Blame or Mirror?

Sometimes a situation reveals something that has been waiting to be seen for a long time.

A late reaction.
Or finally, action? 😂

And then it lands like a bomb. 💣

Suddenly, a family system trembles on its foundations.

Not because someone wants to steal the family flag.
Not because someone wants to tear down the house.
But because the movement finally reveals where those foundations actually are.

And that can be quite unsettling.

Because when the dust rises, our first instinct is often to look at the person who moved.

What have you done?

But perhaps that is not always the most interesting question.

Perhaps we could also ask:

What has this revealed?

Because no single event happens in a vacuum.
It touches relationships, old agreements, silences, expectations, loyalties
and roles that may have become so familiar over the years that no one even notices them anymore.

Until something moves.

Crack.

A fracture in the wall.

And suddenly, everyone is looking at the house.

Not to appoint one person as guilty, but because, for a moment, the entire system sees itself in the mirror.

That, to me, is where the difference between blame and responsibility begins.

Blame looks for someone to carry the story.

A mirror asks something else.

What do I see in this?
What belongs to me?
What do I want to repair?
And what no longer needs to be carried for someone else?

Because healing does not mean that one person has to rebuild the entire family house.

Everyone has their own piece.

And somewhere, in the middle of all these serious reflections, something suddenly appeared in my imagination…

the family dragon. 🐉

You know the one.

The creature everyone thought was dangerous.
The one who could easily be pointed at whenever smoke appeared somewhere.

Except my family dragon did not look dangerous at all.

Quite the opposite.

He looked more like a sweet, slightly bewildered dragon who had been sitting beside the family house for years.

With a chain around his leg.

The house had just trembled.
A little rubble lay scattered across the grass.
The family stood staring at the cracks in the walls.

And the dragon?

He looked at everyone as though he wanted to say:

“Great. Now that we’re all looking…”

He lifted his chained leg slightly.

“Could you please take this off now?” 😂

Perhaps that is sometimes what a crisis does.

It does not destroy what was good.

It does not steal the family flag.

It does not decide who is right or wrong.

Sometimes it simply shakes things hard enough for us to see what had been there beneath the surface all along.

And then everyone has a choice.

Not:

Who is to blame?

But:

What is this mirror showing me?

Perhaps the dragon does not need to be defeated at all.

Perhaps someone simply needed to finally remove the chain.