How the patterns of your ancestors are still running your life — and how to finally heal them
By Abi Beri | Family Constellation Facilitator
You’ve never met your great-grandmother. You don’t know her name, what she looked like, or what happened to her.
And yet she’s in you.
She’s in the way you hold your jaw when you’re anxious. In the patterns you keep repeating in relationships. In the nameless grief that rises when you can’t explain why. In the way you give too much, or too little, or in exactly the same destructive way your mother did — even though you swore you never would.
In family constellation work, we call these the mother line and the father line — the two ancestral streams that flow through every one of us, shaping who we are in ways we rarely see and almost never choose.
Understanding these two lines is one of the most powerful things you can do if you want to stop repeating patterns that aren’t yours to carry.
What Are the Mother Line and Father Line?
In family constellations — the systemic approach developed by Bert Hellinger — we work with the understanding that every person stands at the intersection of two family lines.
Your mother line (or maternal line) carries the patterns, traumas, gifts, and unfinished business of your mother, her mother, her mother’s mother, and so on, stretching back through generations.
Your father line (or paternal line) carries the same — the patterns, wounds, strengths, and entanglements of your father, his father, his father’s father.
These aren’t just metaphors. Research in epigenetics now suggests that trauma can literally be passed through generations — that the experiences of your ancestors can alter gene expression in ways that affect your biology, your nervous system, and your emotional responses.
But family constellations understood this long before the science caught up. Hellinger observed, through decades of working with family systems, that certain patterns repeat across generations with remarkable precision. The same age someone dies. The same type of relationship that fails. The same unnamed grief or anger or shame that passes from parent to child like an invisible inheritance.
When we work with the mother line and father line, we’re looking at what each line carries — and what it asks of you.
The Mother Line: What She Carries
The mother line is often where we find our deepest emotional patterns.
This makes sense. Our first experience of the world is through our mother’s body. We’re held inside her — literally swimming in her hormones, her stress, her grief, her joy. Before we take a single breath, we’ve already absorbed years of emotional information from the maternal line.
Common patterns in the mother line
Difficulties around receiving and being nourished. If there was deprivation, famine, loss, or abandonment in the maternal line, you may find it hard to receive — love, support, abundance, rest. Something in the system learned that there isn’t enough, and that pattern persists.
Self-sacrifice and over-giving. Many people, particularly women, carry a pattern from their mother line of giving until there’s nothing left. The mother who sacrificed everything. The grandmother who had no identity outside her family. The great-grandmother who endured in silence. This pattern often shows up as an inability to set boundaries, chronic people-pleasing, or guilt when resting.
Grief that doesn’t have a name. The mother line often carries unexpressed grief — for lost children, for dreams that were never lived, for freedoms that were never had. You might experience this as a sadness you can’t explain, tears that come without reason, or a heaviness that doesn’t belong to any event in your own life.
Interrupted bonding. If a mother in the line was separated from her child — through death, illness, adoption, immigration, or emotional unavailability — this rupture can echo through generations. Difficulty with closeness, with trust, with allowing yourself to need someone.
Unspoken stories. Secrets in the maternal line — abortions, affairs, abuse, children given away — create energetic disturbances that descendants carry without knowing what they’re carrying.
When I facilitate family constellations in Dublin, Naas, and online, the mother line work often brings the most immediate emotional response. People feel it in their bodies — a heaviness in the chest, tears that feel ancient, a longing they can’t name.
That’s not your imagination. That’s your body recognising something that’s been waiting to be seen.
The Father Line: What He Carries
If the mother line is often about nourishment, belonging, and emotional life, the father line is often about place, power, and protection.
Our relationship to the paternal line shapes how we stand in the world. Our sense of authority. Our relationship to power — whether we claim it or give it away. Our ability to take our place.
Common patterns in the father line
Absent fathers. War, emigration, abandonment, early death, addiction — so many father lines carry an absence. When the father (or grandfather, or great-grandfather) left, was taken, or checked out, the descendants often carry a deep sense of not being supported, not having ground to stand on. This can show up as difficulty with authority, with structure, with trusting the world to hold you.
Violence and rage. The father line often carries patterns of violence — physical, emotional, or structural. Men who were brutalised by war, by poverty, by colonial systems. This unexpressed rage can echo through generations as explosive anger, chronic fear, or a deep distrust of masculine energy.
Excluded family members. In many families, someone on the father’s side was excluded — disowned, shamed, forgotten. In Hellinger’s work, excluded members create a systemic imbalance. A later descendant will unconsciously represent the excluded person, repeating their fate or carrying their burden without knowing why.
Interrupted success. If success was dangerous in the paternal line — if the family lost everything, if ambition was punished, if the tall poppy was cut down — you may find an unconscious ceiling on your own achievement. Self-sabotage at the point of success. A pattern of building and then destroying.
Loyalty to failure or suffering. One of the most powerful dynamics Hellinger identified: out of love and loyalty, we sometimes unconsciously choose to share the fate of our ancestors. “If you suffered, I will suffer too. If you couldn’t have happiness, I won’t either.” This blind loyalty can keep entire family lines stuck in patterns of deprivation.
Father line work in constellation sessions often feels different from mother line work. It’s less immediately emotional and more structural — like feeling yourself finally take your place, or finding ground where there was none before.
How These Lines Interact
You don’t carry just one line. You carry both. And the way they interact creates unique patterns.
