Our son’s wedding this week got me thinking about life-cycle ceremonies. Also known as rites of passage, these particular moments in the life of a family system are incredibly powerful. They have the potential to facilitate reconciliation and healing. On the downside, they can also result in conflict and emotional cut off.
What’s the difference? The functioning of the family leader, any important family member or even a spiritual leader can make a difference. A non-anxious presence can help the system use these important times as a means of positive change.
What’s important about life-cycle ceremonies is that the family system is especially open to change. Even stuck systems have the potential for change during these moments. In fact, stuck systems tend to be characterized by long periods of time without rites of passage. And their stuckness is intensified by the lack of life-cycle ceremonies.
Whether it’s a wedding, birth, death, retirement, divorce, graduation or a significant birthday, rites of passage offer opportunities for change. They are like open doors that lead to a new and better place for the family system.
So how can you as a family member or a spiritual leader help make these special moments positive and not negative? How can you lead the family system through the open door of opportunity? Here are three ways.
Recognize the importance of grief.
Even happy moments represent a loss. Marriage is the loss of singleness. A promotion is the loss of the old job. A child going off to college is the loss of having to parent a child at home. And there are obvious life-cycle moments that are sad. Death, divorce and losing a job represent moments of great loss.
So regardless of the passage, people need to be able to reflect on what is lost. When this is done in healthy ways it promotes emotional growth in the system. It also facilitates the possibility for deeper relationships or even reconciliation.
This is why telling stories, singing favorite songs, looking at pictures and sharing memories are so important. They are the natural way to mark a passage from old to new, whether the moment is happy or sad.
While our son’s wedding was filled with great memories, the moment that sticks out in my mind took place the day after. The bride’s parents hosted a brunch. It was mostly family. I looked at my son and noticed his wedding band on his left hand. I said, “That looks weird on you. But it looks good.”
In some way, it was my way of grieving the end of my son’s singleness. Not that I wasn’t happy that he was married. But the wedding marked a passage in his life and ours.
Remain a non-anxious presence.
When I was exploring ministry, I interviewed my pastor. I asked him what his least favorite part of pastoral ministry was. He said wedding rehearsals. In particular, because there is a lot of anxiety. Not to mention that people often show up drunk.
Rites of passage can be anxious times. Even happy moments such as a wedding can be a time when people‘s anxieties are unleashed into the system. Remaining a non-anxious presence gives people the opportunity to deal with their own anxiety in more healthy ways. This is especially true when the grief is intense. This could be over the loss of a loved one at a funeral. But it could just as easily be over the loss of a daughter by the mother of the bride. Sure, she is gaining a son-in-law, but her relationship with her daughter will be different from then on. At least it should be.
When I officiate weddings, I try to use humor and playfulness to help lower anxiety levels. When I officiate funerals, I seek to be steady and relaxed, so others can be also. These approaches can be used in any situation. They can be used by anyone, whether clergy or a member of the family.
As long as a family member or clergy person can remain non-anxious, it creates emotional space for people to process their own grief. This increases the capacity of the entire system to deal with pain and challenge.
Remember, it’s process not content.
If you’ve read my books, you know that I say this a lot. Family systems theory teaches us to recognize the emotional process going on regardless of the content. Whether birth or death, marriage or divorce, college graduation or retirement, a life-cycle ceremony is a change in the system. This requires people to deal with their own emotions. The content can vary all over the place. It can be anxiety about what lies ahead. It can be grief about what’s been left behind. But the process of change and how we deal with it remains constant.
Recognizing emotional process will help you to understand that when people start acting out it has more to do with their own anxiety than the actual issue they are presenting. It will also help you to avoid “fixing” their problem. Instead, you can remain connected to them emotionally, while letting them keep responsibility for their own issues. This is hard to do, but it will not only help them, but it will also help the entire system.
When someone, anyone in the system can provide this kind of leadership during life-cycle ceremony, the potential for positive change is great. Family members can develop a greater appreciation for their connection to each other. Forgiveness can be sought and offered. Relationships can be re-established and even deepened. The family system can move to a new and better place. You can be that person.
