The filling day

I have just come back from the most astounding, enriching family day at the beach.

If you can imagine, my family is spread pretty wide. Cousins flung from either side of the country - my mother's relatives settled predominantly in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne - so we are separated by distance and always have been. Add various inter-generational rifts (what appear to be genetic methods of coping with situations too difficult to express in words) and this has further contributed to separation and estrangement. Let's just say, it's rather commonplace at least on one side of my line.

My oldest cousin turns 50 this year. She is 15 years older than me. I remember her as the coolest, most lovely and nurturing girl - the one who willingly had me over to stay, as a spritely 6 year-old, at her home when she had her baby (and I was so besotted by her little girl during a trip to WA that I had taken with my mother). She was the one who got married the same year as Charles and Diana. I thought she was living a fairytale and I was always a bit starstruck by her.

I haven't seen my cousin since I was eleven. But I would know her in any crowd.

In recent years, I have heard from various members of the family that my cousin has taken an interest in the genealogical lineage of my mother's family. When my great aunt died earlier this year, my ensuing trip to the family home in remote outback Australia ignited a drive in me to remember my roots. This ties in very neatly also to my energenetics studies - the energy locked up in our genetics, basically - which have, these past 12-18 months, turned to unravelling the intricate webbing of genetic patterning (the stuff that isn't locked up in physiological DNA, but that which is energetic - passed on down the line, in much the same way as the physical characteristics).

Imagine my utter surprise today to discover that my cousin has been "hoping to learn more about healing the energetic side to a family's history." My ears pricked up when she said this. She referred to it as "healing the family tree". And imagine her keen interest when I told her, rather awestruck, that I had been learning how to recognise and decode family genetic patterns - the outmoded "ways" that carry down our genetic lines as patterns, overlaying our natural original self.

There was a bit of a grin and a slow head-nod of recognition for us both then, as we looked at each other, suddenly realising we were both striving to learn and uncover - from different ends of the same spectrum - this same thing. It's not very common, one has to admit, to hear about anyone studying their family pattern (not the tree and who was in it and who was born/married/connected to whom, but more the patterns of their ancestry and what they passed on). And as they go, let's just say our family has a few DOOZIES of recurring patterns!

I feel honoured that this chance catch-up (for they have been to Melbourne before on fleeting visits but we've not caught up before today) has given me a connection, or reconnection, to this beloved cousin. And now I have another family member in the know about our specific family dynamic - the strange, delicate, dysfunctional, unique and beautiful ways - to bounce theories and ideas off.

I have heard of courses such as Cutting The Ties That Bind and so forth. These aim, basically speaking, to safely and respectfully allow the individual to recognise and remove themselves from family patterns (or societal ones, for that matter) that do not fit for them. What we're doing seems to be something slightly different to that. At any rate, I know what I am seeking is a real understanding of where each member of my ancestry was 'coming from' as much as I can, in order that I might wholly accept that individual and their monumental role in shaping the generations that followed, right down to li'l ol' me... And Lolly, for that matter.

For, once again, that is what I am doing all this for. It's for her. My LGBB. For my further training, yes (and what better way to learn how to guide others than to first go through the tough trials yourself - heal the healer, etc etc...), but ultimately it really is to safeguard the way for her.

There may be more I'd like to share about this, but anything more specific might be best left for the private blog sometime in the near future.