Family Constellations: The Dowry Chest Passed from Mother to Daughter

It's time to look inside your dowry chest.

What gifts did your mother, your grandmother and your great-grandmother place there for you? They know better than anyone what a girl needs as she becomes a woman.

On the road to womanhood, a woman carries an entire transgenerational dowry chest with her. Out of love, out of duty, and because that's simply how it's done, the young woman feels confident, supported and proud.

The heavier the chest, the more determined she is to carry it and honour what's expected of her. We have beautiful customs and traditions that celebrate a woman coming into her own.

The old people used to say that, year in and year out, a woman is as rich as her dowry chest is full.

What have your mother, your grandmothers and your great-grandmothers set aside especially for you, and for the woman you've become?

Perhaps they gave you pillows and bed linen embroidered with the art of patience and inner calm.

Perhaps they gave you blankets woven with symbols of love, lightness and joy.

Perhaps they gave you the little recipe book written in a language only the two of you understand, with secret ingredients meant to stay secret until death and beyond.

And they certainly gave you a few carefully wrapped gifts, meant to be opened when the time is right.

What have you chosen to do with all these gifts — the material ones, but above all the emotional and energetic ones?

Do you keep them with loyalty and devotion? Do you carry them as a responsibility, as a way of honouring the family? So that one day you can hand them down to your own children?

The transgenerational dowry chest is a gift we receive through our DNA and through growing up inside a family. We gather beliefs, customs and behaviour patterns from our lineage, and we build our lives on top of them.

What is your life like right now? Are you content, at peace with it?

If your answer is a firm yes, then you're walking your own path and living your destiny.

But if you feel unfulfilled, unhappy, if you have health problems no one can explain, or you can't seem to find your place in your own life — these are all signs that it's time to open your dowry chest and start sorting through it. To decide which transgenerational gifts you want to keep, and which ones you're ready to let go of.

Start by writing down, on small pieces of paper, every gift you've received from your mother and your grandmother. Then separate them into two piles: the gifts that still make sense for you now, in the present, and the gifts that no longer serve your wellbeing. Then say these words:

Thank you, mother, and thank you to all the women of my lineage, for these gifts, which I now lovingly return to you. I honour you and I love you.

Thank you, mother, and thank you to all the women of my lineage, for these gifts, which I keep with gratitude and love.

Dear woman,

Do you know how to make the most of the inheritance your lineage has given you, and build a fulfilling life with it?

I'd love to welcome you into my family constellations group — Trăiește holistic ("Live Holistically") — where we bring healing, peace and harmony into relationships: https://www.facebook.com/groups/traiesteholistic/