Is there a defining symptom of childhood trauma?

There’s a podcast with Dr Ramani (www.drramani.com) and Patrick Teahan, (patrickteahan.com) which has been remixed a zillion times. Finally I caught it again at @SoulSurgeryWithAndrea. Dr Ramani asks Teahan what, for him, the defining symptom of childhood trauma is.

‘For a lot of us it is trying to get a difficult person to be good to us’.

If you’ve been stuck in that kind of groove, you might start to find a way out and forward through family constellations therapy. That groove may be littered with people who you picked to be in your life because with them you can faithfully replicate the agony of longing that characterised your early life, because they are like one of your parents or caregivers. Does that sound like your meet, get beaten - one way or another - rinse, repeat? Perhaps you’re ready to get out of there. There are hundreds of different therapies. I’ve tried a few along the way that are super helpful. For me nothing provides the wide sweep relational equivalent of sound surround at the movies that family constellations does. As well, it is fairly lavish in transgenerational recognition, and collective trauma, such as the legacies of colonialism, war, displacement and the torrid aftermath of ‘natural disasters’, which are still sometimes referred to as acts of god, especially by your insurance company. And all the familiar forms of abuse.

So, if you’ve tried therapies and still have your unhelpful patterns in your cross body bag, or you’ve never experienced any sort of therapy, give family/systemic constellations a go. It’s not a magic one off event that wipes your trauma slate clean, but it is super effective at lighting the way to understanding, acceptance of what is, what can’t be changed, where you fit in the family scheme of things, and enabling you to offload what is not yours to carry. You will certainly feel how resilient you are and how you have protected yourself. There are lots of facilitators around. I’m one. I work in English, but love to hear accents, in person or online at times to suit you and your schedule.

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions. manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate self-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators. Her second Substack is Wild Horses, a frankly anti-fascist rumble. Because fascism is not good for humans.

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[Where Have All The Flowers Gone, my 2024 ANZAC Day painting at solekart.com]

Aotearoa-New Zealand used to be just New Zealand, and that country was the uncomfortable, colonised, obedient child of the UK, and more specifically the Queen, Elizabeth II. English (Pommy) friends of my parents referred to England as Home. More oddly, some people born in NZ who had never set foot in it, also referred to England as Home. Patriotism meant to England, not to New Zealand. The congealed blood of dead NZ men in Europe, Turkiye, Africa and the Pacific glued the myth to the collective psyche. The Maori Battalion was co-opted into the war, at huge cost of life, especially in some tribal areas.

The transition from little-England-plain-colonised-New Zealand to Aotearoa-New Zealand has been long, hard fought for, tragically repudiated by our current tripartite coalition. In a very serious miscalculation of probable opposition, Luxon’s toll for being Prime Minister was to make vicious concessions to the leaders of his coalition partners around Te Tiriti O Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi) and the human rights and rights of Maori as the indigenous people of Aotearoa. Attempts at dismantling the protections enshrined in the Treaty produced huge marches and assemblies across the country. The Governing Coalition’s push back against Maori language in its Departments, on road signs, in education and in general has backfired. The defiant joy people feel in using te reo Maori is an almost palpable mist surrounding people speaking it as we go about our daily lives. This may mean only the few most adopted words and phrases are incorporated into greetings and small exchanges, but what a standout!

[Arrivals At Kemal's Party, Acrylic and oil pastel on found paper, 75 x 52 cm
www.solekart.com / 2023 +]

Alongside this run changes in attitudes to ANZAC Day. A feeling that there were wars here, on this land, that have not been acknowledged. Because many people were killed to achieve this (former) outpost of Britain. A feeling that ANZAC Day must be a day to call for peace, not to bathe in warlike waters, while still respectfully remembering the people who died in the two World Wars. A feeling that we also need to remember Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and so on to today. How can we frame ANZAC Day 25 April, 2026 against the backdrop of never again and the genocidal, conquering, colonial barrage by Israel in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and a few days ago, even Syria’s borders being breached by IDF men? And the other wars currently being undertaken?

Immediate Post WWII ANZAC Day remembrances in small town Taranaki

My feeling was that the Day was special. My knowledge was that it was something to do with The War. My impulse was to put on my best dress - always the one made especially for A & P Show Day - join my sister and the hundreds of people who walked to town and to the Opera House. We headed for ‘upstairs’ so we could look down on everyone, including the old men who took the stage to talk for a long time in terms I did not understand at all, only the sense that if we did this, there would not be other catastrophic wars in future. Guaranteed.

That was a hot period for ANZAC Day. Then, later it cooled off, until a fairly strong revival under the various reframes mentioned above. In fact, I must only have got on board a few times, between when my sister and I were able to go alone until high school.

Later, I became aware that my paternal grandfather and two of his brothers fought in WWI. Miraculously, all three returned. Pop was wounded at the Somme, sent to Scotland to train other men to do war’s bidding. He never spoke of it, my mother said. When he was around 90, he was interviewed by a small provincial newspaper with another veteran in his the home town, Marton. What was reported was not pretty. Pop did not join the RSA, believing it to be war-mongering. In 1933 when he had six children, the house burned down. No loss of life, but everything else was gone. Pop rode his bike to the office of the RSA to appeal for immediate assistance for his family. Their response was that they only helped the truly destitute.

I have imagined my great grandmother seeing her three beloved sons off at the railway station, not knowing when or if she would see them again. I imagine the agony of the years in between, the not knowing, the lack of communication - I suppose. Maybe infrequent letters. As a Family Constellations practitioner, I wonder how that experience has entered the flow of the family river, and how it joins the collective experience of war and its concomitant lashing of populations around the world, and how it has not stopped. Ever.

For several years I have been painting one or sometimes two pieces on or near ANZAC Day. This year I have made four ANZAC Day paintings. They are necessarily symbolic. They are necessarily my expression of a range of emotions. They are a reflection on the horrors of war, of colonialism, of the collective trauma we all experience even when we are geographically far away from the frontline or the fall of drones. If you want, see them at www.solekart.com

I would love to include some words of Francesca Albanese, urging us to consciously, intentionally continue to walk and be heard against the genocide in the Middle East, and recent pungent-sweet poems of Lucas Jones. You can find them everywhere online, and I recommend you do so. Instead, I am adding some words from WH Auden.

Decades ago, I had the great pleasure of sitting in the fourth row of a poetry reading, somewhere in Edinburgh. Yevgeny Yevtushenko and WH Auden read. Somebody else replaced Wole Soyinka, who was unable to travel, and there was a fourth person but I have forgotten who they were. Up close, Auden’s face was exquisitely, beautifully finely lined, and clearly unforgettable. Here is the first stanza of his poem September 1, 1939, which references the invasion of Poland and the start of WWII.

September 1, 1939

W. H. Auden

1907 –1973

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

From Wikipedia "September 1, 1939" is a poem by W. H. Auden written shortly after the German invasion of Poland, which would mark the start of World War II. It was first published in The New Republic issue of 18 October 1939, and in book form in Auden's collection Another Time (1940).

I may come back and add to this piece!

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat. Book. manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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[Note: this is a stock photo. It does not represent Melania Trump.]

Top models Carre Otis and Stacey Williams say that the modelling world was and is a system for trafficking girls and young women into the orbit of rich, influential men, the owners of modelling agencies. [The Daily Beast, 06 April 2026.] Otis describes herself being trafficked to Paris, having her passport confiscated, being delivered to the agency boss’s house, having to pay for her accommodation, and being sexually abused by him, photographers, and others. The abuse, aka rape took place repeatedly in numerous situations and by numerous men until she completely broke down. Donald Trump, himself, Melania’s husband and President of the USA, boasts about his entitlement to walk into changing rooms of beauty pageants he ‘owned’ while the teenage participants were in various states of undress. He has talked of 12 being his cut-off age.

So they are introduced by someone, and presto, there they are, Melania and Donald Trump. She probably thought…well what did she think? We do not know. However, it seems clear that their meeting and coupling is in most respects a consequence of the entitled, louche, abusive and deeply misogynistic socio-economic subset he moved in, and that she was syphoned into. Yes, yes, of course we can fairly safely say she loved and loves the advantages of having a rich husband, and of extending the Trump brand to her own businesses. That does not erase her hazy even concealed trajectory, in which we can again safely say, she had little or no agency.

Her values and politics are awful, inasmuch as we have heard or seen her account of them. Be best doesn’t cut it. That is not relevant to my impetus for writing this piece. I am doing so off the back of two moments of social media discovery, if you like.

The first was an episode of The Lincoln Project, on 11 April 2026, in which an old man, Rick Wilson, referred to her as ‘sloppy seconds’ in reference to her effectively having been Epstein’s lover before Trump got to her. That is so profoundly misogynist; in the convenient vernacular, ‘slut shaming’. It’s shocking.

Rick, who uttered the words, sat smugly on, while his co broadcaster, Kate, who I assume had to quickly digest that disgusting language, and take the baton from him for the next sliver of their podcast. The Lincoln Project is described on Wikipedia as a ‘never Trump’, basically Republican aligned, definitely not Democratic Party aligned or progressive outfit.

The second jolt was a photomontage on Facebook: head and shoulders shots of first ladies Bush, Obama, Reagan, Nixon et al, all in traditional First Lady type jackets - except Michelle who is way too classy for that - juxtaposed to a full body length photo of Melania, nude. What’s the message?

The message is that a woman who once posed nude for a photo shoot had better watch out, for she is considered in a reflex reaction to have no right to be viewed as a person worthy of any consideration, let alone respect. Her sovereignty over her own body is stolen. Her body, our bodies, are in fact the cornerstone of every piece of misogyny that exists or ever existed. A woman’s past life, whatever it may be, if it involves any exercise of her free will - or entrapped or trafficked status - to take advantage of her beauty or sexuality, can and probably will be used against her at some time in the future. Her body is desired but degraded by men. Men close to her, or men who have never known her. And some women who have been captured by misogyny. In this casual, reflex reaction, any woman can be completely trashed with cyber wildfire speed. Matronly attire in public life is the only acceptable kind - unless you’re a teenage pop star or actor in which case the more sexualised the better.

