Growth Takes Root in a Past Laid to Rest (by Suzi Tucker)

Notes on the Workshop with Bert Hellinger in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (USA) - February 7-10, 2003
(German Translation : "Vergangenheit, die ruhen darf, ist die Wurzel des Wachstums".)

Sometimes I rush to write about Bert's workshops right after, while my head and heart are crowded with feelings and ideas and sensations all vying for attention. Sometimes I wait a while to look back at the minutes and hours and days. This time I felt compelled to let go before attempting to gather, and even still I know there will be pieces left unattended, unspoken, waiting for yet more time to pass.

But that's the nature of the work too, isn't it? Slow and evolving … quicksilver and surprising.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Outside the air is warm, palm trees guard the buildings, and the sky sweeps wide. Inside some 300 people have taken their seats for 300 different reasons and perhaps for the same one. Each person wears it differently - the hunger, the secrets and sadness, the violence and neglect, their own and that of others who came before. A little smile, an icy stare, a nervous giggle, a determined distance, an eager acquiescence, a readiness to fight, a desire for instructions, an inability to hear, there's room for everyone.

As cancer, and grief, and schizophrenia, and loneliness, and abortion, and adoption, and families lost, and cultures conquered, and death, and continuing life stand before us, the notion of healing seems very small, an almost insignificant idea in the face of the forces of being alive. Perhaps it's something else the soul craves. Circumstances take on their full dimension in the eyes of these beautiful, flawed people, like all people, like no one else in the world. And each will take his or her place, unique and common, in one family among all families, and we will all feel, even if we cannot always name, the weight of the movements.

Growth Takes Root

By now, many of us are familiar with the dependable and unpredictable nature of the work. A seemingly simple sentence may lead to the depths of the family soul, revealing just how complex a simple sentence can be. On the other hand, the most complicated of histories may be disentangled by gently tugging the right single thread. Tears may cover up callousness and compassion may be hiding beneath the surface of stone features.

And in this workshop, like others, time is told on a Dali clock. The past and future flow into one another and the present is mercurial. Representatives and clients and even observers enter into the field, empty of information and the petty data generated to explain away, to protect, to pretend, and to deny. Representatives and clients and even observers slip into the embodiment of something greater, poised to receive the deep and fleeting knowledge of other times and places.

When I, a child snatched from life by a Nazi, reach out to gently touch his shoulder … when I, a frightened mother, study the contours of my daughter's pain as she struggles to hold on when I cannot … when I, a suicidal teenager, fall to my knees to pay homage to a great-grandmother's dead baby… when I, a representation of death, hold the woman who stands before me as my daughter … when I, my body racked with disease, celebrate life even at this price … when I, who cannot receive love, reach out to the marauders and to the victims from generations ago and find that my arms are long enough to hold them all … when I, as one at the crossroads, lay the past to rest.

This fundamental dynamic emerges: to go on in peace, we must truly honor the past and all of its inhabitants. To do that, we must lay it to rest. This sense of laying to rest doesn't come in the familiar admonitions to "forget" or to "confront." When victims and perpetrators stand before each other, clearly, forgetting is not possible and solace is not to be found in confrontation. The past is not a place, not a fixed moment in time, it is everything that came before. Like Bert's river that doesn't ask for direction, it doesn't ask what it carries; the river carries it all. Thus, to forget or to confront has no power in the face of this immutable, ever-flowing entity. But to open one's arms to allow the full rush of water and sediment and life and death, now that is something. Then seeds are deposited here and there along the banks, and if we don't step on them, they will grow.

The Dream

They walk in grace. One woman, an elder, sits solidly beside Bert. She is not unsure. Bert smiles, "A powerful woman." She agrees. "Then you know all," he touches her lightly. She laughs and gestures that she knows just a tiny bit. "Good," Bert says. She sits content, understood. I think to myself that I would like to know that much.

The five women represent 48 Native tribes, and the past is fraught with the pain of a ravaged people. They came on the wings of a dream. For them, the dream is no less than a plan, and its guidance is to be heeded. They are in this room far from home, knowing before witnessing, in their bodies and souls, the depth of this work, knowing that the river carries all, the victims and the perpetrators, to the same place downstream and beyond. Knowing too that on the banks of the river, the seeds are already planted, if we can just keep from stepping on their tender shoots.