COUPLE/FAMILY THERAPY

When the music changes, so does the dance.

—African proverb

Each family is its own forest, complete with an ecosystem shaped over generations, with every member playing a vital role. Planted in soil, we grow absorbing a way of being that feels like THE ONLY WAY. Unspoken rules for conflict, harmony, closeness, emotion, and communication deeply shape the way we reach for light and offer ourselves to the world. West African Dagara medicine man Dr. Malidoma Somé said that some of us are born in exile…and it can take a lifetime to find our way home. 

Compounded by traumas such as immigration, the violence of patriarchy, colonization, and other systems of oppression have become part of our psyches, our bodies, and our ways of being. These jail cells are known, and compared with the unknown, they can feel safe. What is done to us, we do to ourselves, and to others. In this way, the victim becomes the perpetrator becomes the victim. And the cycle of pain continues. 

As we begin to shake these iron bars through awareness, through being witnessed, through naming and feeling patterns of overwhelm, freeze, numbness, and habit, we learn about the true safety that lies in connecting to the breath, the heart, and the body. This can be a terrifying and confusing process, as these scripts were hard wired at an early age, for survival. We have to repeatedly remind ourselves that we are not five years old, that this person facing us clothed as a partner, friend, coworker, or boss, is not our parent, and that it is possible to choose differently, over and over again. 

Through healing, we can build the connection that we long for— inside and in the world. We can find our way home to a larger family— a sense of belonging in our bodies, our communities, and in the ever changing flow of life.