The Family Systems Hub

22/12/2025

For many families, December carries both celebration and sorrow, both excitement and pressure. Overwhelm has a way of slipping in at the edges of holidays - through full calendars, complicated relationships, or expectations that feel heavier than they look. And for some, old grief can mix with the rush of the season in ways that are hard to name.

If your heart feels a little out of sync with what’s happening around you, may you feel permission to move gently, to take what you need, and to leave the rest.

Sometimes the simplest act of naming what’s here can be grounding. Saying - out loud or quietly to yourself - “This is overwhelm” or “This is sadness” or simply “This is a lot” doesn’t make the feeling bigger; it often makes it easier to hold. Naming gives shape to the swirl inside. It lets your body know you’re listening, and it can bring a small moment of steadiness in the midst of everything.

If this season brings both warmth and heaviness, both joy and too-muchness, may you treat yourself with the same gentleness you’d offer someone you love.

18/12/2025

This February, something truly transformative is coming to Sydney: our first-ever Family Constellations event. And this session will be led by one of the master facilitators of the field: Alejandra Pistorio.

Alejandra studied directly under the founder of Family Constellations, Bert Hellinger, and has since developed her own compassionate, insightful approach by bringing warmth, clarity, and deep transformation to every session. Joining us from Argentina, Alejandra will lead this exclusive full-day experience offering a chance to step into a space of healing and discovery.

Join a community of like-minded souls for a day of connection, release, and forward momentum. Together, we’ll uncover the patterns holding us back and move beyond them, empowered and renewed.

Tickets available now on our website.

15/12/2025

Good listening is harder than it often seems. In tense or urgent moments, we may think we’re listening - but often, we’re just waiting for our child to finish talking so we can respond and move on. This isn’t just a parenting challenge; many adults fall into the same pattern in friendships, partnerships, and at work.

Truly listening takes intention and practice. It means quieting your inner thoughts, staying fully present, and focusing on what the other person is actually saying. Reflecting back what you hear helps confirm that you’ve understood their message. This simple practice can reduce conflict, build trust, and create space for genuine connection.

When you really listen to your child, you’re saying - without words - “You matter. I see you. I understand you.” Kids don’t just need instructions or solutions—they need to feel heard, just like adults. Listening well isn’t just a skill; it’s the foundation of understanding, connection, and trust.

12/12/2025

06/12/2025

Melbourne Seminar – 2 Day Intensive for Professionals

The Family Systems Hub is deeply honoured to welcome Alejandra Pistorio, an internationally respected therapist, teacher and founder of Constelaciones Esenciales y Compasivas in Argentina.

🗓 Dates: February 8 and 9
⏰ Time: 9am to 5pm
📍 Venue: The Living Centre, East Melbourne

Alejandra brings over two decades of work at the intersection of systemic therapy, Tibetan Buddhist practice, Compassion Focused Therapy and somatic wisdom. She trained directly under Bert Hellinger and is the founder of Espacio Dragma in Buenos Aires, a centre devoted to deep inner work and compassionate awareness.

💫 A 2 Day Intensive for Professionals
For therapists, coaches, facilitators and wellbeing practitioners who want to learn a compassionate and embodied approach to Family Constellations that centres on presence, compassion and nervous system regulation.

✨ What Makes This Training Unique
Alejandra’s approach, Compassionate Family Constellations, weaves together:
• Classical systemic principles
• Embodied compassion based practices grounded in Buddhist wisdom
• Neuro emotional regulation tools
• A deeply respectful and gentle orientation to human suffering and healing

This is a rare opportunity to learn directly from one of the elders in our field and someone whose work has shaped constellations practice across Latin America.

💫 Early Bird Offer ends December 15
If you are feeling called, now is the moment. To book your place, click here: https://thefamilysystemshub.com/course/compassionate-family-constellations-alejandra-pistorio-seminar/

04/12/2025

Look who I reunited with this evening!

Tallara was my incredible Clinic Manager at The Hub, by my side through every high and low of our expansion from 2021 to 2023. She then transitioned into practicing as a play therapist until 2024 before moving to Ballarat to focus on her studies. She helped build systems we still use today and was deeply loved by our team and the families we support.

She started with me at just 23, and hearing she has now completed her Masters of Social Work and has a full time role waiting made my heart swell.

She is thriving… and I am so proud of her. ❤️

02/12/2025

On Sunday 30 November, 18 of us came together for our final Family Constellations circle of the year.

It felt like coming full circle. Our very first constellation in March, in this same space, began with just 10 people and a deep sense that this work was the piece missing in the support we offer families alongside play therapy.