Back to Melania. Her young life was probably troubled. She was undoubtedly mixed up with Epstein to degrees that are especially regrettable to her now, and if she was complicit in the crimes we know he committed, that’s another point not in her favour. Photos, documents and verified accounts of her closeness can validly be used to establish any part of any of the one thousand plus cases of trafficking, rape and other crimes.

The denigration and shaming of her for her sexual or professional history as a reflex in the manosphere without borders, embedded in the centuries old patriarchy is invalid, and disgusting, however awful anyone deems her to be in other respects.

However ‘bad’ Melania is now, remember the real criminals in the overlapping stories are Epstein, Zampolli, Casablancas, Brunel, et al, and the associates who joined them and enabled them in their criminal exploitation of girls and women. Maybe Melania will turn out to be one of them, a recruiter or trafficker. Would that place her in the Virginia Giuffre, or Ghislaine Maxwell camp? Asking for a woman friend. At the moment, her entire ethos is horrible. Castigate her over her complicity in genocide, ICE actions, her stupid I don’t really care jacket and all the rest, as it is richly deserved. However, as much as she denies it, she was a victim of, or had scant or no agency in the midst of the basket of snakes she fell into as a minor.

So much of the misery in this world results from the power of the patriarchy over women and girls. Our bodies. Our sexuality. Our modesty or lack of it. Our public and private lives. We have to stay vigilant against its gross and finer manifestations, call it out, support women who are harmed by it, and call on men to call each other out for their transgressions . This will eventually create some positive change, despite the Andrews and Jeffreys and Donalds. A better world is possible.

"If I can't dance, I won’t be in your revolution" My paraphrase, original attributed to Emma Goldman

Karen Sole is a Family Constellations Facilitator based in Napier, Aotearoa-New Zealand

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions at times to suit you. manawa = heart breath emotion English language. Global reach.

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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Surely, if an historical Jesus existed, he was tortured and murdered for advocating broadly socialist, tolerant, humane behaviour in that era of cruelty, autocracy, hegemony, colonialism, imperialism, and misogyny to name some of the injustices, then - and that we are still living with and fighting against.

As we know, crucifixion was favoured by the Romans as a method of torturing people to death. In the scriptures Barabbas, a violent insurrectionist also sentenced to be crucified is juxtaposed with Jesus, and chosen by the crowd to be freed. This posits him as the lesser criminal in the eyes of society, or perhaps a crowd who understood the distinct biases of the Roman authorities. This all takes place far from Rome. Very modern.

Torture has continued to be used, refined, and expanded, despite intermittent declarations of our advanced evolution. When we tell ourselves these soothing stories, do we mean the mere continuation of our species with our huge brain, or something much more cognisant of the vagaries of the overall human condition, running sweetly and smoothly along tracks forged of respect, love, care, sharing, kindness and compassion? If the latter, how dare we.

I don’t want to dwell on contemporary examples of torture, but seeing as it is my custom to roam the territory between traumatic events, and especially collective trauma, and resilience and therapy, I am impelled to note that Francesca Albanese, UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES OCCUPIED SINCE 1967 has called torture on the accumulation and decades long cruelty and now genocide perpetrated by the Israeli system against the Palestinian people of Gaza. It is entirely relevant that this all takes place in the so-called Holy Land when Eid, Passover and Easter practically run over each other. Happy festivities, all.

#torturealwayswasalwayswillbeevil

We’re a deeply secular society here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, (and also tolerant of the myriad religions) but stick to an anachronistic, even hypocritical law that restricts Good Friday trading. Perhaps most notably, garden centres are not allowed to open. Garden centres. This is despite the fact that Easter is the longest long weekend in our calendar, making it a massive DIY project and gardening time for stay at homers, and the last gasp of fingers crossed summery break away time for others. Carparks of building supplies warehouses overflow, the queues instore test patience. We eat hot cross buns with lashings of butter, chocolate eggs - and we get shit done. We pack the car and go away. Maybe not so much this year with petrol at near enough to $NZ3.50/litre. Full speed to the 25th amendment.

ill-advised, Bill Nighy’s pod.

You send your questions in and Bill Nighy speaks to them as only he could, he thinks taking care not to be consequential. In fact he’s droll, wise, ironic and funny. He also mentions some music, and reads from a book he’s enjoyed recently. Trust me it’s all a soothing balm for your heart and mind. Your nervous system will thank you for every episode. Truly a delicious dose of nonsense-not nonsense in all the flavours of just let go and be gently rocked. ‘If you are socially adept there is nothing really for you here, but if you have time to squander, this podcast might just be for you.’

Recommended music and books are in the show notes. I listened on Spotify. Here’s a little taste from the episode Procrastination of 09 October 2025, ‘…from what to do when you don’t recognise somebody, to his thoughts on clutter.

‘..people always presume that I’ve got vinyl and a sophisticated sound system. In fact, I don’t. I have a couple of little you know Bluetooth speakers around the house and the reason for that is because I can’t bear to give up the space. I’m always going to prefer the space where it isn’t to the object…’ Bill Nighy

And that’s in lieu of some lines of poetry this time.

Karen Sole is a Family Constellations Facilitator living in Napier Aotearoa-New Zealand.

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com English language. Global reach.

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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Adjacent to manawa family constellations, but entirely distinct from it, is Manawa Life Coaching. It’s built on my experience in

• formal and informal mentoring and coaching successes in large organisations,

• writing and facilitating training workshops in and for a range of organisations,

• using accelerated learning methods as a CELTA qualified teacher of English to foreign adults,

• internalisation of the power and meaning of social determinants,

• human rights activism, and of course,

• my own general life experiences,

Let me elaborate on the power and meaning of social determinants. This refers to recognition that our problems derive from the system, and are widespread - poor wages, unaffordable housing, food scarcity, unhappy health outcomes, unemployment, misogyny. These are systemic issues, not factors that can be blamed on individuals. When we see that, at least some the burden is lifted. Similarly, constellations therapy sees multiple generations - our ancestors caught in the macro political and social mechanics of their time, accumulating trauma that tumbles down lineages. These traumas express themselves in our lives, our relational patterns, our anxieties, our fixations, foibles and fears. These are literally stored in our bodies. Constellations work somatically, largely beyond language, allowing us to access the hidden wounds and reveal secrets, all the unthought known. Constellations work with compassion, with the clear boundary of doing no harm, in a process led by the ‘client’ for want of a better word, and in groups, with the voluntary participation of representatives of members of your system or constellation.

In life coaching my interest is in enabling and empowering men and women of all ages to transform doubts, transient wishes and hopes into strong intentions, and work with them to develop conscious, realistic steps towards achieving the goals they develop. I convene in-person workshops for 8 - 12 participants as well as working one to one, in person or over Zoom. In all cases resources, useful links, online check-ins and other means of follow up are part of the process.

Bring your story, bring your learning style, bring your gifts. Bring all of you, and go away with more.

I use some video and audio content, but my workshops are distinctly analog in character.

The work is relational, cognisant of the knowledge and wisdom in the room, whether it’s just you and me (or online), or a group, and

• mixes my input with vibrant small group work and

• quiet alone working time for participants to reflect, integrate and synthesise content,

• settle with realisations and

• to provide space for individual creativity.

My coaching methods promote and uphold personal autonomy and power as the foundation of authentic change.

Learning happens when

• we are interested in content and process,

• motivated,

• autonomous,

• can be ourselves and have support along the way.

Working face to face with others - not a screen - sharing ideas, considering other viewpoints and bringing that together in our own reflective thinking and writing brings clarity and focus.

That enhances the likelihood of making the bold steps toward our goals, with the support of other participants and the coach after the workshop. Accessible memory of the interaction helps to maintain motivation, and the expectation of ongoing sharing to others over a period of time adds safety and security to the plans we make.

It is easy to create an exciting high around ideas, in a roomful of people, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the eating takes place after the workshop. The danger after a high experience is always that enthusiasm wanes, no one is checking in, and the energy falls away. When there is a process that includes peer and coach follow up, the twin goals of making progress and sharing the ups and downs with others helps to keep us on track.

The first essential for personal change is our readiness and willingness, not just to engage with ideas, but to do the work. My mother-in-law, Margot used to say brilliance is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. More famous people have given us similar sayings, for example this from Picasso, paraphrased here - genius happens, but it has to find you working. My personal mantras which apply to my art life and anywhere else, are don’t stop, don’t hurry and don’t be afraid. Sometimes we hurry because we must, sometimes we’re afraid, but always we must take the next step.

Important note: coaching is neither psychotherapy nor psychiatry. It is suitable for the normal range of well people who want to explore ways to enhance aspects of their lives, make some specific adjustments, refine goals, develop steps toward achieving them, or similar, or to use a session or workshop to calibrate or monitor their lives in any sphere.

Working together, we can tailor a package to suit your precise needs, with one or more constellation sessions, followed by a coaching programme that fully recognises your busy life: children, partner, friends, family, work, exercise, existing holiday plans, and so on, so that the timeframe is realistic, the work and process is doable, bound for achievement and finishing. Zoom check-ins between face to face sessions are built in to the coaching programme. To book a free 15 minute call to discuss your requirements, send me an email karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com, or leave a note on my website manawafamilyconstellations.com at ‘Contact us’. I look forward to hearing from you.

