The Love Project- Family

Following on from my last post in The Love Project series I'm going to write more about family today. You can read my last post here: http://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-love-project-family.html



Birth/Biological Family

I remember reading somewhere about how our families are our first experience of love. Our relationships with our families are the first ones we form in life. Things that happen in childhood can affect us deeply and we often carry trauma into adulthood. Also sometimes you can get stuck in old family patterns, like with mental health or a tendency to addiction. For example there is a history of depression in my mum's family. I'm going to share a few links about healing family trauma and patterns.


First of all here's a link to a website about healing family trauma: http://healingfamilytrauma.com/



They mention a type of therapy called "Family Constellations" on the site. I think I've heard this term before but I didn't really know what it was. It's described as a combination of Western therapy and indigenous healing and was founded by a man called Bert Hellinger who grew-up as a teenager in Nazi Germany, became a priest and later travelled to South Africa as a missionary where he worked with the Zulu people and learnt their traditions

For more on Bert Hellinger and Family Constellations visit these links:

http://www.hellinger.com/

UK sites:

 http://www.hellinger.co.uk/

 http://www.constellationsolutions.co.uk/index.htm


If you found those useful you might also like these sites:

http://wakeup-world.com/category/love-life-gratitude/trauma-healing/

http://upliftconnect.com/family-trauma/


 Here are a couple of links about ancestral and family patterns:

http://viendamaria.com/2015/05/your-parents-and-grandparents-are-definitely-stopping-you-from-having-the-life-that-you-want-and-deserve/

http://gwynnraimondi.com/ancestral-stories/

Also here is a good post from Maria Kang about healing her relationship with her father:

http://www.mariakang.com/2005/09/13/language-of-love/

And one from Deliberate Receiving about why your behaviour changes around your family (this is Law of Attraction related): http://www.deliberateblog.com/2011/03/29/why-being-around-your-family-turns-you-into-a-16-year-old/

 It's also worth mentioning that a resource often used for healing is Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT) aka "tapping". I haven't had a lot of success with it but maybe I haven't used it consistently enough. If you'd like to learn more visit these sites:

 http://www.tapping.com/
 
 http://www.emofree.com/eft-tutorial/tapping-basics/how-to-do-eft.html


A good way to feel connected to your family is to look at old family photos, as I suggested in my previous post (see above for link). Unfortunately I don't have any photos of my dad's ancestors or many of his family at all but in recent years I've connected with one of my cousins on his side, so I have a few current photos now. :)

If you like family pictures check out this post by Celestine Chua:  http://personalexcellence.co/blog/childhood-photos/



Adult Family (Partner and Kids)

So far I've focused on birth family. There's also the matter of the family you build in adulthood and that's a whole new subject. I don't have any kids so it's not something I know about but I like to read about other people's families. A site I follow is Baby Making Machine.com. I enjoy reading about their family life. They're also an interracial family and as I've mentioned before, I'm mixed race so it's nice to see families like mine.

On that subject I recently found a site about a mixed race family which is good. I've had a hard time finding positive mixed race resources on the internet (there are some but a lot of stuff seems to be negative) and even set up my own Pinterest boards on that subject (Positive Mixed Race Board and Positive Mixed Race Board 2) so I was pleased to find this website: http://www.mixedracefamily.com/.

I also like these sites about family life (not mixed race related):

http://www.butlerpartyof4.com/

http://tessarayanne.blogspot.com

These family sites inspire me to think about the kind of family life I'd like to have one day. :)


When I started this project in October 2013 I intended to explore different areas- self love, romantic love, family love and friendship. They weren't necessarily in that order and I sometimes went back to an area. Now I've explored them all but I think I'll keep going because there's more to write about. The more I write, the more I see they're all related. Your self love is really important because you are the only person you know for sure you can rely on (although that's not to say you shouldn't rely on others as well and allow them to support you) and the longest relationship you will ever have. And then family really affects us throughout our lives as do friends, they all influence how we relate to other people and the romantic relationships we have in our lives.

I started this project because I wanted to have more love in my life. Since then I've found a supportive friendship group online and I feel the love from them. I'm also learning more about having self worth. I haven't found the romantic relationship I'm looking for but hopefully I'm closer to it. This whole thing has helped me to express myself too.

 If you've read from the beginning thank you for sticking with me. And whichever post/s you read, I hope they help you in some way. :)