Acknowledging

Acknowledging what was. 

Acknowledging what is. 

That’s one of the principles in Family Constellations: Acknowledgment. 

Acknowledgment gives a sense of completion. When you consent or recognize something that happened to you, you can finally get closure and so move on. 

We reorder the past by being fully in the present moment. We heal the past by staying grounded in the present moment. The present moment is our foundation to work on our past without feeling uprooted. 

But, how many of us are stuck in the past? Hoping that things could have been different. How many of us are still holding on past anger? Hoping that rage and resentment will finally create a shift. A lot of us. It’s hard to make peace when we are unable to understand the entire situation and instead of feeling with our gut and connecting with our emotions, we overthink, we overcomplicate, we overdo it while actually, by the simple act of acknowledging we can finally create a movement of peace and so wholeness. 

I know it sounds too ‘simple’, too ‘easy’ as the more things are hard and complicated, the better it is for our personal growth, that’s bullshit! We should always go back to basics, go back to our foundation, go back to our inner child and with a lot of Love and Compassion, fully grounded in our present moment, take care of any occurrences that we did not fully understand at that time and in order to cope from, we developed a survival mechanism – anger, aggressiveness, guarded, depressed and so on – and that latter was useful but we forgot to switch from it and go back to our Life and the simple pleasure of existing. 

So, today is the first day of November – Thanksgiving will be celebrated soon but here is an exercise that I hope will help you to reconnect with the amazing person that you are. 

Have a seat. Take a few deep breaths. Look at where you are, pay attention to the colors, the sensations of your body, how do you feel? How does your body feel? With what are you connected? Grab a piece of paper and a pen and start acknowledging all of the beautiful things that you witnessed, achieved, worked on, people who you loved, favorite memories of your childhood, anything that makes your heart full. And, then acknowledge the difficult moments, the painful memories, the losses, the misunderstandings and anything that makes you feel “not enough”. 

These two lists are valid, they made you as you are now and just one by one, thanks all of those events, there is no right or wrong, just experiences, bow in front of all them, take all of them within you, make room, make peace, bring Love, Compassion and understanding. Feel it deeply in your body that everything is exactly where it needs to be and you can say goodbye to all of them, knowing that they will stay behind you, supporting you and guiding you because you learned a lot, you’ve changed, you’ve been polishing your true self so chin up, acknowledge the fabulous woman / man that you are and give yourself a big hug. And then finally, if you have a family, friends, people who you love, call them, look at them and tell them out loud: “I acknowledge you. I love you.” 

“Peace brings together what was separated before. Therefore, peace is a movement of mutual recognition, a movement of balancing differing needs and of restoring disturbed human relationships back to order.” Bert Hellinger