Copyright Karen Sole 2024

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

She has extensive experience of training, coaching, mentoring, and leadership in a wide range of professional and community roles, from government departments, through NGOs to High School Boards, including writing/designing training for management, stakeholders and community. www.manawafamlyconstellations.com

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Family Constellations is an embodied, trauma - and resilience - informed modality capable of working with all the things we push to one side:
- anxiety
- loneliness
- depression
- overwhelm
- sense of loss and grief
- the feeling of not belonging
- the effects of all kinds of abuse, and
- adoption
- miscarriage
- abortion
- uncanny ability to find ‘bad’ relationships
- creepy uncles and more!
The modality is not intellectual, that is, it is not a ‘talk therapy’, but allows you to get in touch with the pain you are carrying in your body, and to get to the root of it in a process that you lead.

My new offering is a short espresso constellation for fifteen minutes, any time between 08 and 10 am New Zealand time. Then, if you book a 60 minute session within 30 days you receive a super discount.

You find out literally where it hurts. You know all those old sayings, like I had a gut feeling, my heart was in my mouth, butterflies in my stomach - they come from real wisdom of how we work, what happens when we are stressed. Our old wounds inform us that something is not quite right, or very wrong. We benefit from paying close attention to the signals our body sends us. We couldn’t be any closer than that to the source, could we?

Find out the secrets you’ve been keeping from yourself. Let go of shame and blame. Get back to ease and renewed compassion for yourself and others in your system or constellation. In this modality you are not hooked into months or years of therapy, but (usually) one to three sessions depending on your issue(s).

The marvellous truth is that despite our trauma, we are still here! Our natural resilience is always active as part of our balance and survival system. Boost your resilience by letting yourself know the trauma you’ve been ignoring. It seems contradictory, but as Tich Nhat Hanh said ‘the way out is in’. The process of a constellation is gentle, trauma and resilience informed, and is effective per issue over one to three sessions. Compare that with fortnightly talk therapy for months or years.

Are we ever out of the woods?

It’s possible in this mad time, bursting with horrific genocides and other atrocities that our anxieties and trauma are activated, that in our personal circumstances we feel well, but about the world - pffft. Sometimes I just cannot get myself into action. Yesterday was one of those days. I just felt deeply sad. I considered going to bed in the afternoon, but didn’t really have the oomph to move from the couch. I know well that I am not alone.

The news is no better, but today will be different. I will spend time with friends, whack a couple of tasks off the list, work out, trial my new wheat filled heat pack over my eyes - well look, I did sew and fill that yesterday evening!

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Pablo Neruda

Except for the Neruda, copyright Karen Sole

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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‘I didn’t go’ - we don’t believe you

‘I didn’t see’ - we don’t believe you

‘Nothing ‘untoward’ ever happened when I was there’ - we don’t believe you.

We believe the children and women. It is their story.

Instead of hearing that layered, horrific story, apart from a few notable exceptions, we see the accelerating madness of King Donald, who is as deeply implicated as a man could be, and ask who’s afraid of the 25th?

We witness a scrunched up in the back seat Andrew double barrelled entitled former prince. One law for all? We’ll see. He was arrested for adjacent allegations relating to his business behaviour as a trade envoy for the UK. On trade missions he is well known

to have accessed tens of workers in the sex trade, in many cases trafficked, whether by actual third parties or the precise details of their socio-economic determinants.

We see heroic spiritual bypassing by Deepak Chopra - get your money back - he’s an unevolved patriarchal supremacist oozing pedophile dreams with a smug smile his face. The statement he issued was generalised jargon, did not so much as mention victims, and certainly there was no ‘I’ on the page.

The intellectual dodgems of Valeria Chomsky on behalf of herself and Noah was squirm-worthy. How sweet it is to be universally loved by conscious thinking people. No more.

Then, the ‘exoneration of Trump’ by the high priestess of pedophile trafficking Ghislaine Maxwell. Women of the USA, be ready to be fully nasty and take the streets if Trump moves to pardon her.

And all the others, rich, idle, famous, egotistical, arrogant, supremacist, sated, searching for what they code as transgressive, but which is really evil shit to do, because they’ve done the rest. And now they are lying, dodging, hiding, denying, and denigrating the victims and survivors.

I first wrote about the Epstein & co trafficking and abuse of children ad women on Substack 10 February 2026, ad will paste it in here, for coherence:

The pedophilia-elite: the ugly criminal child of the incestuous lovers, Capitalism and Patriarchy/misogyny, endlessly anointed by entitled sycophantic wannabes in their jet-set lairs.

We know it’s not the only stinking layer of humanity pedophilia thrives in, but this delude d strand thought they were untouchable. Their chief inveigler drew them in, used them, documented them, &...

Have I left anything out? Oh yes, many aspects, such as the whole situation is now described as one in which the children and women survivors were Epstein’s ‘honey-trap(s)’ for the mostly male hangers-on who couldn’t contain their excitement at the thought of raping trafficked children and young women. We are starting to hear the extent of this illness among people who have so much money or fame, or celebrity, or prowess or power or established notoriety that everything they can buy has been bought, and now, what? What irredeemable scrag end of humanity can they suck up to, and presto, there’s Epstein. They discovered children were on his rape menu, offered as freely as dinners around his numerous dinner tables. I refuse to call it sex. That level of depraved predation.

We’ve heard all the excuses that the so-far exposed former friends who now apologise for their friendship can offer, from Mandelson’s abject sludge to Valeria Chomsky’s eloquent insistence that she and Noam had no idea. We have to note though, that among the infamous emails is a line from her to Epstein that the #MeToo pushback had gone too far. Pushback is my word, not hers.

Epstein and his sycophants, enablers, moral-washing excusers are not the only perpetrators of these crimes. They are not the only manifestation of the abdication of the rule, the imperative that we look after and protect children: all children, not just our own or those within our spheres. But they are exemplary.

Imagine being so entitled that you deliberately choose to spend some of your life within the sphere of a convicted pedophile, that you are photographed in your underpants, or a fluffy white bath robe, or with a child you’ve never seen before on your lap in a pool or room or plane, thinking that no one will ever know you committed this heinous abuse. Epstein lured in famous and powerful people, and gravitated towards other paedophiles and misogynists and rapists. Larry Nasser, Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Imagine a world in which one man with a reputation for trafficking children and young women has such a hold on other men (how numerous we have yet to learn, how well known we have an inkling) and women (Ghislaine Maxwell, Fergie Mountbatten Windsor, Mrs Lutnick, to name a few) when the only and singular characteristic that distinguishes him from other rich criminals and grifters is his ability to supply - his literal and figurative island of children and young women - and that is what we’ve got.

Knowing as we do, that abuse, and particularly sexual abuse of children wrecks their lives, often irrevocably, often to the point of them taking their own lives when they are a little or a lot older than when the abuse occurred, there is no wonder that the world insists on full disclosure. Just apart from the sheer lunacy and horror of it. We have the suicide of Virginia Giuffre; there are implications of murder, abortion and infanticide within the ‘files’.

Behind us we have generations of children consigned to Catholic and other religious schools where the news of sexual, emotional and violent abuse by staff was out, or circulating underground years before their children were packed off to those hells. A special mention here for the quasi-genocidal examples of indigenous children stolen from their families and taken to hells where many of them died, and were stealthily buried. There are cults and communities and private homes where abuse of minors takes place.

Simply, children are thrown under the bus. It’s very difficult to get out from under a moving bus. Either way, you’re going to get mangled. On Netflix today there are several films documenting the phenomenon of gross, well known, emotional and sexual abuse of children in large communities where the adults in the piece variously turn a blind eye, consent to, or encourage the rape of children by adult men, and in some cases adult women grooming boys for the same purpose.

We have to say that cultures where child marriage is legal are not exceptional, or only for the numbers of situations where the rape of children is sanctioned. The moral outrage of the very same men who scratched Epstein’s back for access to children to rape speak scathingly of those cultures and countries. Four states in the United States have no minimum marriage age.

The outrage and disgust is hard to hold. Lucas Jones, who’s been eulogising Palestine and Gaza and lashing world leaders in his poetry has abandoned poetry in favour of desperate pleading in the face of the crimes and cover ups. Which reminds me, war is another arena in which children are among the most affected, nowhere moreso than in Gaza, where their murder is a much vaunted strategy declared by Israeli ‘leaders’ and military figures.

The victims and survivors of Epstein keep slipping into the background as discussions of espionage, of how Epstein really died, Maxwell promising to exonerate Trump, the Royal family ducks and dives, the UK government waddles about in confusion. Famous men representing many spheres issue their apologies for knowing Epstein, deny knowing him, regret ever having met him, say they used to be friends but…and Trump continues to suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere and to flood the zone.

The victims/survivors have the compelling story. They are the story. First things first. The rest is flailing that serves to obfuscate and shift the focus. The men - the enablers, sycophants, acolytes, fellow perpetrators, and pretenders that they did not see are another story.

I could not think of a poem that suits this piece, but as I grazed my shelves, I picked up The Story of Miss Moppet, by Beatrix Potter, [F.Warne & Co Ltd ISBN 0 7232 0612 0] , and page 35 taken out of the context of the book, seemed apt. So, here is page 35 of The Story of Miss Moppet, where ‘he’ is a mouse.

He has wriggled out and
run away: and he is
dancing a jig on the top of
the cupboard!

Except for the quote from Beatrix Potter, copyright Karen Sole

[Family Constellations is a highly effective therapeutic modality for working with all kinds of abuse. All are welcome, and all parts are welcome.]

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate self-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a time that suits

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[Untitled 1020 x 1020 mm artist at www.solekart.com]

Have I left anything out? Oh yes, many aspects, such as the whole situation is now described as one in which the children and women survivors were Epstein’s ‘honey-trap(s)’ for the mostly male hangers-on who couldn’t contain their excitement at the thought of raping trafficked children and young women. We are starting to hear the extent of this illness among people who have so much money or fame, or celebrity, or prowess or power or established notoriety that everything they can buy has been bought, and now, what? What irredeemable scrag end of humanity can they suck up to, and presto, there’s Epstein. They discovered children were on his rape menu, offered as freely as dinners around his numerous dinner tables. I refuse to call it sex. That level of depraved predation.

