important part of us and our identity. As you read this book, you are going to be invited to think openly about what parts of your roots you love and want to carry forward, and which ones you are ready to transform. I believe that every single family system has the duality of peaks and pits. Of gifts and not-so-gift-like traits. We can always look at our families and find something we can take as a gift, even if it comes from something painful. Maybe those painful things woke you up and helped you remember your voice and who you are. I often find myself in moments of deep privilege and thanking my ancestors out loud alone in the car for all the struggles they went through so that I could be here and write a new story. (And if that just brought up something conflicting inside of you, we’re going to get to that).

I was raised by an entrepreneurial Lebanese Maronite father and an American mother of German-English descent who tried her best to adopt a lot of the traditional beliefs and rituals from my Dad’s Middle Eastern culture, yet struggled. As a child, I deeply integrated myself into the Catholic Church, my Lebanese heritage, and my family. I found purpose and hope in religion and went onto be involved in Campus Ministry in High School. But as I got older, stepped outside of my bubble and saw the world, I began to understand many other truths that existed out in the world besides my own. After my grandfather, grandmother, and aunt all passed away within 13 months of each other when I was nearly 20 years old, I went through my first deeply spiritual experience and became obsessed with death and near death experiences. From there, it was a door that flung wide open and called to me so deeply - I haven’t really looked back. As I became an adult, I’ve really had to look at my own relationship with the things I grew up around and ask myself what feels true for me, even if it doesn’t adhere to family “norm”. I’ve come to learn that there are many things around morals and values from my family that I really admire and implement into my own life. But on the other side of that same coin, there are some very traditional beliefs that I simply cannot get behind. I’ve been able to hold space for the gifts of these parts of my childhood, have grace for myself as I learn to navigate my own authentic path, and stand in my truth.

When it comes to our families, we carry this deep primal need from conception to belong. How connected do we feel to the people around us and if we don’t, what does that mean about us? We take it personally and of course we do. For the first 10 years of our lives, everything is about us. We need Mom’s love, emotional connection and attunement. We need Dad’s love, direction, protection, and support. Then we naturally get so much attention for just being these cute little squishy chubsters.

But what if that doesn’t happen? What if our little bodies are wired for connection, dependency, and love and we have parents who are emotionally or physically detached, distant, or removed. What happens when our bodies have the felt sense we’re not safe or loved before our brains do. What happens when we aren’t someone’s whole world and our development gets stunted emotionally because we are still looking for love and approval that we matter?

So we grow up looking for people like us, people who understand us and our pain. We try to find our tribe and sometimes, we are questioned for the people we find ourselves amongst. We often may call them our “chosen family”. And although we may be absolutely right about how at home and loved we feel with them, it reflects something deeper. We need them because we don’t feel we have the love we wanted from home. We’re angry, repressed, resentful, and we feel that something is “off” with our families and maybe we can’t pinpoint why. We never feel good enough, we have trust issues, and we want revenge or to act out to get someone’s attention that we’re hurting because we can’t find the words to say, “I’m sad, lonely, and feeling disconnected from you. Do you love me?”

Welcome to feeling like the black sheep. And this is why the black sheep has such a negative societal connotation - because there’s truth to it! There can also be many black sheep in a family - not just one. Sometimes the need to be the only resident black sheep is just our need to feel special or different from the people that hurt us.

And here is where we come back to belonging.

If you knew, truly knew, that no matter what you did, said, or felt, you still belonged… how might that shift things for you?

Whether things have been beautiful, painful, or somewhere in between, what if your soul chose this family system for your growth, your evolution, your becoming?

Would you stop fighting your family… and start accepting yourself?

When I started really exploring my own relationship to belonging, I created some affirmations that hung on my wall near my meditation pillow for an entire year. I said them over and over again until I started to believe them. You may want to write them on post-it notes and leave them around your house too, if they deeply resonate.

