In relation to integrating our family story, Desmond Tutu has this to say: 'Every family has a story and every member has their own interpretation of that story, and every member has their own story. If you don’t own your own story, your story will own you, and for the rest of your life. Understand your own and your family story, or it will play havoc with your life, for the rest of your life'. We are products of our ancestral story as much as our personal history and we can be controlled by either. Even issues that were carefully guarded family secrets we may be carrying at an unconscious level to the extent of making us sick. A woman who always felt an absence of bonding with her mother and could never understand her coldness, only found the reason weeks after she died. Another child had previously been forcibly taken from her mother and given for adoption. This was never spoken about and the wound of separation made future bonding difficult. This woman had lived the legacy of her mother’s secret.
