In this post I talk about what happened in the 8 - part series. If you haven't watched it and don't want it to be spoiled, watch the series first. In this post I talk about the content of the series, its obvious illustration of Constellation work and the application of Constellations which the series wonderfully exhibits.
The series starts by asking a question about the past staying with us and the series ends by each person becoming a better version of themselves, "Another Self."
"Is it possible that our past, whether we know it or not, is always saved somewhere ? And eventhough we forget it, does our past stay with us?
The story takes place in Turkey with a group of 3 life-long friends. Each with their own life challenges to face, one friend with cancer sets off and finds what later proves to be a game changer for herself and her friends too. What she finds is a man outside of the major city of Istanbul who does Constellation work, Zaman.
The series never calls it "Family Constellations" as we know it, but instead calls the Circles shown "Expanding the Origin Family - Expansion Circles." The premise is that each person joins his morning Circles and with help of "representatives", the other people reveal the origin of the problem they are facing in life today. This is exactly Constellation work and Expansion Circles is a great name, because in our healing and connection to the origin of problems we face today, we disentangle ourselves and therefore expand and gain freedom.
In nearly all the cases shown, the ancestral link was tragic. Several cases shown were ancestors needing to escape urgent and very difficult circumstances where some were left behind, or even killed as it was too difficult to bring everyone along. In one case the girl had always had trouble going into the water and could never explain why. The Expansion Circle revealed a story of ancestors who were escaping to another country by boat and a female ancestor had been knocked off the boat and drowned. She had been forgotten, lost and never talked about. We know in Constellation work that the ones who were never talked about again and suffered greatly are still present, and the invisible bonds of being linked by bloodlines are there and can have consequences on our lives today.
"The most powerful bonds are those with the ones who brought us into this life. Maybe what we call fortune or misfortune is the consequence of a step taken, or not taken, in the past."
As the quote from the series says, we are brought into this life by those who came before us, not just mother and father, but those who also brought them into this life - our ancestors. It's irrelevant if we knew the ancestor or not, because the invisible bonds, the bloodline and the DNA we share keeps us connected in life and after it. Another Self gives several examples of this for all different circumstances the characters are facing today. The woman with cancer later finds out that her father was a revolutionary and died because of it, only to be "replaced" by someone else later who raised her. These are innocent acts and what we consider today normal ways of getting on - whether it's a step parent or a community who raises a child after a parent passes on, but the link with an ancestor, especially a parent, is never lost. It's not strange that many cultures and families choose to not talk about the pain and heartache, thinking it's the best thing to do, but precisely the pain and heartache can't be erased and stays stored as memory in the body. Repressed emotions manifest somehow. Many fields of work today know that unprocessed pain and trauma come out in the form of illness, which was in fact linked to the case of the character with cancer in the series.
Another case was for a character who started having trouble with a shaking hand. As a surgeon, precision and steadiness were crucial in her work. The unexplained shakiness led her to get fired and it seemed like her life was falling apart after that with broken relationships and an unexpressed anger that controlled many aspects of her life. The Expansion Circle (Constellation) revealed a tragic story of an ancestor in a field of poppies who was killed by her own father when there were too many to escape, so one had to be left behind. In the ancestral story, the father's finger and hand naturally trembled as he pulled the trigger.
The short series of only 8 episodes shows the past ancestral stories of each character mixed in with their current life circumstances. The mother of one character was greatly critical of Zaman and the changes she saw happening to her daughter and her friends. Call it her fear of the unknown, the unexplainable or her fears of the truth being revealed that caused her to report him to the authorities. This worked for good in the end as other characters who had their own skepticism saw the power and importance of the work he was doing once it wasn't available. In the end, even the skeptics were convinced of the importance of exploring ancestral bonds in order to expand and be able to live their own lives with freedom, dignity and authenticity. The woman once afraid of water was surprised when she jumped into the sea after her son without questioning it. The surgeon realized her hand stopped shaking when she colored with a colored pencil and could say within the lines easily, coloring a poppy of all things.
The story ends with each character being changed, although it wasn't a fairy tale ending where everyone lived happily ever after. Healing is a constant thing and although big change and miracles can happen, more often changes are seen with shifts in wellness and perspective instead. The character with cancer in fact got ahead of herself due to her enthusiasm for the changes she was experiencing and stopped taking her medication. The cancer came back. Zaman never told her to stop taking her medication and he as a medical doctor himself had great respect for science and medicine. His life journey had also led him to the importance of healing the spirit though, which is so much of what Constellation work is about.
In the end, with imperfect yet changed selves and circumstances, the characters said they had come into a better version of themselves, "Another Self."
Highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl33KQP8b4
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