I belong because I exist.
Belonging reflects my intrinsic value and that's not up for negotiation.
Fitting in is not the same as belonging.
I have a role in this family, even if it's not always recognized or validated the way I'd like it to be.
I am important to myself
I lovingly take care for my feelings because I matter to me.
I am love. I am light. I embody loving connection. I am worthwhile getting to know.
I am an important root in my family systems tree + me being alive in it affirms that!

—

Before Family Constellation Therapy ever had a formal name, it existed in the rituals and tribal knowledge of the Zulu people of South Africa. In the 1950s, a young German priest named Bert Hellinger left behind the structured world of the Catholic Church to live among the Zulu for what would become a transformative 16 year period. Although he came as a missionary, it was the Zulus who became the real teachers.

Bert witnessed something that would forever shape his understanding of human beings. He witnessed the way the Zulu worked out conflict, navigated grief, held hands after turmoil, and sat with each other despite their differences in the midst of collective pain. He watched how human they were when the rest of the world felt separate. He was also most astounded with the way the Zulu honored their ancestors. Not as a concept or superstition, but as truth. They understood that the dead are not gone; they are present as spirits and as they live through their family members.

In my own language, I might say the souls & the stories of our ancestors and family members are still with us even when they cross over energetically and epigenetically. Hellinger realized something revolutionary: so much of human suffering stems from unconscious entanglements in the family system, especially when someone in the family lineage had been forgotten, excluded, or wronged. (I might say: the unhealed trauma and affect of said trauma’s that went acknowledged became epigenetic and energetic patterns, beliefs, curses, or cycles in the family system)

In Zulu teachings, these disruptions of harmony in the family that came from unhealed trauma created imbalance in the spiritual field of the family. What Hellinger later called the “Family Soul” or “Systemic Field.” Think of it like you are one part of a larger energy field that is your family system. Spirit has shown me something very similar. Similar to the name “constellation”, Spirit shows me that each individual person has their own light, presence, and existence in a family system. This is their role, but trauma, secrets, or fears can throw the system out of balance. However, we are connected to the greater existence of the star constellation and what we go through individually plays a big role in the felt sense of the larger system. We are both one part and the whole system - more proof of our belonging.

Bert began to formulate the idea that healing must come from restoring order, belief of belonging, and balance to the family system. Healing came through ritual, through acknowledgment, through restoring “right relationship”, and through love. Right relationship is when each person is in their rightful role within the system, with clarity, boundaries, and recognition. Meaning, Dad is in Dad’s role, not replaying the trauma of Grandpa. We need you in the front of your lineage and not somewhere else mixed up in other ancestral drama because it wasn’t healed. What this does if it allows us to be free on our own journey and explore our true selves on this ever evolving journey of life without the unnecessary burdens created by unhealed family trauma. Family Constellation Therapy is lightening the energetic and epigenetic load. It’s reminding us that communities once used to be safe unlike in today's world. But it does not do all the work and we must know that we can’t give our power away to just one modality or to the ones that guide us through this work. It’s all just bringing us back home to ourselves.

The Zulu didn’t ask, “What’s wrong with this person?” They asked, “What happened in the lineage that needs to be seen?” This is how you free yourself.

This way of seeing stayed with Hellinger when he returned to Europe and began his work as a psychotherapist. Blending what he learned from Gestalt, group therapy, and psychoanalysis with the ancestral wisdom of the Zulu, he birthed a new kind of healing work rooted in relational truth. What became known as Family Constellation Therapy (FCT) was never just a technique. It was, and still is, a remembering.

Although Hellinger’s approach has been refined and adapted over time, at its core it remains influenced by Zulu phenomenology:

● The interconnectedness of all beings across generations.

● The importance of ritual and acknowledgment.

● The soul’s deep need for belonging and order

He often credited the Zulu people as the original teachers of his method, saying they taught him about the soul’s natural desire to move toward balance and inclusion, a kind of relational truth that transcends cultures and trends.