For instance, if your mother line carries a pattern of self-sacrifice and your father line carries a pattern of absence, you might find yourself endlessly giving to people who aren’t there. Repeating the dynamic on both sides simultaneously.
Or if your mother line carries grief and your father line carries rage, you might oscillate between deep sadness and explosive anger — two ancestral currents pulling you in different directions.
In a family constellation, we can see these dynamics play out in real time. Representatives for the mother’s side and the father’s side take positions, and the entanglements become visible. Where is the energy blocked? Who has been excluded? What is the system asking for?
As a family constellation facilitator working with clients in Ireland and across Europe, I’ve seen how powerful it is when someone can see — physically see — the patterns they’ve been carrying. It moves from abstract concept to felt reality. And that’s where change begins.
Signs You’re Carrying Ancestral Patterns
How do you know if the mother line or father line is active in your life? Here are some signs:
• You repeat the same relationship patterns your parents had — even though you swore you wouldn’t
• You feel emotions that seem too big for the situation, or emotions that don’t feel like yours
• You’ve hit the same ceiling — in relationships, career, health — multiple times without understanding why
• You feel an unexplained loyalty to struggle, sacrifice, or suffering
• You carry guilt about having more than your parents or grandparents had
• You feel blocked from success, love, or happiness for no clear reason
• There are family secrets, silences, or topics that are “never discussed”
• You feel drawn to a particular ancestor, or repelled by one, without knowing their full story
• You experience chronic anxiety, depression, or physical symptoms that don’t fully respond to treatment
None of these mean you’re broken. They mean the system is asking for something to be seen, acknowledged, and brought back into order.
How Family Constellations Heal These Patterns
Family constellation work doesn’t analyse the patterns. It reveals them.
In a constellation session — whether in a group setting or one-to-one — we set up a representation of the family system. In group work, other participants stand in as representatives for family members. In individual sessions, we might use figures, cushions, or other markers.
What happens next is consistently remarkable. The representatives begin to feel things — emotions, physical sensations, impulses — that belong not to them but to the person they represent. Without knowing the family history, they access information that’s held in the family system.
This isn’t therapy in the traditional sense. We’re not analysing or interpreting. We’re allowing the system to show itself. And once what’s hidden becomes visible, healing movements can emerge.
What healing looks like in constellation work
Acknowledging what was. Often the first step is simply seeing the truth of what happened. The child that was lost. The father who left. The grandmother who carried unspeakable grief. The system relaxes when truth is acknowledged.
Returning what doesn’t belong to you. In constellation work, we sometimes use the phrase: “This is yours, not mine. I’ve been carrying it out of love, but I give it back to you with respect.” This isn’t rejection — it’s restoring order. The grief belongs to the grandmother. The rage belongs to the great-grandfather. You can honour it without carrying it.
Including the excluded. When someone has been excluded from the family system — forgotten, shamed, erased — a later descendant often carries their energy. Bringing the excluded member back into the system, giving them a place, can release the descendant from carrying their fate.
Restoring the orders of love. Hellinger observed that family systems have a natural order. Parents give, children receive. The elder comes before the younger. When these orders are disrupted — when a child becomes the parent, when a later partner takes the place of an earlier one — the system becomes entangled. Constellation work helps restore this natural order.
Working With Your Own Lines
You don’t need a formal constellation session to begin this work. Here are some ways to start exploring your mother line and father line:
Map what you know. Draw your family tree — both sides. Note what you know about each person: their life circumstances, their struggles, their gifts. Also note what you don’t know. The gaps and silences are often as informative as the facts.
Notice the patterns. What repeats? Divorce at a certain age. Financial struggles. Illness. Emigration. Loss of children. Early death. Addiction. Once you start looking, the repetitions can be striking.
Feel into each line. Stand quietly and bring your attention to your mother’s side. What do you feel? Then shift to your father’s side. Is there a difference? Many people notice one side feels heavier, or more distant, or brings up specific emotions.
Honour your ancestors. Simply acknowledging those who came before you — “I see you, I honour what you went through” — can begin to shift the energy in a family system. You don’t need to know their full story. Your body knows more than you think.
Seek facilitated support. For deep or complex family patterns, working with an experienced constellation facilitator can take you where self-reflection can’t. The field of a constellation reveals things that the rational mind alone cannot access.
Guided Practice: Honouring Both Lines
I’ve created a guided somatic meditation that works specifically with ancestral healing — helping you connect with the mother line and father line, acknowledge what they carry, and begin to differentiate what’s yours from what was passed down.
(You Can Rest Now — or a future ancestral healing meditation)
Working Together
The patterns you carry from your mother line and father line aren’t a life sentence. They’re an invitation — to see what’s been hidden, to honour what’s been endured, and to consciously choose which patterns you carry forward and which ones you set down.
I facilitate family constellation sessions in person in Dublin and Naas, and online for clients throughout Ireland, across Europe, and worldwide. Whether you’re drawn to explore your maternal line, your paternal line, or a specific pattern that keeps repeating, constellation work can reveal what’s been operating beneath the surface.
Your ancestors didn’t just leave you their wounds. They also left their strength, their resilience, their survival. When we heal the entanglements, we also free the gifts.
[BOOK A FAMILY CONSTELLATION SESSION]
In-person: Dublin | Naas
Online: Ireland | Europe | Worldwide
familyconstellationseurope.com