Transcript for Writing Your Resilience Podcast Episode 117

Healing Your Ancestral Trauma: How Family Constellations Work Can Free You from Stories That Aren't Yours with Tania Gonzalez-Ortega

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:00] Listeners, what if the stories we tell about ourselves aren't really ours, and what if we could finally trace them back to where they began? This is something I've been asking myself for years, and today I am excited to share a few ways you can answer those questions for yourself through Family Constellations work. This week's guest, Tania Gonzalez-Ortega, is a Family Constellations practitioner with 25 years of experience in energy work. During our conversation, we explore the benefits and challenges of the dark night of the soul, how some of what we experience during the dark night isn't ours, and how we can work with those connections in ways that allow us to live our fullest, most empowered lives. Be sure to stick around for the incredible exercise Tania shares with us — it's already making me think differently about my book. Let's dive in.

Welcome to Writing Your Resilience, the podcast for writers who want to write and live the story that sets them free. I'm your host, Lisa Cooper Ellison, a writer, transformational and trauma-informed coach, story alchemist, and fellow traveler on the winding road of healing and creativity. Each week I'll share tools, practices, and conversations that will help you let go of what no longer serves you as you create stories that change lives — especially your own. Together we'll explore how to trust your creative voice, support your mental health and resilience, work with your nervous system and unique design, and stay connected to your deepest calling as a writer, even when life gets messy. It's time, my friends, to write and live the story that sets you free. I'm honored to walk that journey alongside you, one story and one episode at a time.

Welcome, Tania, to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am so happy to have you on today.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [1:50] I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:52] Listeners, you are in for a treat, because Tania is going to talk about something that is really fundamental to understanding who we are — and to the stories that we write and the stories that we tell ourselves. I'm going to let her tell you about it, but I want you to first open your mind and think about what those stories are. What is the story you're telling yourself right now about who you are, and who helped you become this? Okay, now that you have your story, Tania, tell us a little about yourself and what you do.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [2:28] Okay. So, a little bit about me: I started out as a fine artist as a young woman and went to school for that. Once I graduated, I ended up in education because I felt really drawn to children and was thinking about what is the best use of my time and energy considering just how troubled the planet is — and was, at the time; it still is. So, I ended up in Waldorf education, which found me. I studied Steiner and worked with young children, which is really beautiful. If you don't know anything about it and you're a parent, I highly suggest you Google it and look into it — it's a wonderful educational approach to the child.

During that time as a teacher, I went on a little yoga retreat, and that was kind of the beginning of my spiritual awakening. I felt very different after that retreat — things were clearer, more crisp, more alive. So, I ended up becoming a yoga teacher with the Sivananda Ashram organization, and I ended up in their ashrams in San Francisco, Grass Valley, and Los Angeles, where I taught yoga and was basically living a monastic life — even though I wasn't ordained as a monk, I was definitely living that life. That's when I had my spiritual awakening, which was a very challenging one. It was definitely a Kundalini awakening experience, which I didn't know was what was happening to me at the time.

Long story short, I left because of the health issues and all the anxiety and depression I was experiencing — the overwhelm and disorientation, not understanding what was going on with me. After a couple of years of really being in that and looking for answers, I had what I can only describe as a miraculous experience. I went from being extremely ridden with anxiety, overwhelm, and depression to it being totally gone overnight. It was through my encounter with Christ, which I hadn't had a relationship with before, so that was something totally new.

I learned a lot from that experience in terms of what spirituality is and what gets in the way. For me, it was a huge pattern of performing for love — feeling like, even on the spiritual path, I had to prove my worthiness or somehow earn God's grace. In that experience, I learned that I never had to do anything in order to receive God's grace. That's when my deeper healing began. I got into energy work and then discovered Family Constellations, probably around 2012 or 2013. I went into training and became a facilitator and started working with clients around 2019.

I found Family Constellations to be so amazingly effective in tracing where trauma comes from. In my own experience of overwhelm — just the physical and mental overwhelm from my awakening — my first constellation revealed that there was a lot of trauma in my mother's lineage that I didn't know anything about, including her own trauma. What was revealed to me was that I had inherited all that trauma, and my body simply couldn't continue to carry it. It was building and building and building, and I was trying to hold it, until I realized that most of it wasn't mine to carry. We can unburden ourselves and really rewire our nervous system — give back what doesn't belong to us — and create space to step into our fullest potential and what we came here to do.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [6:33] I love how meandering your experience was, because mine was as well. I did spend time in the education system, which I can attest has a lot of brokenness — and it was the reason I left. I worked in the inner city in Louisville, Kentucky, as a special education teacher, and it was a really intense environment. I was working with children who had critical needs, who would sometimes come into the classroom with things having just happened to them — and there I was, trying to hold space for their experience while also having the pressure of "it's math time." Those two things do not work well together.

