09/16/2026
No Contact: Some Considerations
[This is the short essay I included in our recent email newsletter. It was inspired by reflection I've been doing lately on the movement I see called 'no contact.' Because Family Constellations healing is involved with reconnecting what has been separated so that the love that got restricted somewhere in the family lineage can flow again through the generations, I have a lot of thoughts:]
There’s a trend called No Contact I’ve been watching for the last year or so, in which people consider or choose breaking off communications with their family, or certain family members. I have many thoughts and feelings on the subject as I continue to think about it and reflect on it. I plan to share more in future essays. This first one might serve as a brief overview of some of the terrain I’ve covered myself as well as in exploring with hundreds of clients their own painful challenges with family dynamics.
I support each person’s choices and what gives them their best sense of autonomy and agency. There are times when creating distance and separation in order to heal from abuse is necessary for healing. At the same time I’ve seen how that decision might be a part of the longer process of coming to peace, and that there are additional considerations we might not know about without further exploration and guidance through the dimensions of the family soul.
In the healing we practice there is an emphasis on seeing one’s self in the larger picture of the family system and the ancestral lineage. It’s hard to understand the influences of the ancestors’ lives from the limited perspective of the individual self. It might help to think about the way a hologram works. An original holographic image is produced using a laser beam split into two parts. One part- the reference beam- is directed by mirrors onto a photographic plate directly. The other, called the object beam, is directed onto whatever’s being photographed- let’s say a coffee mug- in a way that scatters the beam so it lands on the same photographic plate while carrying all the information about the mug. The way the two beams interact on the photographic plate creates an interference pattern. When a clean reference beam is passed through that plate, the illusion of a three dimensional mug appears floating in space.
Here’s the part I find fascinating, and relevant to family healing. You could break the original plate into pieces, choose any broken piece- whatever the shape and size- and pass the reference laser through it and still recreate the 3-D image of the mug. The difference is, it wouldn’t be as sharp as the image from the original plate. You’d have to put all the pieces back together to get the clearest picture of the coffee mug.
In my experience, it’s just the same with us and our part in the family. We can only see from our place and from a limited understanding until we include in the picture all the lived experiences, memories, loves, struggles, losses, strengths, and healed wounds that reside in the ancestral lineage. And in almost every case I’ve seen, underneath all of the burdens, somehow, there is love to be found and restored. I’ll give one personal instance from my life that I didn’t understand until I was in my 40’s.
I was 15 years old, loved music, and wanted to go to my first rock concert with some of my best friends. I didn’t need money for the ticket, I just needed permission- and my dad said no. There wasn’t an explanation. Just no. The next summer I took driver’s ed in preparation for getting my driver’s license when I turned 16. When I did, I asked my dad to take me to the DMV to take the driving test so I could get the license, and he said no again. He didn’t think I should rush into it. I shared this disappointment with one of the older guys at my summer job, and he offered to take me on our lunch break. It felt transgressive, but I was willing to risk the guilt that would come from defying my dad in exchange for the freedom of driving. Thanks to Mark Chism, I got my license, and I felt like I outsmarted my dad. It didn’t help our relationship.
Years later, thanks to our Family Constellations training, I came to understand my dad better. When he was in his 20’s my dad’s older sister Angie died in a car accident. She had gone on a road trip from Detroit to Florida with friends. They were driving at night, the driver fell asleep, the car went off the road and rolled over and my Aunt Angie was killed. She was the first to go to college. She worked at a law firm and from what my dad and others in the family told me, she was the academic star. It was expected that she would become a lawyer. It devastated the family. The pain of that loss came from the deep love the family had for her, and that love got translated into a fierce protection my dad had for myself and my sisters. He didn’t want to lose one of us. As a teenager I only felt anger, frustration and judgement toward my dad, but as an adult, seeing more of the picture, I found compassion and understanding.
There’s a risk we may take by trying to separate too fully from the family. Going no contact may be helpful in the short term by providing relief and the space needed to stabilize and grow. In my experience, there is further to go and more to explore to help us keep open the heart of compassion and find deeper healing and understanding.