We’ve heard all the excuses that the so-far exposed former friends who now apologise for their friendship can offer, from Mandelson’s abject sludge to Valeria Chomsky’s eloquent insistence that she and Noam had no idea. We have to note though, that among the infamous emails is a line from her to Epstein that the #MeToo pushback had gone too far. Pushback is my word, not hers.

Epstein and his sycophants, enablers, moral-washing excusers are not the only perpetrators of these crimes. They are not the only manifestation of the abdication of the rule, the imperative that we look after and protect children: all children, not just our own or those within our spheres. But they are exemplary.

Imagine being so entitled that you deliberately choose to spend some of your life within the sphere of a convicted pedophile, that you are photographed in your underpants, or a fluffy white bath robe, or with a child you’ve never seen before on your lap in a pool or room or plane, thinking that no one will ever know you committed this heinous abuse. Epstein lured in famous and powerful people, and gravitated towards other paedophiles and misogynists and rapists. Larry Nasser, Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Imagine a world in which one man with a reputation for trafficking children and young women has such a hold on other men (how numerous we have yet to learn, how well known we have an inkling) and women (Ghislaine Maxwell, Fergie Mountbatten Windsor, Mrs Lutnick, to name a few) when the only and singular characteristic that distinguishes him from other rich criminals and grifters is his ability to supply - his literal and figurative island of children and young women - and that is what we’ve got.

Knowing as we do, that abuse, and particularly sexual abuse of children wrecks their lives, often irrevocably, often to the point of them taking their own lives when they are a little or a lot older than when the abuse occurred, there is no wonder that the world insists on full disclosure. Just apart from the sheer lunacy and horror of it. We have the suicide of Virginia Giuffre; there are implications of murder, abortion and infanticide within the ‘files’.

Behind us we have generations of children consigned to Catholic and other religious schools where the news of sexual, emotional and violent abuse by staff was out, or circulating underground years before their children were packed off to those hells. A special mention here for the quasi-genocidal examples of indigenous children stolen from their families and taken to hells where many of them died, and were stealthily buried. There are cults and communities and private homes where abuse of minors takes place.

Simply, children are thrown under the bus. It’s very difficult to get out from under a moving bus. Either way, you’re going to get mangled. On Netflix today there are several films documenting the phenomenon of gross, well known, emotional and sexual abuse of children in large communities where the adults in the piece variously turn a blind eye, consent to, or encourage the rape of children by adult men, and in some cases adult women grooming boys for the same purpose.

We have to say that cultures where child marriage is legal are not exceptional, or only for the numbers of situations where the rape of children is sanctioned. The moral outrage of the very same men who scratched Epstein’s back for access to children to rape speak scathingly of those cultures and countries. Four states in the United States have no minimum marriage age.

The outrage and disgust is hard to hold. Lucas Jones, who’s been eulogising Palestine and Gaza and lashing world leaders in his poetry has abandoned poetry in favour of desperate pleading in the face of the crimes and cover ups. Which reminds me, war is another arena in which children are among the most affected, nowhere moreso than in Gaza, where their murder is a much vaunted strategy declared by Israeli ‘leaders’ and military figures.

The victims and survivors of Epstein keep slipping into the background as discussions of espionage, of how Epstein really died, Maxwell promising to exonerate Trump, the Royal family ducks and dives, the UK government waddles about in confusion. Famous men representing many spheres issue their apologies for knowing Epstein, deny knowing him, regret ever having met him, say they used to be friends but…and Trump continues to suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere and to flood the zone.

The victims/survivors have the compelling story. They are the story. First things first. The rest is flailing that serves to obfuscate and shift the focus. The men - the enablers, sycophants, acolytes, fellow perpetrators, and pretenders that they did not see are another story.

I could not think of a poem that suits this piece, but as I grazed my shelves, I picked up The Story of Miss Moppet, by Beatrix Potter, [F.Warne & Co Ltd ISBN 0 7232 0612 0] , and page 35 taken out of the context of the book, seemed apt. So, here is page 35 of The Story of Miss Moppet, where ‘he’ is a mouse.

He has wriggled out and
run away: and he is
dancing a jig on the top of
the cupboard!

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate self-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.
www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a time that suits

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[View from Ohura Road, Whangamomona, Taranaki, Aotearoa-New Zealand January 2025. Author’s photo.]

Your name is “one of the greatest gifts that a family can give you. It is the first gift that a child, when they enter the Earth, receives from their family. It is usually informed by tradition and love, and the hope and aspiration the family has for that child. It is something precious and sacred and it is a part of their identity.”–Vice-President Kamala Harris on The Daily Show, October 2020

I’m back at Dolly Gray’s in Whangamomona for a couple of weeks while Tracey is on holiday. Thanks to technology, workshops and constellations can and will go on!

We’ll start with exploration of your given name, how you got it, the story behind it - ah you don’t think there is one, but you’re 99% sure to be mistaken about that.

Then there’ll be time for 2-3 constellations working with issues arising in the exploration. There is opportunity for one more person to have their issue constellated, maybe two. Everyone present benefits from the process - no minute wasted, no one left out. We imagine that experiences that have affected us are unique to us, but they are universally resonant. Kick your year off with a relational refresher that lightens your life!

Unlearn a lifetime
of answering to
not your name. Make them taste
your name, their unknowing tongues
prickling with tamarind.
Shape their mouths around
cardamom vowels,
your syllables turmeric. Teach them
to whisper spice, intone fire.

From “Cardamom Vowels” by Aruni Wijesinghe

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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How are you with your ancestors, both the living and the ones who have long since left this crazy scene?

I binged the series Renegade: Born in the USA as my gym listening for several sessions. It traversed wide ranging topics from American music through to each man’s relationship with his father. The latter fell headfirst into my preoccupations at the time, causing some shivers. My relationship with my father had often been troubled. Dad had very recently died. Those short sentences of Springsteen’s became the title of a painting I made in honour of my father, Thomas Edward Sole. He was another troubled man, his life deeply impacted by colonial blanketing of New Zealand, a short school education, and a life of hard physical work. He was a hard man to live with, whoever you were to him. He was also nice to be with when his sky was blue, fun even. A man who was last to leave parties, first to put his hand up if there was some voluntary work that he could accomplish at a marae (tribal community house), and so deeply incapable of pretence it offended people.

[Ghosts Haunt Us. Ancestors Walk Beside Us. Mixed media with collage. Copyright Karen Sole solekart.com]

His mother, Lola Robinson married James Sole, and my father was the second child, first son, of ten children, living on a farm that James had made into a big success. My mother, Nola was one of six children born to Clara Busby and Will Brogden. Their house burned down in 1933, in the sugar bag years of the Depression. No one was harmed, the house was insured, but in that moment the family of eight had only the clothes they stood in.

Behind these immediate four grandparents are lines and lines of forbears, some of whom had always been here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, others who came in ships like the Oriental that brought James’ forbears to New Plymouth. That family’s journey is recorded in the ship’s manifest at the New Plymouth Museum, Te Puke Ariki. My mother’s paternal grandparents, my great grandparents, were still living together in their own home when I was in my last year of high school. They were separated when Grandma was removed to a rest home, and they both died shortly after. My father’s maternal grandmother, Maraea Robinson, passed away while my mother was carrying me. So, my early life was rich with grand and great grandparents.

They were all eccentric, unpretentious, hard-working working people, and although I did not have the intimate relationships with them that my generation have with our grandchildren, I intuited long ago that they are unimaginably important in my life, and to who I am.

The first time I remember consciously calling on them, my ancestors, and the lines behind them, I was serving in a jury in a well publicised case. Eighteen defendants, all Maori, were prosecuted for murder in such a way that if any one of them was guilty, the others would be by association. The jury was young, only one among us prejudiced against gangs in the way the prosecution had hoped for or, more likely, counted on. The responsibility felt gargantuan.

I needed to check in with something, someone(s) beyond my thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. As I sat in the jury box, I summoned the support of my ancestors through Dad and Lola and Maraea and way, way beyond. That was a moment. And there have been many more since.

Yesterday, I remembered that trial and my calling on my ancestors when I listened again to Dr Maya Angelou exhorting us to bring our people with us, not only family and forbears, but anyone and everyone who has nurtured and supported us in our lives. As she tells it, better than anyone could, when you bring that collection of everyone who has loved you, with you into a room, people don’t know what it is about you, but they can’t take their eyes off you, they see charisma. She says that is all those people around you. She was speaking of self love. And that’s it, isn’t it. You are not alone. You are never alone. Your ancestors who dreamed of you are all around. Always.

So, how are you with your ancestors?

Can you feel their influence?

Who among them have you met or heard about?

What do the stories tell you?

Does it make sense in the family history you have access to?

Would you like to enquire more?

There are many ways to look into your antecedents. Of course, if you have living family members who met and remember ones who have passed on, that can be a rewarding and valuable source of information, and a way to understand yourself a little or a lot more.

My workshop, Your name, your ancestors, your patterns takes place on Sunday 30 November from 2000-2300 New Zealand time. It takes the gentle approach of interrogating your given name, as a portal to family history, dynamics and possibly secrets, and a view of your patterns. You might want to work one more of those unhelpful patterns! If you would like to join, book online at manawafamilyconstellations.com via the booking and payment portal. I have recently discovered that not all countries allow Paypal to operate. If you live in one of those countries, please send me a request for an invoice. Please include your email address in your message on the website. You will then be able to pay using international bank transfer from your account to mine. One to one sessions are always available. Contact me to arrange a session that suits your time zone. All welcome.

Karen Sole

my mother sacrificed her dreams
so i could dream

rupi kaur
the sun and her flowers
Simon & Schuster Inc Copyright 2017 Rupi Kaur

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate self-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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Your name is a portal to your family history, dynamics and may give up secrets you never imagined were tucked in there behind your name. Maybe you’ve been unknowingly carting around some of these your whole life, and the dynamics behind it has influenced your choices and actions. Explore at this workshop and family constellation session by booking online at manawafamilyconstellations.com. Choose the ‘Substack’ payment option for 20% price reduction.