I resonate with that so much. And this concept of performing for love — I know a lot about that. It's been part of my own awakening process. I think it's so important for us to talk about awakening, because we are meaning-making animals, and awakening is how we make meaning — how we expand the meaning of our lives. For so many of us, that awakening happens through the dark night of the soul, through challenge and hardship, and it's on the other side of it that we can see the magnificence or the power. But when you're in the middle of it — oh, my goodness — it's terrifying.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [8:03] I know. There are varying degrees, but my experience of the dark night of the soul was like my soul had left. I could not feel anything — no joy, no happiness. I couldn't even really feel sadness. Complete numbness and disconnection from all of life. That was what was causing the anxiety, because it was like, what is this? Where am I? It was no-man's land.

I remember at the time I was seeing a psychiatrist who put me on a bunch of medications, which honestly never did much for me. But one thing she said was, "At some point this will end" — meaning the depression. I couldn't understand how, because I was so conditioned to think, oh, if there's a problem, you fix it. Maybe I just need to meditate more, or go on a cleanse, or think the right thoughts. None of that was working.

At that time, I came across St. John of the Cross's writings, The Dark Night of the Soul, and he described it — in a nutshell — as something there's nothing you can do about. It's a purification, and it's up to God to decide when you're done. He was essentially saying no amount of prayer, no amount of meditation, is going to get you out of this. That, honestly, is kind of what kept me alive — just knowing, okay, I don't understand it, but maybe there's something to this. It wasn't until I surrendered, until I finally let go of trying to fix it, that everything changed. Literally overnight, I made a proclamation to God: "Okay, my life is yours to do whatever you want. I'm not going to try to fix this anymore." And that's when things changed.

It's just so counterintuitive. We're taught to do something, and surrender is hard to grasp if you've never really had to do it before — especially when it involves your life.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [10:06] Absolutely. First, kudos to you for finding that work and for going through that process and arriving at surrender as the way forward. For so many trauma survivors, that can be really difficult, because one thing that can happen — that rewires our nervous system — is that we get rewired to hypervigilance. It's that hypervigilant part of us that wants to fix things, wants to be in action, and often feels that action and control are what will move us away from discomfort.

Something I've come back to again and again is my Osho Zen Tarot deck. There are two cards — Nothingness and Aloneness — and they both carry this idea of being in the gap, being your own light. That can be so hard to do, but when you can find some visual, some piece of writing, something you can hold on to that allows you to make sense of what's happening, it makes all the difference.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [11:17] Yes, definitely — at least something. Even if you don't understand it, it can bring in some level of faith. Reading St. John of the Cross was like, okay, other people have been through this before. I'm not an anomaly. This happens. That brought some level of comfort for the way forward, for sure.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [11:37] Part of what was happening to me in that dark night of the soul — when I was in deep depression and anxiety and my body was failing, all those things — was that I wasn't just holding on to my own story. Like you, when you talked about that ancestral story, it played a huge role for me too. Given what you now know about Family Constellations and that form of therapy, what would you say to that part of yourself, looking back?

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [12:09] Really, what I would say is: this isn't all yours, and it's not your fault. We tend to think that, somehow, we caused the things we go through — we go into our minds trying to figure out, oh my gosh, where did I go wrong? What should I have done differently? Trauma can certainly be such a gift, but only if you can move through it, only if you really get to the other side fully. Because once you do, the gift it brings is the capacity to hold space for others.

Maybe what I would say to myself back then is: there's a gift in this. I promise you're not going through this torture because life is meaningless, or because you've messed up and you're never going to get back on track. I would hold on to little messages like "never give up" and "this too shall pass."

What I find is that you can really feel it when you come into contact with someone who has been through a lot in life and has digested it — transmuted it, accepted it. They carry a level of peace that's really beautiful, and they seem to be able to behold another in a way that is just so deeply loving. Versus someone who has either never had difficulty or isn't willing to do the work — to me that feels like a kind of shallowness, maybe a more materialistic view of life, an unwillingness to face what's uncomfortable.

So, the gift for me, having gone through that, is just knowing that everything is always changing, life really is temporary, and there's something greater — a larger reality, a greater mystery — that we're a part of, and we can surrender to the journey.

