Healing Families After the Holidays
By Eve Wilson
Many people rush toward holiday family gatherings with joy, others drag their feet but go anyway, and some choose not to participate at all. Family holidays present many challenges and even greater opportunities for healing. Here is my Healer’s perspective on the bigger gifts in retrospect after the holidays.
Why are family holidays so loaded, and what are some opportunities for healing?
· Small children are blissed out with all the fun! Everyone is glad to see the people they love, even if that love is edged with limitations or challenges. But shadows of the past may seem to hover at the edge of vision, and there may be an inner tension and an outer feeling of expansion all at the same time.
· Mom looks at her adult children and maybe both amazed at their strengths and gifts, and aware of her shortfalls in raising them and how those are still holding them back in important ways. She may wish that she had been as mature as she is now when they were small.
· Dad may feel a distance and difficulty crossing barriers caused by upbringing and things he learned from his own parents. It may make him sad and lonely, even while he is enjoying being with his family.
· Adult children may feel as though they return to the family home and regress to a less mature way of seeing themselves. Sibling relationships can facilitate these feelings, replaying all the old ego dynamics, as can relationships with parents.
· Where there has been abuse of substances, or emotional, mental or physical abuse all these will be multiplied exponentially.
As a Healer who works with the dynamics of soul groups (those that incarnate together repeatedly to evolve and ascend) I feel honored when invited to work with an individual member of a family to access their family dynamic including genetic and soul group contracts. I am deeply respectful of each person’s roles and the greater purposes unfolding in the family. I work to strengthen the positives, so people can own the gifts they have earned and be empowered by them, and help the negatives be resolved and released as people are ready to do so.
Perhaps you can imagine how as a Spiritual Healer, I can rise above the individuals and their experiences to the equivalent of a satellite view. From there I can see into the past and into the future of family and soul group. Repeating patterns emerge including dynamics and roles, limitations, strengths and gifts, obstructions, diseases and the purposes they each fulfill. My attention is drawn to a time and place where an insertion of unconditional love, compassion, and healing would be welcomed into the stream of time past, present or future.
This will act as a damn breaker to set free the true nature of body, emotion, mind, spirit, and soul for each one affected, when they are ready to receive it. Healing of wounds from the past allows clearing of the toxic debris of life and change. Then the wisdom and strength of each soul in the future can be brought back through time to ease the transition further, making changes seem to be natural and familiar, although they are new.
I love how I can see that an individual who is very strong, but who sees themselves as vulnerable, weak or lacking influence, may quite reasonably perceive an overbearing individual as a persecutor in their lives. But from this spiritual “satellite” perspective it can be seen that the persecutor is pushing that individual to release their self-limitation and claim their own authority and power.
Like the oppositional weight on a workout machine, the individual may feel like they continue to draw these types of challenges from the world around and feel weaker because of it; when really, they are getting stronger and developing the needed muscles to be whole. They feel weaker because the weight continues to increase until they reach a point where these issues become easy for them to handle. Knowing that this is the case, can help them choose to step into their power and then no longer require that outer resistance and opposition to grow.
There are soul contracts at work in all our relationships, but most strongly in our families of origin. The dynamics we contract for in childhood become the basis for the fulfillment of our purpose in the world. Even if we choose not to spend time with our families, these lessons continue to make us grow.
Families are impactful teachers, whether teaching through love or something less than love; the gifts are nonetheless valuable and needed. The strengths you gain by growing and healing through your experiences provide leverage in spirit for others who need it. We are all connected, and you are a gift, always.
Eve Wilson