When it comes to belonging, Bert was very clear that this is one the fundamental needs of someone who is in a family system. Hellinger believed that belonging is more important than happiness, success, or even survival. At a subconscious level, children will sacrifice anything, even their own well-being, to remain loyal to and included within the family system. This is why people unconsciously repeat patterns of addiction, depression, failure, etc. Because those patterns tie them to someone who was previously excluded, unloved, or someone they feel disconnected to. They are trying to find connection and we would rather suffer the loss of the self than be cast out. We will search for that outcasted person in the lineage subconsciously to try to balance the family system and make things right. We will bond ourselves to the person we need love from the most in order to finally feel we matter. We take it on because someone has to and it’s our Soul who raises a hand. Whether or not we answer the call and do the work in our human experience is entirely our free will and choice. But if you’re here, it's safe to say you’re off to a great start.

Dr. Gabor Maté might also say this but in a different way. Our deep primal need to be in connection with our caregivers, and the lack of it, drives us into a compulsion to fill a void and find control over something that feels deeply painful, out of control, and abandoning. This is how we experience blocks in our own life and why I take intentional time with my clients in sessions to understand the stories of the past. Because if you want success, true love, health, and all your heart's desires and no matter what you do, you can’t seem to find your way forward, the chance of you being enmeshed in an old painful story of someone in your lineage is highly likely. And yet, no one is looking there because most of the time we don’t know the stories of the past or don;t want to look there. Often if we feel rejected by others, we reject back - the brain's greatest protection mechanism. And this is why FCT is so valuable! You can truly step into the shoes of a family member in an energy field and understand how their unhealed stuff has been passed down to you or how you’ve been enmeshed in the unhealed stories of the past. Aka what’s been blocking you or keeping you stuck.

According to Hellinger, every family member has an equal right to belong, no matter what they did, what happened to them, or how others feel about them. This includes:

● The mentally ill

● The addicts

● The “black sheep”

● The abortions or miscarriages

● The victims and the perpetrators

● The people who have been shunned from the family

Basically, the people we want to shun or forget from the family system because there is so much pain or hurt around that person are the exact people we need to give energetic space to in the family system. That doesn’t mean you have to be friendly with or close with an abuser or even a murderer. It just means that they deserve a role in the family too. Regardless of what they did. (And I’m gonna bet that most times, that person is the harmful one because they’re out of place too.) They have a wound around belonging and love and chose to take it out on others which is never condoned, but it is important to witness.

When someone is forgotten, excluded, dies early, or rejected, their absence creates a black hole in the system, and someone in a later generation may unconsciously step in to balance the family system or even atone for the wrongdoings.

Oftentimes we do not know that we are staying loyal or “in line” with the trauma of our ancestors until we do this work. We think we are cursed, not meant for more, or get bogged down by the exhaustion of “trying everything” only to feel the same way. For me, this work has allowed me to break free from the family system’s way of doing things in the past and rewrite a new story for the lineage. I didn’t ever look at the stories of my Grandmother’s and see how their lives, health issues, beliefs, or fears were playing out in my own life. I didn’t even realize that I needed to see, witness, honor, and acknowledge their pain (the same pain that was showing up in me) to become free.

As I’ve come to understand belonging, I’ve realized that being true to ourselves brings its own kind of risk, and with that risk can come unexpected grief and confusion.

• “What if I stop obsessing about my diet all the time? What will we have to talk about?”

• “What if I stop relating to people through drinking alcohol, even when I don’t really want to or feel shame the next day? What will our emotional connection point be?”

• “What would happen if I said no because it felt right for me rather than saying yes because I know it would be the ‘right thing to do?’ Would I be accepted?”

These are things I've contemplated and as someone who has spent their whole life worrying about what other people think, if I'm good enough in others eyes, or if what I do is acceptable - it was healthy for me to start looking at my role in my family through a different lens. To discover who I am underneath all the “should’s” or worries. To know that my worth has never relied on the idea of fitting in or not, but rather the intrinsic knowing that if I’m alive and I’m here, there’s a damn good reason for it.

So, will you own who you truly are, even when it risks connection?