But I think what Family Constellations work reveals is the ability to have a real experience of what's behind the veil. We often think, oh yeah, I have ancestors — but what do they matter? They're dead. What relevance do they have? And we're beginning to realize that their life experiences actually do get passed down through our DNA, even at a purely scientific level. When those experiences aren't resolved, or something is out of order, it can end up with us to sort out. So, if it's showing up in our life, it really is an opportunity to do the work — not only for ourselves, but for our lineage and for what exists within the spiritual realms. That level of healing and transformation ripples out throughout the collective.

I think that's what we're experiencing now, with so many people going through awakening experiences. It's like popcorn — one person wakes up, and it activates another and another and another, even in ways we can't see, even in ways that appear illogical. But that's what I'm seeing: a lot of people just waking up, not necessarily because they're consciously trying to. They're simply having these awakening experiences. It's an interesting time, for sure.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [15:38] It is. I'm seeing this as well — in the people I work with, in my clients, in friends, all over the place. It's pretty magical to see people wake up, awaken to their full potential, and claim their power. It's amazing. And usually the process is messy, and when it's messy, having a guide is incredibly helpful.

So, I want to stop for a minute, in case someone doesn't know what Family Constellations therapy is. Could you tell us what it is and give us a sense of what it might look like — and how we identify our ancestors?

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [16:18] Sure. Family Constellations was created by Bert Hellinger, a German family therapist who brought this work to the world in the 1990s. It's much more popular in Europe, India, and other parts of the world — it's still relatively unknown in the United States.

There's a lot to it, but I'll do my best to explain it, with the caveat that it's one of those things where you really only know it once you've experienced it, because it is experiential — phenomenological. It's about meeting what's present in the moment, and the way a constellation unfolds really depends on what's happening in that moment. There's no set protocol; as a facilitator, I never know what's going to happen or what needs to happen.

There are different ways to conduct constellations, but let me describe what a group process looks like. Let's say I'm hosting a workshop with a room of about 15 people, and one person is going to receive a constellation. That client tells me what the issue is — it could be health, relationships, money, emotions, really anything. We don't go into the story. There's no "tell me when this started" or "how long has this been with you?" We don't want the person reliving and retelling what is, because in Family Constellations we're zooming out and looking from a much broader perspective — not just through their lens. As you said, we make meaning out of our lives, but oftentimes the stories we make up about ourselves aren't necessarily even true, and yet we're living as if they are.

So, let's say the client keeps attracting the same kind of partner over and over and can't seem to break the cycle. I would have the client choose someone from the group to represent themselves, someone to represent the mother, someone to represent the father. These representatives generally have no connection to the client — they don't know the client's story; they don't know anything about them. Because we're consciously working with the field — what's called the knowing field — those representatives step into the circle and are placed wherever the client intuitively feels they belong, facing whatever direction feels right.

The moment those representatives step in, things start happening automatically. They begin feeling things in their bodies that aren't theirs — they've taken on those roles, and the information is coming through the field. Maybe the person representing the client says, "I'm feeling a lot of anxiety when I look toward the father." Maybe the representative for the mother says, "I can't look at the father — something is pulling me in a different direction." The representatives communicate what's coming through them, and 99% of the time it's accurate. The client will say, "Oh my gosh, that's exactly what my father would say" or "that's precisely how my mother was." Something is activated, and the client is suddenly seeing their life mirrored back to them.

From there, we track the issue back through the lineage. Where did it stem from? Maybe the grandfather was a philanderer — had many mistresses — and it was a secret that was never spoken about. That ends up showing up in the field. More representatives may be brought in to represent other people and elements, and then we begin working with what Bert Hellinger called healing sentences.

These sentences come at the level of the soul — statements that need to be spoken because they are true. An example might be a daughter saying to her father, "I give back to you your anger. It's not mine to carry." Or, if there was a role reversal where the daughter acted more like the parent and the parent more like the child: "I was supposed to be the little one and you were supposed to be the big one. I take my place back as the child, and you as the parent."

What the constellation reveals is where the disruptions are in the flow of love — the order of love — because there is an order to love. When we're out of place in that order, it impacts our lives in a negative way. When we restore order in the constellation, the flow of love can come through from the ancestors and everyone in the lineage toward us.

With trauma, I think there's sometimes a necessary first step — if you were abused by a parent, you may need to put your hand up and say, I'm done, I'm not engaging with this. But at some point, the deeper work involves not cutting yourself off from them entirely, because they did give you life. There's a process by which you come to a place of acceptance — you accept your place within the lineage — without continuing to carry the story of victimhood.