Over the year, it has become clear:
Play Therapy and Family Constellations are two expressions of the same truth.

Play therapy gives children a safe, embodied space to express what lives beneath their behaviour, strengthen their capacities, and carry what belongs to them for their own growth and destiny.

Family Constellations gives parents a lived, embodied way to see and release systemic patterns, reclaim their adult presence, and stand fully as parents without taking on what belongs to the child or the wider family system.

In many ways, Family Constellations is the parents’ version of play therapy. Both invite us to feel, sense, and move rather than think our way to change. Together, they restore connection, belonging, and balance.

When every member of the system is in their rightful place:

Children can be fully children, curious, playful, and free to explore, learn, and express themselves without carrying responsibilities that belong to adults.

Parents can be fully adult, present, empowered, and able to respond from clarity and love rather than fear based patterns that no longer serve them.

The family system realigns, creating more space for connection, inner freedom, and life to flow across generations.

Thank you to every person, including my dedicated team of child and family play therapists and parent systemic therapists, who were part of our family constellation sessions this year. Your courage to look, feel, and shift is what transforms the generations that follow.

Here is to widening the circle in 2026 and the next cycle of healing in 2026. ❤️

27/11/2025

For nearly a year, I had been thinking about taking an overseas trip with Farrah, and slowly it became clear that Japan was where we were meant to go. We chose Japan because Farrah has loved Asian culture for years. Her K-pop obsession started when she was eight, and it all began with anime. She wanted to go to Korea, but we settled on Japan as our first mother and daughter adventure.

There was a quiet unease about doing this because it would be just the two of us. I worried about navigating a new country, a language I barely knew, having zero sense of direction, and being responsible for a dependent. But I also wanted to prove to myself I could do this again, and more importantly, share an adventure with Farrah, creating memories together in a way only traveling like this can.

Traveling in Japan was everything I hoped for and more. We survived travel fatigue, language barriers, Tokyo’s metro, Disney, and carrying our own rubbish because there are no bins on the streets.

What the photos don’t capture are the in-between moments. My panic in losing sight of Farrah at the metro underground, my overwhelm and confusion with their train schedules, prioritising Farrah’s choices, like eating at the same restaurant once she liked the food when I wanted to try new places. Going k-pop store hunting when I wanted to explore more cultural sites. Sleeping in while I wanted to try a new coffee spot and being okay going out on my own while she rested. Those moments, while messy, gave us chances to listen, repair, and understand each other more deeply.

Even with challenges, I loved witnessing her joy, her K-pop obsession, her love of Asian food, and her delight in arranging her space wherever we stayed. Traveling together reminded me of the joy in stepping into uncertainty, embracing new experiences, and making space for connection, curiosity, and growth - for both of us.

26/11/2025

What if 10 weeks could reshape the way your family connects?

Flourishing Families is a research-backed therapeutic play program that helps parents and children move from tension and overwhelm to trust, calm, and genuine connection.
Using Filial Therapy — the gold-standard approach for strengthening parent–child relationships — you’ll learn how to meet your child’s emotional world through play and create lasting change.

Program Dates: Starts Mondays 20th April — runs for 10 weeks
Time: 6:00-8:00pm
Location: Online

10 weeks. Real connection. Evidence-based transformation.

23/11/2025

From the very moment we are conceived, our interactions with others quietly mold who we become. Even if we don’t consciously remember every moment, the emotions and sensations from our earliest days influence how we relate to people as adults.

The habits, beliefs, and patterns we carry are often echoes of how our parents and significant others communicated with us about who we are. Understanding this is the first step toward deeper self-awareness and more conscious connections in our lives today. 💛

22/11/2025

Ever feel frustrated with your child… and then immediately feel guilty for feeling that way?

I recently had one of those moments with my daughter in Japan. I planned a day trip, she wanted to sleep in, and I felt a rush of resentment.

Then I paused, noticed the tightening of my chest and the holding of my breath and exhaled slowly and deeply, and said to myself: “This is mine. Not hers.”

She is just being a kid. I knew my anger wasn’t hers to be responsible for - it belonged to me.

Once I owned it, I could:
✔ validate her tiredness
✔ hold the boundary
✔ stay compassionate, not resentful

Resentment often shows up when we’ve given too much and forgotten to take for ourselves.

It’s a reminder to check in with our own needs.

Parents give. Children take.
When we take for ourselves too, everyone flows easier.

💬 What’s your biggest trigger with your child? How do you reset?