We will start with exploration of your given name, and how you got it, who gave it to you, and much more. There will be time for two or three constellations. Everyone who is present benefits through recognition and resonance with our universal human experiences. We only think we are alone!

Here’s a reminder of the questions in my recent piece What’s in your name? Just your whole world. How on earth did you get it? There are way more interrogations you can make of your name!

If you explored how you got your name, what would you discover?
- What story do you already know that you have attached no significance to?
- What were the influences on the choice?
- What tribe, or culture or language had to be included or excluded?
- Who had traditional rights to name you?
- Was the choice left to your parents or grandparents or other relatives?
- Was there a political event or famous person whose name was imported through you, into your family?
- Did your parents argue, and did one of them prevail?
- Who would you have been if the other parent had had their way?
- Why was the argument important to them?
- Are you named after a parent or grandparent?
- Are you carrying the same name as a sibling or cousin who died young?
Were you adopted and did you have a name before the one you have lived your life with?
- Does anyone in your family system refuse to call you by your name?
- Has your name been anglicised or francofied (?) to make it easy for the people you live among?
- Are you nervous about insisting on correct pronunciation of your name, in whatever language, within whatever culture and language environment?
- Would you like to change your name because of its associations?
- Have you informally or formally changed your name?
- Have you changed your name to align with your trans-gender?
- Do you have a stage or art name or nom de plume?

I’d love to see you online next Sunday. All welcome, but limited to 30 participants. Secure your place now. Book at the website below.

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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[Untitled watercolour and oil pastel on paper. Copyright Karen Sole solekart.com]

In person and online sessions to suit your schedule, wherever you are in the world, where ever you are in your life. [Scroll for booking buttons.]

If you experience

• anxiety

• loneliness

• depression

• overwhelm

• loss and grief

• feelings of not belonging

• effects of emotional, physical or sexual abuse
  find out literally where it hurts.

During the process, you may

• unmask secrets hidden within your family, even generations ago

• let go of shame

• find your place in your family system

• discover ease

• discover renewed compassion for yourself and others.

Book a private session now, or come to the Sunday 07 December workshop at Puketapu, or online on Sunday 30 November 2000-2300 New Zealand time. For reference, see my earlier piece What’s in your name? Just your whole world. How on earth did you get it?

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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Last year I published: Are Your Family Celebrations A Set-up? Does your heart soar or your stomach drop as you anticipate family gatherings? I went on -‘outrageous expenses, extensive travel, extravagant social expectations, crowded houses, happy and riotous kids, stressed nervous systems around a laden table - that’s a set-up. There’s plenty of potential for at least one person to lose their shit, probably at the least auspicious time.’

I have to say that all of that is still true. In mitigation, to offer more on the other side of the family gathering ledger, I believe there is hope and there are ways to become more at ease about the phenomenon. It’s advantageous to take your terror by the lapels earlier than later, so that the rest of your life may be enlivened by more relaxed family situations. I may be nearly grown up, evidenced by deeper gratitude for my parents, and who we all are together, my mother, father and my sister and brothers and I. Remarkably together, despite them and one brother having passed to where ever you think, and definitely away from pain, work, fatigue and illness. It is more than 100 years since the birth of Tom and Nola, who started it all for our nuclear group. What we learned in their presence holds us together after they have gone. That is a great gift, and the legacy of their values and the way they held us when we needed that and them.

So, I want to focus on the both / and of early childhood experiences and family life, the not-black-and-white of it; not the excoriating and therefore lasting effects of childhood wounds, but the remarkable joy and happiness and steadiness to be found at the core of family, of family life, of the place and people we still call home. It all exists simultaneously. We can ameliorate the ‘bad’. We can celebrate the ‘good’. Here is a fragment, a Christmas Day memory that illustrates the both/and of my father, that man of few but absolute words, of scant demonstration of positive emotions, also of no pretence, who we walked towards a little bit on eggshells sometimes, and who was nice to be with when his emotional sky was blue.

It’s Christmas morning. The air hasn’t warmed yet on the south side of Taranaki Maunga/Mt Taranaki. We’re still in our pyjamas, huddled together considering whether to wake Dad up. Yes, we will. We knock on the door, and enter our parents’ room, gathering around Dad, looking down at him. He’s a bit startled, but receptive. On learning the reason for our invasion, he’s out of the bed, out of the house, and back within an hour with a suitably cone shaped branch from one of the trees shading a section of creek a few hundred metres away. The creek in which lumps of pork fat from the bacon factory bounce along its shallow course, pink and white, white and pink flat squares and curly tangles.

Dad had mistakenly decided we were ‘too big’ to want a tree. And then, the next day we’re going to the beach for a couple of weeks, to camp in what turns out to be a leaky tent, loaned by friends. I picked off some resin shimmering on the cut, loosened it onto my forearm. The gummy golden glob smelled so good I might have eaten it if I didn’t know better. The pine aroma filled our house in no time. We stuffed the tree into a bucketful of dirt, decorated it, and spread our presents, pretending not to notice our names written in Mum’s hand on small Woolworth’s gift tags. Our mother is performing miracles of big mid day dinner making. Soon she will come and we can open presents.

I feel that the black and white in relational life does not morph to grey, but is multi-coloured, with the caveat that sometimes situations are deeply without real resolution. Multi-coloured and multi-layered, where many paradoxical factors exist together in the same time frame, within one nervous and psycho-emotional system, that is one human being. Learning to live with that, to regulate our emotions and nervous systems is the most interesting, challenging and worthwhile life task, referred to in the vernacular as ‘adulting’. Other disciplines, and I use the word as a carry all for a range of more or less rational spheres, call it spiritual, or attuned, or realised, or aligned with whatever star or goddess or symbol adhered to. Regulated works for me. It applies to anyone, regardless of beliefs or leanings. Getting to be regulated all or most, or a lot of the time requires focus, the ability to pause before acting, to observe myself minutely and honestly, and stickability to that watching or monitoring. Any of us may have more opportunities, more tools and more knowledge to guide us on that path than our predecessors did, but the availability alone does not get the work done.

When I have that quiet observation of self turned on - I can only speak about my own experience - difficult situations and deep emotions become easier to be with. The pause, if I remember it or let it be, gives space to consider how to respond to whatever it is that touches me. This is a much more liveable MO, than coming off hyper-vigilance in an avalanche of emotion (aka reactivity), whatever that emotion happens to be at the time. Moving away from unhelpful responses often requires some intervention. I’ve moved through a range of therapies over the decades, from conventional talk therapy, gestalt, conscious connected breathing, working with a Compassionate Inquiry therapist, and most recently family/systemic constellations, in which I have been trained by Yildiz Sethi of Family Constellations Australia. I have also to take into account my general life experiences. There is more about that on my website.

Thinking about looming holidays and gatherings,
- what in your family system stops you from loving the idea of a festive gathering?
- What makes you think it will, in fact, be fine?
- Could you be a person that might add to the risk of blow ups?
- Who do you want to avoid making eye contact or conversation with?
- Who do you hope will not be there?
- Who would you like to be there?
- Will you be in the company of your abuser or the abuser of another family member?
If you are getting visceral responses or strong denials to the questions, here are some more:
- Do you think you can change how you feel about meeting with your family?
- Have you refused to look at your real feelings?
- Do you really need to continue denying the wounds you are carrying?
- Would you feel better if you dropped the denial?
- Would you be able to meet with your family with more calm and warmth if you changed something in yourself - without even talking to anyone else?

There are lots of therapeutic modalities out there, and fessing right up, I think family/systemic constellations are an effective and fantastic way to cut through the fuzzy stuff and get to the real issues. It’s not intellectual, it’s gentle, embodied trauma and resilience informed brief intervention. Not unemotional, not judgemental, welcoming and compassionate, and you lead the process. And it is the answer to the last question above. My analogy is your family system is a pond. Your therapy is a stone thrown into it. The pond ripples, without knowing, without question. And you can be the imperceptible change in your family system.

If you would like to clarify your familial ‘stuff’ before you get together with your DNA sharing crew, jump online to make an appointment. I have nominal hours on my calendar but will arrange with you a session to suit your time zone.

‘It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace

Oh, I wish I had a river
I could skate away on…’

Joni Mitchell, excerpt from River on her album, Blue 1971
Copyright BMG Rights Management, Reservoir Media Management, Inc, TuneCore Inc. [Joni Mitchell was writing about her break up with Graham Nash, but it works for Christmas.]

Enjoy your festival(s) with your family if you have that possibility! If not, get together with your chosen tribe.

Karen Sole

Coming events:

Online workshop Sunday 30 November, 2000-2300 hours New Zealand time. your name your ancestry your patterns. Details and booking link on website

In person workshop Sunday 07 November 9.30 am - 4 pm, St Michaels and All Angels Hall, 86 Vicarage Road, Puketapu, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. Details and booking link on website.

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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Who would Maarama have been?

My own naming story involves a degree of animosity or not getting along so well between my mother and paternal grandmother, a cousin of my father birthing a girl child days before I appeared, and the earlier child receiving the name for me that my mother had confided to my grandmother. The ‘theft’ put my mother off giving me the name she had chosen. She picked my recorded name from the book she was reading at the time. That change of mind had profound implications for me. I would have had the name, would have been Maarama, a Maori* name, which would have led to entirely different expectations from every person who read my name or interacted with me. Think especially teachers, training institute selectors, employers, and the 50s and 60s in New Zealand.