I hope that helps explain it. Like I said, it can be very cathartic and very eye-opening — even for the people serving as representatives. Even though the constellation isn't about them, they will often receive profound insight into their own lives through the role they played. And it's important to note that this is not psychodrama. It's not "let's pretend to be mom and dad and make up what we think happened." Things actually start happening — bodily sensations, feelings, emotions — on their own.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [22:43] I love this explanation — and I think you did it beautifully. It was making me think of Fritz Perls' Gestalt work, because there's some element of Gestalt in what you're describing. I'm going back to my counseling days and way back into counseling theory, which has been a while. But Perls did a lot of work in the moment. He had a famous exercise called the empty chair, where you would sit across from an empty chair representing someone in your life — family or otherwise — with whom you had unresolved conflict, and you would say the things you hadn't had a chance to say. Sometimes, if there was another person sitting in that chair as a representative, they might say the things you needed to hear.

I was never a Gestalt therapist, so if any Gestalt therapists are listening and I've gotten something wrong, please feel free to correct me. But what I find is that in my own work as an Akashic Records healer and reader — which can sometimes feel a little like a choose-your-own-adventure story — there is a similar energetic element. People go where they need to go to release stuck energy. There's often a story element: they go to a place — it could be a past life, whether that means another lifetime or another part of this life — where something is unresolved. Depending on the trauma, a person may encounter someone there — a perpetrator, or someone who simply wasn't seeing them. It can show up in a lot of different ways.

What I find happens in these healings is that there comes a point where the person has something they need to say — some truth that needs to be vocalized. And then sometimes a higher-self version of the other person will receive that and reveal a message in return. Something shifts as a result. I do it in a very different way, but I've seen the power of it, and when you can allow yourself to be fully present with that, it can have dramatic impacts on your life.

Something else is coming up for me right now, and I'm wondering — feel free to say no, because no is a complete sentence, especially in podcast world — whether we might go through a very short exercise so listeners can get a sense of what this is like. I'd love to turn it into a writing exercise afterward. It wouldn't be a replacement for Family Constellations work by any means, but a way to tap into that sense of ancestry so people can do a little of that exploration on their own — and if they're interested in working with you or someone else, they'll have an experience to use as an anchor.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [25:28] Yes, I can describe a simple exercise that gives people a taste of what it's like to work with the knowing field. You can do this on your own, though it can be helpful to have someone observing, because we don't always catch everything we're experiencing or expressing through our bodies.

Let's say you want to get a sense of your matrilineal lineage. You would take several pieces of paper — standard letter size or smaller — and write on each one: mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, one per page. You can go back as many generations as you like. Then do it blind. A blind constellation means you step into each element without knowing which it is. So, you flip the pages face down, mix them up so you don't know which is which, and place them on the floor.

Start with just the three. Step onto one, close your eyes, and simply notice: what are you feeling? You will feel something. Maybe it's a sense of being pushed backward, maybe your hands get fidgety, maybe you feel jittery, or you notice heat in your belly — it could be anything. Take note of whatever comes up. That's why having an observer is helpful — they can record what you're noticing and experiencing. Then move to the next page without looking and repeat the process. You might also hear words, or an image might come through. Record all of it.

Then go back and flip the pages over. Oh — when I was feeling jittery, that was my grandmother. Oh — when I was feeling bliss, that was my great-grandmother. Now that you know which sensation corresponds to which person, you can step back onto those pages and go deeper: what else do you notice?

That's a simple example of sensing into the field. You can use this approach for anything — your business, a decision you're facing. What are the different choices, and how does each one feel in your body? It's a really accessible way in.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [28:02] I love that for two reasons. One, it directly relates to something I'm working on in a project — which I'll share in a moment. But also, as you were describing Family Constellations, I was already picturing pieces of paper before you even mentioned them. I love that connection point.

I'm going to be doing that exercise very soon, because I'm working on a project where breath plays a huge role. In researching my ancestry for this piece, I've been sitting with the fact that my great-great-great-grandmother fell off a ship coming to the United States from Ireland and drowned.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [28:02] Oh wow.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [28:02] And there's this lineage of drowning that has carried across several generations — in the form of congestive heart failure in some, and in my case, severe asthma. Even now I'm dealing with a health issue related to my lungs, which I find fascinating. The lungs show up throughout this piece in so many different ways across my own life. So, I do think there is that ancestral piece — some story I've been carrying that isn't mine, and yet it is mine to transmute, because I am living it.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [29:24] Yes, definitely. That is the work. And when we do it ourselves, we're actually impacting future generations. To me, it's just mind-blowing when you really think about the ramifications. We go into Family Constellations work because we want our own lives to be better — but it makes me think of Indra's Net, this image of an interconnected universe where each intersection is a jewel that reflects all the other jewels. Whatever one aspect of the universe does, however small, it ripples out. It's quantum physics, really.

