everyone matters

​Constellations are about inclusion. Once a friend told me of their visit to the Westminster Abbey for the ANZAC Remembrance day service. This was the First World War battle in Turkey where New Zealand, Australia and Britain fought together against Turkey. What struck me in his story was the fact that Turkish flag was laid in the ceremony by the Turkish soldier next to British, Australian and New Zealand flags. When I wanted to know why, he showed me these words written in a booklet for the ceremony ‘...the Union Flag and the flags of Australia and New Zealand are presented at the High Altar with the flag of Turkey in a sign of the reconciliation of old enemies...’ The ‘perpetrator’ has been included into the ceremony next to the ‘victims’. It had a place. 
 
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – the first President of Turkey after the war wrote: ‘Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives...you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.’ To Turkey those soldiers were enemies and in these words he acknowledges their place in the collective story of this land. 
 
A system seeks to include anyone who is excluded, forgotten, kept secret, not spoken about. It might find strange ways to do it – repeating scenarios, similar patterns, unexplainable health issues. System uses whoever is available to remember and to give place on some unseen level.
 
When you prepare for your constellation think of anyone in your family system who might have been forgotten for some reason. Without judgement or fear but as a fact of your own story, of how things really are, look for who is missing.