If you explored how you got your name, what would you discover?
What story do you already know that you have attached no significance to?
What were the influences on the choice?
What tribe, or culture or language had to be included or excluded?
Who had traditional rights to name you?
Was the choice left to your parents or grandparents or other relatives?
Was there a political event or famous person whose name was imported through you, into your family?
Did your parents argue, and did one of them prevail?
Who would you have been if the other parent had had their way?
Why was the argument important to them?
Are you named after a parent or grandparent?
Are you carrying the same name as a sibling or cousin who died young?
Were you adopted and did you have a name before the one you have lived your life with?
Does anyone in your family system refuse to call you by your name?
Has your name been anglicised or francofied (?) to make it easy for the people you live among?
Are you nervous about insisting on correct pronunciation of your name, in whatever language, within whatever culture and language environment?
Would you like to change your name because of its associations?
Have you informally or formally changed your name?
Have you changed your name to align with your trans-gender?
Do you have a stage or art name or nom de plume?

There are many more questions we could ask our name, but I think you can see why those ice-breakers became a rowdy force of urgent interaction!

Who is Bardia?

This is a name story from small town 1950s New Zealand. I was trailed around by a boy who waited at our primary school dental clinic gate for me to arrive - every day, or so it seems now. There was the gate, and beside the post, a kid’s body shaped hole worn away in the escallonia hedge. There was also an ovoid furrow in the ground made by our feet, and because the lawn didn’t grow right beneath the hedge. He lived opposite the school, and probably saw me coming in time to run across to be there before me. His name is Bardia, a very un-New Zealand sounding name especially at that time. It was said that his name was a place in Egypt where his father had fought in the second world war. It turns out to be in Libya, near the border with Egypt.
Wikipedia: ‘The Battle of Bardia was fought between 3 and 5 January 1941, as part of Operation Compass, the first British military operation of the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War. It was the first battle of the war in which an Australian Army formation took part…’ Also from Wikipedia ‘Bardia, also El Burdi or Bardiyah is a Mediterranean seaport in the Butnan District of eastern Libya, located near the border with Egypt.’

That is one hell of a story to be held in a child’s name and life. I want to assume that Bardia W’s father found something beautiful or admirable or delightful or sensual or awakening or simply and magnificently, something nice to eat when he was hungry in that region straddling Egypt and Libya, and not just the carnage of the battle, if indeed he was there. But who knows, now? And was he Australian, or has Wikipedia not cottoned on yet to there being NZ soldiers involved at El Burdi / Bardiyah / Bardia?

Contemporary name stories These days there are women and girls called India, daughters of hippie mothers who fled to the Ganges or New Delhi or Poona to find what was inside themselves all along. Some wonderful stories there, surely. Boys and men called Jordan. Stories, threads to pull; the father who loves the sport, who played when he was younger or who couldn’t play because he…fill in the blanks. He couldn’t because his father in turn had a poorly paid job and the son left school to work…and so on and on, until we get to the great grandfather who was enslaved. Great echoing, meaningful and impactful stories. Intergenerational working, escaping, illness, injustice, hurting, being born and dying, indelible trauma and remarkable resilience. Stories that have become legends or secrets. All contained in a name.

These are stories that can conceivably be uncovered by questioning living relatives, thereby shedding light on the remarkable ordinary people of our lineages. If we want to go beyond language, to find what is recorded in our DNA, the stories our bodies literally hold in our cells, to uncover secrets, get the aha that helps to clarify who you are, who and where you come from systemic/family constellations is a gentle but not unemotional way to surrender to the unthought known, or unsuspected truth of our ancestors, whether living or long since gone. I am still discovering or waking up to, or finally seeing events and relational factors in my lineages, and in my family of origin, now just four remaining out of six siblings. I can say that family constellations for me, is a great way to feel my DNA tremble with recognition!

’Tis but thy name that is mine enemy:
What’s Montague? It is not hand nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Karen Sole

* On my father’s side, my iwi is Ngati Ruanui / my paternal tribe is Ngati Ruanui

My upcoming workshop on 07 December 2025 your name your ancestry your patterns jumps off from this piece to explore, express and reflect on the significance of your given name. It is an in person workshop at Puketapu, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. If you would like an opportunity to experience this workshop online on 30 November 2000-2300 NZ time, leave me a message here or in chat on my website. Thank you.

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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Let’s talk about it, normalise it, de-mystify it, try to understand it, accept its pervasiveness, develop compassion toward our friends, family members and acquaintances who encounter it. Lets recognise it as a systemic issue and not an individual issue. Let’s fully accept that ‘mental illness’ is as blameless as cancer or a broken arm, or toothache. Let’s work towards breaking down the often astounding difficulties involved in getting help within the health and welfare system.

I would like to see mental health as the queen of our health system and not the Cinderella, whose funding can be reallocated on a whim, on a specious idea that mental health is less deserving than just for example, cancer, heart conditions, or asthma. I would love to see mindfulness incorporated into the earliest public education syllabus or routines. If our early life trauma is the root of our physical and mental illness, as I believe it is, then training teachers in that, and giving them skills to encourage and provide periods of calm, reflection, and stillness, in young children, we will surely reduce the number of people of any age struggling with life in a toxic culture. I refer to Dr Gabor Mate and his son Daniel whose subtitle of The Myth of Normal is trauma illness and healing in a toxic culture. [Vermillion, London, 2022]

When I was in the first years of primary school, we had time together on the mat to hear stories and soft talk. There was also a short rest period, I think every day in which we lay across our desks, head on folded arms. I can’t remember if that was after lunch, but logic suggests that. A time to quite and become still, fully back in the room and ourselves before resuming lessons. That makes sense. I doubt that it was regarded as a mindfulness or stillness practice, just classroom management, and that also makes sense. If that has gone away, bringing it back would be a great first step.

We can also learn how to respond as friends or parents or relatives of distressed people. It should be as easy to identify where and who to go to if someone’s in need of professional care and help as it is to find A and E when your kid stuffs a crayon up their nose. It is not. We find that out as soon as we have the person in our relational space. Effort required to find a loved one a spot in the health system’s limited accomodation is all consuming and excoriating. In my own case trying to find health care for my beloved, I eventually said to the bewildered young registrar she had been seeing, ‘If something doesn’t happen soon, you will have me in here’. At that point my dear one was placed on the acute file. There is a lot more, none of it pretty, none of it happy, all of it just a few decades ago. And bereft families are still fighting to be heard, to be believed when they are heard, to not be made ‘the problem’ and sidelined, to find appropriate levels and types of care for their loved ones. We have a long way to go. [I live in Aotearoa-New Zealand.]

In systemic constellations, it is possible to work with a wide range of mental-emotional-relational issues. Many issues are intergenerational. Systemic/family constellations works with these but not with diagnoses such as schizophrenia, or borderline personality disorder. I trained to be a systemic/family constellations facilitator not because of my own experience, but in spite of it, and because the need for therapy is simply so pervasive. The need is huge, widespread, through all layers and streams of our society. It’s everywhere.

If you or someone you know and love may benefit from systemic constellations, there are many facilitators around the world. Because of the boom of Zoom, I can work with you where ever you are in the world and where ever you are in your life.

“Isn’t it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside”
― Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates or has participated in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate self-inquiry and the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.

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If this ‘peace plan’ is possible now, it was possible on, let’s say, 10 October 2023, and it would have avoided the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

But it is not a peace plan. The whole world saw that in a nano second. It is merely the coda to Netanyahu’s forever stated determination to smash and decimate Palestine in Gaza and take over the territory fully. Humanity cannot bear the personal and collective consequences of the evil enacted in this genocide. For generations we will feel the trauma it has created.

For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Pablo Neruda ‘Keeping Quiet’

If you are feeling the weight of grief in our collective trauma induced by the genocide so heavy that small personal or systemic issues that arise seem impossible to withstand or process, maybe booking a private constellations session is the action that would enable you to lift some weight from your heart.

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.

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Long before that, though, (the whole documentary is more than 3 hours long) while he and Art Garfunkel are making music together, they’re nutting out Songs For America. Bridge Over Troubled Water is playing over film footage of roiling American scenes, and then of pensive Jack indoors, active Bobby in the street, and MLK on the street, marching.
The producer: You can’t have just those three.
Paul Simon: Why?
The producer: Because they’re all democrats.
Paul Simon: Really? We think of them as all assassinated.

[Please note: I drafted this days before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. There is and will be plenty of commentary about that. This morning 12 September, I recommend Owen Jones’s Substack, Battlelines : Charlie Kirk’s assassination: a dark, cold winter is coming. A heavily compromised US democracy was already in mortal danger. This is a moment of terrible danger]

Simon is now deaf in one ear. He decides to experience it as a gift, not a problem. That struck an edge of this piece, for which I had flung down a few key words. How to survive the continual assaults on humanity, and kindness and decency with joyous rage. Not that I have any answers for anyone else. There are enough people with advice for that, including people I admire, follow and often reference. I can only say that I hold firmly to instinctive, continual resistance to hateful behaviour in all its forms. For me that’s necessary in order to stay well, to stay human. To stay.

One morning in the week of writing this piece, I received a message from a friend and former colleague and boss, that a mutual acquaintance’s young adult child had died in tragic circumstances. That statement without further embellishment tends to mean one thing - the unthinkable one thing every parent would dread, or dreads, depending on how they perceive their child’s wellness. John and I reflected on and compared aspects of our early years and what happens now for young people in several WhatsApp exchanges.

We agreed, our worlds were small, geographically and socially, his in northern England, mine in small town New Zealand. Our horizons were largely dictated by the economic circumstances of our parents; the cost of travel, and even the cost of phone calls. We consulted encyclopaedias and other print resources. When I was in primary school, the entire school walked to the brand new Regent Theatre in High Street, Hawera to see The Living Desert. Lots of tiny creatures making their way over and through sand granules in magnified and magnificent close up, until the projection stopped. Shattering! Before the micro and other camera and technical work brought to us by David Attenborough and others, we had newsreels with weeks old news, and boxing matches, and that was pretty much it. Now young people have the whole world in their faces. They and we, flooded with information: the good, the bad and the ugly. If peer pressure was a pain in our youth, the digital age has created an incalculable and unstoppable avalanche of competing inputs. It has also created keeping up with the Jones’s on steroids.

