Lisa Iversen

Lisa Iversen

USA

Lisa Iversen, MSW, LCSW, has been a facilitator of Systemic and Family Constellations for 21 years and psychotherapist for 27 years. Lisa’s work integrates ancestral prayers, shamanically infused indigenous wisdom, and western-based, systemic knowledge, weaving teaching into all aspects of her work.

Her book, Ancestral Blueprints: Revealing Invisible Truths in America’s Soul (2009), reflects on the relationship between ancestry, psychotherapy, colonialism, slavery, and democracy. A frequent conference presenter, her Tedx Talk (2015) promotes consciousness of inherited American individual-collective trauma and grief. Lisa’s programs include Family Matters, Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor, and BOB + BART, co-developed with organizational psychologist Kate Regan.

Raised in an American Midwestern farm family, she lives with her husband & daughter in the Pacific Northwest where she directs the Center for Ancestral Blueprints.

Workshop Title:  Whiteness is NOT an ancestor: An embodied dialogue with the internalised coloniser.

Truth doesn’t go away. It waits until the time, place, and circumstance is ready for it to be welcomed into visibility, remembering all that is…belongs.

Our shared fate includes simple truths: we are all descendants, each a daughter or son, granddaughter or grandson, each with ancestors. Some are parents, others not, together we are stewards of the web — future ancestors. We are always in relationship, and our human family is nature itself. The western-trained mind teaches otherwise, that we are more separate than what the family and collective soul knows to be true. More than ever, we need each other to remember: there is one human family.

This foundation of shared humanity supports us well in recognizing when blind love excludes those who have carried perpetrator roles. Deeply rooted affiliation with victim or rescuer roles prevents unfreezing of perpetrator/victim trauma bonds. Patterns of exclusion have caught up with us as a collective. It is out of the group conscience that recent political leaders around the world have emerged, reminding us that what gets excluded becomes represented. An example of this movement is the election of Donald Trump, who so palpably and creatively represents colonizer and slaveholder roles on behalf of unhealed American historic trauma.

Whiteness is NOT an ancestor: an embodied dialogue with the internalised coloniser

Truth doesn’t go away. It waits until the time, place, and circumstance is ready for it to be welcomed into visibility, remembering all that is…belongs. Our shared fate includes simple truths: we are all descendants, each a daughter or son, granddaughter or grandson, each with ancestors. Some are parents, others not, together we are stewards […]

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