A personal reflection and professional insight by Jo Amrein-Palairet
Before I was a counsellor, before I trained in Family Constellation Therapy.
It wasn’t through study or theory. It was through life. I was a young mum navigating the tender balance of parenting, partnering, and trying to find my own sense of grounding in the middle of it all. I was also a primary school teacher at the time, and what I saw in the classroom mirrored what I was learning in my personal life, that children are deeply affected by the emotional tone of their home environment, and that so much of what’s playing out on the surface has deeper, unseen roots.
When I came across Family Constellation Therapy, it was like something inside me clicked into place. This wasn’t just a method, it was a way of seeing. Seeing the full family system. Seeing what wasn’t spoken, but was shaping everything. Seeing the love that often gets tangled up in protection, pain, or past events.
At the time, I was navigating my own journey as part of a blended family. I had been a single mum, raising my son Ben with care and devotion. And then I met John, my now husband for 21 years and co-facilitator and we began the beautiful, messy work of building something new.
But forming a blended family isn’t just about love. It’s about layers.
I remember holding questions in my heart like: How do I help Ben feel like he belongs in this new dynamic? How do I honour where we’ve come from, without losing sight of where we’re going? How do we each find our place in this new system, me, Ben, and John without forcing anything?
Family Constellation Therapy helped me hold those questions with gentleness. It didn’t give me quick-fix answers. Instead, it gave me space to see the invisible threads, the loyalties, the grief, the unspoken roles, and slowly, lovingly, begin to bring the system into balance.
Later on, I trained in counselling and deepened my understanding through family systems theory. That professional learning gave me structure and language. But Constellation work gave me the embodied understanding. And it is from that intersection of lived experience, intuitive knowing, and professional skill that I now hold space for others.
Working with blended families is some of the most sensitive and powerful work I do. Because these families carry so much hope, heartbreak, second chances, grief, guilt, loyalty binds, and deep love.
In these families, I’ve seen:
Children caught between two homes, two stories, or two unspoken emotional fields.
Step-parents trying to love fully while not knowing where they belong.
Parents doing everything they can to keep peace, sometimes at the cost of their own voice.
Ex-partners lingering in the system energetically, unacknowledged and unresolved.
A quiet yearning in everyone to feel safe, seen, and settled.
In Family Constellation Therapy, we work with the whole picture not just the visible members of the family, but the forgotten ones, the losses, the children not spoken of, the exes, the inherited grief. Everyone has a place. And when everyone is acknowledged not necessarily included in day-to-day life, but seen with respect something shifts.
I’ve witnessed it time and again in workshops and private sessions. When the system is seen, children relax. Step-parents soften. Parents stop overfunctioning. The pressure lifts. Love flows.
And that’s the essence of family systems work it’s not about fixing individuals, it’s about restoring the flow of love and connection in the system itself. When order is restored and emotional responsibility is placed where it belongs, everything changes.
Blended families are not easy. They are courageous.
They are doing something brave: merging different stories, pasts, and parenting styles into something new.
But that newness doesn’t have to erase the old. And no one has to lose their place for the family to find its balance.
What I’ve learned both personally and professionally is that belonging is the core.
Children need to feel they can love all their parents.
Step-parents need to feel seen without having to take over.
Parents need permission to grieve, to hope, and to not get it perfect.
When we bring all of this into view through systemic counselling, constellation work, and deep listening the family begins to breathe again.
If you're walking this path, or supporting someone who is, my invitation is this:
Don’t rush the blend. Honour the layers.
There’s wisdom in the system, and there’s healing available when we choose to see it.