I find it fascinating that just in a relatively short time, this work with trauma has really taken shape and moved forward — deepening our understanding of what's in our DNA, what our nervous system is, who we really are, what our subconscious mind holds. So much is being revealed and uncovered. It makes it a really amazing time to be alive.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [30:39] I 100% agree, and it's incredible to see how people can blossom when they decide to do this work. I often use the metaphor of a drop of water in a lake — you can't always see where the ripples go, but they go somewhere. I've certainly experienced in my own life that as I've healed, people around me change, not because I'm changing them — that never works — but on their own. When we shift the energy, the energy shifts around us.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [31:08] I'm glad you brought that up, because it's true — Family Constellations work can seem almost miraculous. For example, I did a constellation around my brother. We were estranged, and I went through the constellation, and literally the next day I came into contact with him by chance. He was on the phone — completely unexpected. Things like that happen all the time.

There was another woman who was struggling with her son, who was dealing with addiction and resisting going into rehab. She was, of course, very distraught, and she came to me wanting to do a constellation for him. I said, well, we can't do it for him, but we can do it for you — just to see what's there in your relationship with each other and within the family. There were some loyalties between him and the grandfather that came up, and she experienced a lot of peace and relief from that constellation. About two weeks later, her son reached out to her on his own, asking for her help, saying he was ready to go into rehab. These things really do shift at the quantum level and have an impact on those around us.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [32:20] Listeners, you have a chance to change the quantum in your life, and I invite you to do so. And this is just one dimension of what you explore, Tania, because you have your practice with clients, but you also have a beautiful podcast — the New Earth Consciousness podcast — where you're interviewing all kinds of people doing healing work, working with energy, and offering different perspectives on what's happening in the world. What would you like to share about that podcast, and what are you learning from the conversations you're having there?

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [32:59] The podcast really is a wide-open space. New Earth Consciousness — what does that mean? We have people talking about business, about how business shifts and changes moving forward. We talk about energy work and healing, about how to create conscious communities. Creatives, visionaries, healers — really any topic you could imagine that fits under the umbrella of New Earth Consciousness. Conscious parenting, astrology — and you were on there, talking about the power of writing and how it can transform someone on their healing journey. There are all kinds of conversations there to explore.

My perception is that there is so much light on the planet right now — so many amazing people walking with love in their hearts, dedicated to uplifting humanity. More than we realize. And I think it's really just a matter of time before the oppressive systems we've all had to participate in for hundreds and thousands of years crumble and shift and change. The good news is that a matrix of light is being built.

What I've been learning is that we are all activating each other in more ways than we realize — through conversations, through what we hear, through connection. And I think the way forward is through going deep into our relationships with each other, cultivating them the way you would cultivate soil — nurturing it, nourishing it. Those connections are going to be the fertile ground for a new Earth.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [35:00] And one of the things you and I were talking about before I hit record was the importance of in-person community and real-life connection. Not that you can't have a genuine connection with someone online, but there is something different when it's mediated by a screen. As we wrap up, what would you like to say about that?

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [35:27] Technology is great — we have this almost overabundance of information and access to each other through social media. But I do think it's important to keep ourselves grounded and tethered to reality through real-world, in-person interactions. Making the effort to spend time in our communities, creating offerings within our communities. I live in a small community, and I think it's just necessary — it brings harmony into the community and into your own life.

It's important to ask yourself: when you're on your deathbed reflecting on your life, what will you actually remember? We're probably not going to remember the moments we spent on a screen. It's the memories we made in person with each other that stay with us the most.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [36:27] That feeling when you look into someone's eyes, or the way it feels when someone gives you a hug — those deep, intimate touches and connections that are so difficult to have through a screen. Thank you for that reminder.

This has been an amazing conversation. If people want to learn more about you and about Family Constellations work, what are the best ways for them to connect with you?

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [36:54] You can go to NewEarthConsciousness.com. You can find me on Facebook by searching Tania Elena. And my YouTube channel is youtube.com/@NewEarthConsciousness — all one word. You can find me in all those places.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [37:11] Listeners, I highly recommend you do exactly that and tune in to her wonderful podcast. All the links will be in the show notes, so it will be very easy to connect with her. Tania, thank you so much for being on the show today. It has been an absolute gift to spend time with you.

Tania Gonzalez-Ortega [37:28] Thank you so much, Lisa. This has been really wonderful. Thank you.