With the music, fashion, revenge porn, bitcoins, wellness hacks, beauty hacks, sport, movies, theatre, messages from our loved ones and lovers and haters has streamed horrific imagery of acts of cruelty that we couldn’t make up, and yet someone has. The Gaza genocide has been live-streamed since 08 October 2023, and before that, the horror of 07 October.

I used to feel joyous rage about the injustices of the world, you know, the credo attributed to Emma Goldman if I can’t dance I won’t be in your revolution, (though she didn’t say those words), but the last 705 days (at time writing on 12 September 2025), sneer at the idea of joy. Only grief and rage remain.

What do I mean by ‘to stay’? To not be completely overwhelmed, to continue to engage, to carry on with the work I/we do? I have just resumed daily meditation, after abandoning it for weeks, because I was falling asleep at it, so great the need to dull my feelings of despair. The endless attempt to annihilate the Palestinian people has crushed me/us. I refuse to pretend that I’m happy, or that I have equilibrium in the way I did before. It is simply not possible. With determination I recover intermittently. Long enough to perform essential tasks. To make art. And to see people, to connect with friends and family, all of us reduced by the enormity of the genocide and its unspeakable details.

Where is the medicine? Is there a cure? Can the world be brought back after the long stretch and lean in the unkind direction? Just as the Holocaust of WWII is still with us, this genocide committed by zionist Israel in Gaza against the Palestinian people will stay with us for decades, or hundreds of years.

Considering how to ‘stay’ the first undeniable fact is our feelings, which take up residence in our bodies. The second undeniable fact is that if we deny the feelings, suppress them, we become unwell in all the ways we know are possible. Tich Nhat Hanh the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and political activist recommended treating all of our feelings, especially those which have a bad rap, like anger, as a beloved child. He mimed cradling anger in his arms, soothing it with caresses and sweet talk, even thanking it for protecting him. He also recognised that beneath anger there is always sadness. We have to allow our feelings. Dr Gabor Mate amplifies that call, and backs it up with the science showing mind-body is one. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Knows The Score affirms the concept.

The much flaunted ‘it is what it is’ or ‘the world is like that’ hit me as spiritual bypasses. Being urged to cheer up when you’re in deep grief. No, we have to allow our grief, our anger, our disappointment, our rage and frustration and then call on all the resources we have within ourselves, and by connection with friends and family, and political action, being in community, loving relentlessly, with gratitude for goodness, and pushing through with militant kindness. This is the real medicine.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

Paul Simon from The Sound of Silence

When we are under the weight collective trauma new personal challenges and bereavements seem too heavy. Systemic or family constellations is deep somatic and energy work, trauma and resilience informed, safe and effective in brief interventions. I have lots of energy for that! See my website for chat, bookings, more about me, because you want to know who you are working with.

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

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Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen's profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.

As a family/systemic constellations facilitator, my awareness of socio-economic determinants is an important anchor. I like this mooring in the realm of real, lived experience. Seeing the spread from the absurdity and profligacy of billionaires to the least advantaged and most vulnerable, and the conditions and circumstances that gave birth to and perpetuate the gap. Money can’t buy love - a few seconds are enough to conjure the relational misery of some of the world’s filthiest rich people - Bezos, Reinhardt, Murdoch, Maxwell, for example. But for everyone, from the richest to the poorest, money buys the necessities of life. As the filthy rich get filthier rich, the poor get poorer, until the poorest and least advantaged fall off the cliff. In the developed world this phenomenon is most readily represented by people who have no home, no permanent shelter. Nowhere to go.

A few months ago, I spent a day out in a city 20km from mine, as an experimental alternative to making the trip twice. No big deal. I had my car, a book, money for lunch, and a long time to hang out between appointments. So much comfort and yet by the end of the day, I felt ragged, tired, and so grateful that I had a warm, dry place to go to.

Somewhere to go.

Such a fact to be immensely grateful for, and not one to be taken for granted in an increasingly precarious world. That’s what I thought as I drove home. How awful it would be to have only the cold streets ahead of me as the sun went down, temperatures dropped, restaurants welcomed well dressed and shod, monied or credit carded people. Fun fact: people in general, and generally, eat early in Aotearoa-New Zealand. They’ve eaten, drunk some wine, chatted, paid up and gone home before European places would open their doors for evening trade.

Here (in Aotearoa-New Zealand) we have families living in cars. The State pays for others to live in motels. A growing cohort of single men and women born after the war are house sitting as a lifestyle. Young parents can’t scrape up the deposit for a home. Of our 112K homeless people, about half are under 25 years old. There are a lot of reasons people end up with nowhere to go. It is not their fault. The system is designed for it to happen.

As *Gary Stevenson of tells it, the economy is a finite thing, so if a very few people take hugely disproportionate wealth to themselves, others suffer poverty, and poverty from which they are unable to escape. Without redistribution of resources via taxing obscene wealth, the gap gets wider and more people fall off and out of the system in direct and less obvious ways.

The intersection of indifferent education, race, youth, old age, gender, poorly paid work or no work and insufficient support, high rents, out of reach house prices, mountainous energy costs, sky high prices of basic food items - and that’s in peace time - exacerbates the problem. We can easily appreciate that countries that create more equalitarian systems are happier, have fewer problems, including homeless people. They also recognise that having shelter is the basis of a healthy life and implement bold measures to provide housing. I’m thinking of examples in Scandinavia that I have learned of, but I don’t have references to hand, and for this piece, that’s not important. What is important is that the provision of housing creates a platform for people to find their lives again.

We do not have in Aotearoa-New Zealand tent cities under bridges, in parks, or lining the streets, no favelas, no shanties. Not yet. But I can feel the whisper of it. Globally, at the most extreme, enforced displacement caused by intolerance of gender and sexual preference, of women who exert their desire for human rights, and by inter-country or civil wars and pogroms, and I’m sure many more causes represent the more acute situations. Clearly, Israel’s illegal, immoral, unsustainable militarism in Gaza (and the West Bank), present to us the the gritty results of genocide. [No, I have not forgotten other wars and genocides.] I had no intention of mentioning the Gaza genocide in this piece, but it is not possible to think of homelessness/lack of human and humane scale and scope shelter without ‘it’. As Gaza City is about to be further ravaged by the IDF the hideous reality cannot be ignored in any discussion of shelter. Regarding the questions posed in the sub-title: What does it mean to have a roof over your head? Who would you be without it? How would you show up in the world? How would the world show up for you? What if you had children with you out there? Imagine homelessness in your current location and then imagine how it is for Palestinian men, women and children, if you can. In this visualisation, you are the mother or father of the children trying to survive in hell. How is the world showing up for you? That’s right. It’s not. Because world leaders won’t allow the Zionist project to be stopped.

There are many other ways to be without shelter, as all the diasporas prove, any number of addictions that sap resources, or the choice not to live with unsafe relatives - the equivalent of constructive dismissal, being flooded or burnt out in extreme weather events, and innumerable other causes. More and more precarious. I cannot comprehensively account for homelessness, lack of shelter, because it is so vast that I would never get back here.

Given that a roof over your head is the foundation for a healthy life, let’s have a quick look at it.

It’s somewhere to:

• be warm

• be dry

• be cool

• be safe

• sit

• lie down to sleep

• close the door on the world

• cook and eat

• do your homework

• play

• learn

• rest

• work

• nurture familial relationships

• invite friends and family

• wash clothes

• wash your body

• put your necessary things

• put your accumulation of other things

• enjoy physical intimacy with a partner

• elaborate your dreams

• provide a safe place for your children

All the comfort that we take for granted. Taps that gush fresh clean water. Soft sofas and beds. Tables and desks and TVs. Lavatories that flush all that away. Lighting and decor. Carpets, tiles, polished wood. We love it so much, and take it so much for granted!

Detailing what lack of safe, warm, dry shelter means is somewhat like trying to name all the reasons people become homeless. But it is safe to say multiple traumas, and general inability to have a life, certainly one without anxiety, danger from multiple sources, ill health, inability to get support, more especially if you are ‘undocumented’. We can imagine and shudder. We can imagine and be grateful for our plush existence.

In the early 2000s I was living in Milan, teaching English, spending lots of time with my granddaughter, Clara, and for a while, doing a writing course with Charlotte Price. One of the entry tickets to that was to write a sketchy autobiography of ten pages or so.

I’ve pulled a short piece from that that I think speaks to the safety I had as a child with a home and family. A very simple, very far from posh, imperfect but in the essential ways, sheltered life - I mean housed, with parents, who put food on the table, somewhere strong to go out from to school and to come back to, and never doubting that I could. Forever grateful.

‘We were usually outside, unless there was heavy Taranaki rain. The house was small for five children and my mother. And my father after his work day. Her frequent admonition was ‘go outside and play’. Our home playground consisted of lawns in front and back of our house, and beyond the back lawn a larger wild area. A narrow path with leg scratching grass and bidibids, flanked by much lichened apple trees, lead to a large shed. One half of it housed the chooks, on the other side the dividing wall, miscellaneous bike pieces, and the dustiest floor ever. I hated my rostered turn to collect eggs. I was afraid of chooks, their unpredictable pecking, clucking, taking off and landing, and the way they looked at me, and I still don’t rush to be around them. Another shed near the house contained the coal bin. One of my father’s brothers was our coal merchant. I loved watching him hefting the bags along the path, heaving the mouth of each one onto the edge of the bin, deftly picking up the lower edge of the bag and shaking the coal out, all the way to the choking fine dust at the end. He slapped the bags flat, folded them in half to carry back to his truck. This shed also had a cobbler’s last bolted to a sturdy workbench, and a 20 litre stone bottle which contained TEEPOL detergent used by my father in concrete making. Assorted tools and machinery bits hung from nails on the dusty open framing timbers, alongside the well oiled gardening tools. The squeeze gap between the tank stand and house was the right dampness for glossy green mosses to grow. My sister and I dug kitchen knives in to the ground to lift moss up for our sand saucer gardens bound for flower shows. My maternal grandfather and uncle exhibited prize daffodils and gladioli at these shows, or we would never have known about them, although I thought then that everyone made floral saucers once or twice a year. The vegetable garden bound by hedges was my father’s territory. Years later, I discovered that I knew how to make a garden from having watched him spade the soil over, let it weather, break it up with the fork, and rake it into a perfect crinkled plane, the raked lines at perfect right angles to the garden edge. I never got to running a string line between sticks to create straight rows, but I can see now the string running off the oval winding stick as Dad moved from one end of a new row to the other, walking a plank laid down to prevent heavy trampling of the soft raked soil. If we were lucky, we picked peas on Christmas Day. We shelled them sitting on the warm concrete path in our best shorts, before dusting them off and taking the peas in to our mother who would be cranking the coal range up to roast the chicken on that summer day.The vegetable garden was created around a lone Cape Gooseberry bush which produced one or two papery berry containers each summer. I never understood why it was allowed to stay. ‘

‘It is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.’
Mary Oliver, Red Bird

References

Dr Gabor Mate with Daniel Mate the Myth of Normal - TRAUMA, ILLNESS & HEALING IN A TOXIC CULTURE www.drgabormate.com

Gary Stevenson instagram, Youtube, X, *Our mental health is being destroyed by a collapsing economy 18 August 2025; The Trading Game: A Confession 432 pp Penguin ‘The high-wire true story of the millionaire trader, who won the finance game and then blew it wide open’

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Next Constellations:
1. Sunday 14 September, 13-1700 10 Herschell Street, Napier New Zealand.
2. Sunday 14 September, online, 20-2300 NZ time
Booking at manawafamilyconstellations.com 15% discount for GetConstellated subscribers

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen's profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.

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Correspondence. Letters! With beginnings, middles and ends, forming part of ongoing conversations in that form. And post scripts. Strings of them. You imagine your friend, sitting in their spot, envelope addressed, letter folded and a barely aspirated ‘oh!’ followed by a quick unfolding, snatched up pen, and the P.S.s. I forgot to say I broke up with… or you should see the garden. The zucchini are outrageous at the moment…or you must read The Incredible Lightness of Being or see Lawrence of Arabia…maybe going over onto the back of the final page, below the salutation, a little arrow at the right foot of the page pointing to a promise of more words from your loved one on the other side - just turn the page over. Oh yes, and don’t forget the haunting nature of handwriting. That extension of the person. You knew it was they who had written you from your name and address scratched onto the envelope.
Actual handwriting, drizzling a finger over the ink, a caress of the sender’s skin. Who hasn’t done that?

In this realm, those were the days! Whole conversations in exchanges of casual, normal language of ideas, friendship, travel, love, divorce, births, work, family, politics, one thread spanning weeks, and sometimes just one volley going thousands of miles wrapped around a few photos, usually developed at a chemist shop by a technician or just the woman who handed you your aspirin and sticking plasters. Is that who did it?

I’ll use ‘bring that back’ as one of my three wishes when Aladdin comes to call. We’ll keep email, habibi, but put letters back in the mix.

Once, sitting with my mother on the edge of her bed, when she was well into her eighties, or even nineties, I can’t place the decade, we were talking about her state of being. ‘I’m alright’, she said, ‘and what is that thing they call happiness anyway? What does that word mean?’ Indeed, if we are one, and we are one, then we are only as happy/well as the least well amongst us, and today how can we answer that? Maybe happiness is having enough resilience to carry on, to get up in the morning, do what has to be done, be grateful for what we have and what we get, spread some love, and receive it, too. More or less.

It’s more difficult some times than others, and everyone has stuff to deal with, in times when war and famine and other catastrophes are absent from where we are, although visceral evidence is delivered daily, or every minute to our phones, so that it cannot be absent from who we are. We cannot be unaffected by the suffering of others in our lifetime, or of our forbears, ancestors, family lines. Here comes the therapy bit. Systemic constellations provide a pragmatic/phenomenological way of working with the generationally collected and currently collective traumas we carry, by recognising what is, opening up our natural resilience which is a resource we take for granted, or perhaps we don’t even acknowledge it. We have it, though, otherwise we would not have made it to this moment, in whatever shape we are in.

There are systemic constellation practitioners around the world, and systemic practitioners who work with you where ever you are in the world - thank you Zoom - and I am one of those. I can stay up late or get up early or in the middle the night to be in sync with your time zone. You can find me at the website and email below, to arrange a time, or book a session directly. I would love to work with you, in English (my only fully competent language), on your issues. I chose manawa because it carries the meaning of heart, breath and emotion, all essential for the embodied energetic processes of constellations.

Meanwhile, we all must allow our grief, take action, take care of ourselves and ‘each other’.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.” Rumi

www.manawafamilyconstellations.com Chat, book sessions

manawa = heart breath emotion

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com drop a line to arrange a workable time

Next Constellations:
1. Sunday 14 September, 13-1700 10 Herschell Street, Napier New Zealand.
2. Sunday 14 September, online, 20-2300 NZ time
Booking at manawafamilyconstellations.com 15% discount for GetConstellated subscribers

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen's profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.

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On 14 July Andrea Gibson died. I knew they were going to do that sooner than most of us, but it surprised me, and there they are, nearer and more prevalent than ever as they predicted, though in the way they are and in measure they couldn’t have guessed, despite their immense reader-follower base. For a long time my website held a line from them about choosing to live fully in the face of imminent but imprecisely timed dying. I thought there’d be time to post another line or two before that moment, but was mistaken. Their unoutdoable everything should deter people from trying to outdo them in tributes, but I’ve seen some efforts at that. Nah.

[Calibrating Joy, acrylic paint on stretched canvas, 1020 x 1020 mm copyright solekart.com/Karen Sole]

Stardust and all that. Getting back to the garden seems the unlikeliest thing for humanity as we hit 652 days of the Gaza genocide. A genocide exceptional for its cruelty, transgressiveness, and effect on everyone, globally, among the contemporary catastrophes. The lie that people working together can create positive change is highlighted in constant live streams of unspeakable carnage, murder, Israeli perpetrators dancing on bodies, celebrating the death of Palestinians don’t get me started. In my lifetime, we the people took to the streets in our millions to stop US entry to Vietnam and Iraq to name just two of the hideous infractions of basic humanity and international law, and what happened? Nothing, niente, nada. The politicians carried on relentlessly lying, murdering, justifying, escaping The Hague. But we continue gathering, marching, protesting because we feel better moving beyond grief and rage to action, and mixing our exhale with that of people we trust feel as we do. It feels better if we get up stand up. We’ll keep doing it.

On a personal level, the 652 days have worn us down, though it seems almost Munchausen-ish to mention that in the face of the live streamed reality of life and so much suffering and death in Gaza. When I meet groups of familiar people we speak of poor sleeping: I believe the witnessing of the genocide causes this by contributing a huge weight of anxiety and grief. There are other signs of literal heart failure, too. We carry on, while we feel and see the disintegration of any moral sense among ‘world leaders’. It’s now illegal in the UK to hold a poster decrying genocide, or proclaiming Palestinian rights. But not in New Zealand.

Never again has become shut the fuck up.

But we don’t and won’t. And must not.

The anxiety is a lot about the world not falling apart so much as falling in with, protecting and enabling and arming the worst ideas, policies, and militarism. If you have peeked at my substack before, you’ll probably know that this is far from the first time I have mentioned the genocide. I wish something else was the foremost weight on my heart and mind. There are close rivals. They all intersect. but I can only mention the antidote to the despair: action, spending time with people who can hold sadness, so it becomes a human or universal pain, not a personal one. Shared trauma. It is not diminished by sharing, but becomes a little more bearable, even if it is actually unbearable, unspeakable, unthinkable.

In the same way each of us does, the world accumulates grief and trauma. The most recent is never over before the next crashes over us. That is clear, as we see the horrors of the Holocaust still rippling through generations of the perpetrators and the victims in equal measure and power. So too, the effects of the Nakba(s). And now, the tsunami that Israel created in 2023 is insistent, thrashing every shore. There is no way to avoid it.

But life insists on itself. Alongside the collective trauma, we find abundant joy and delight in the usual sustaining experiences. In my small orbit, babies born, (hello Alouette and Lily Mavi), exams passed (hello Emily), qualifications attained along with exciting work (hello Tahi and Clara). People travel and work and dance and sing and holiday, go to the gym, walk and run and swim. Kids climb trees, get cell phones, go to school. People fall in love. Luckily and miraculously I must say to all of that.

If we have nothing

but each other

we have so much.
Andrea Gibson 13 August 1975 - 14 July 2025

Meanwhile, keep a watch on this.

We are stardust.
Thank you science. [Ref. Brian Cox, Neil de Grasse Tyson.]

We are golden.
We’re born that way.

We belong in our family system.
We really do.

Love flows in that system.
Yes, it does. It does.

Our trauma is stored in our cells.
No longer up for debate. [Ref.Dr Gabor Mate, Bessel van der Kolk]

We are resilient.
Or we wouldn’t be here now.

We can build more resilience.
The proof is all around us.

Factors that enhance resilience are well known.
Warm friendship. Staying fit. Eating well. Reading. Journaling. Thousands of therapeutic methods.

We’re all copping lots of trauma right now. We can work with that in constellations, too. If you would like to experience trauma and resilience informed therapy that works with multi-generations compassionately and pragmatically/phenomenologically, email, or message on my website, where you can also book a session directly. Other time zones i.e. not New Zealand, please contact me to arrange a time.

manawafamilyconstellations.com 021 210 3773

karensole@manawafamilyconstellations.com

Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen's profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.

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