Martha S Bache-Wiig LLC

Life as a Gift and a Work of Art

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New Year, New Lens! Here’s to 2026 🌟

by | Dec 30, 2025 | Whole-Person LifeArt Consulting, Blog, Existential Personalistic Anthropology, Groups and Workshops, Life as a Gift and a Work of Art, Love, Psychology, Self-Love and Self-Care, Services

 Hello Friends!

As we step into 2026, I wanted to share with you a new way of looking at life and the many challenges we can often be faced with, both individually and on a collective level, and that can be of great help in these tumultuous, difficult and yet exciting times of rapid change.

I hope that with the dawning of a new year you will find new energy and inspiration to bring a deeper love and appreciation for your own self and your life, so you can share your unique gifts and talents with others with increasing confidence, satisfaction, and enjoyment: my new workshops, based on these ideas, are being offered with this goal in mind, and I am looking forward to sharing them with you!

Life as a Gift and a Work of Art.

What does this mean, exactly?

It is not so much a therapeutic technique as a way of thinking and seeing the trauma we carry, and the accomplishments and challenges that are present in our lives from the moment of our conception onward, through a brand new lens.

All kinds of tools and techniques can be used to help us develop this kind of Artistry, from more traditional talk therapy to the most avant-garde energy techniques becoming more and more popular over time.  What is important is to define what it actually means to become an Artist of our Life, and why we might want to do so. 

First developed by Antonio Mercurio, the founder of Existential Personalistic and Cosmoartistic Anthropology, it is a holistic way of seeing our human experience, and while it fully honors and recognizes the kind of profound discomfort and disorientation we can experience when we are faced with pain and loss, it also encourages us to see these traumas not so much as condemnations or punishments, but as potential motors for new ways of Being, Seeing, Experiencing, and thus Creating new ways of Living.

It encourages us to embrace even the most difficult past or present traumas and struggles as important parts of our story, as often they are the motors that help us find the strength and courage to change not only how we see and care for ourselves, but how we see the world, and how we truly want to live in it. As we turn to address those inner and outer obstacles that bring us dissatisfaction and trouble and manage to overcome them, we not only live better ourselves, but we create a powerful, transformational energy. This energy is such that it can not only help us continue to heal and grow, heal and grow as we face the various challenges that come up in every life, but, like great works of Art that we may admire in the galleries of the world, it sparks inspiration to create such Beauty in others as well.

The beauty we are talking about here is not the aesthetic beauty normally ascribed to material things; it is an inner beauty that transforms pain into love, fear into new dreams, and opens in the most wounded of souls to new possibilities.

Just as an artist uses many different colors to create a powerful painting, so, too, can we learn to combine the many elements of our lives, including the painful ones, to create a new sense of ourselves and, sometimes, an entirely new direction in our lives.

By shifting our inner attitudes from those of feeling that we are powerless victims of circumstance – which can be very difficult when we come from family and/or societal and cultural situations that are abusive, dysfunctional and deny us basic rights – to realizing that we can learn to love ourselves and our lives, and improve our circumstances through that love and through acts of existential creativity, we can build something entirely new out.

When we choose to do so, we are activating our Inner Artist and becoming actively engaged in affirming the deepest goals of our Higher Self .

The Inner Artist is that part of ourselves that expresses our basic freedom to choose to either move towards love of ourselves and our unique life purpose – our True Self – or instead move away from it. When we move towards our life purpose we feel more fulfilled and whole; when instead we move away from it, we feel empty, conflicted, and full of all kinds of problems. This does not mean that we make one giant leap and become either completely One with our Higher Self, or completely disconnected from it. Although some people may experience such extreme moments of inner choice making and never change again, most of us are on a journey that begins the moment we are conceived, and ends the moment we die. We are offered many choices to experience both types of movements, and with every step forward, or back, we learn something new about ourselves and our lives and about Life itself, as well.

And sometimes we are blocked from moving towards our life purpose by difficult external circumstances. If our parents / caregivers in early life, families and societies are unable to offer us the kind of nurturing and support we need to feel in touch with our own Self and our own deeper value and meaning as a human being, it can be extremely difficult to feel the kind of freedom and confidence we need to do so.

We can also be also be inhibited by types of loyalties and expectations that pull us away from our Selves to make others in our life happy, or to keep the peace, but the cost in our mental, emotional and even physical health can be high. 

Whatever the case may be, the Authentic or True Self, even when deeply buried within us beneath layers of denial and repression, never goes away. Often it takes time for us to be able to truly hear its call and even more time to listen to it. It is a common experience that something happens in the course of our life – a loss, an illness, a divorce, a deep personal crisis of some sort – that forces us to stop and pay attention. The pain of denying our inner truths becomes greater than the fear of listening, and in those moments, we open our minds and hearts, and begin an entirely new journey.

The Inner Artist is always there, and we can tap into its energy at any time, although we often need to learn how to do so in ways that feel right to us, and that can truly lead us towards the purpose contained in our True Self, rather than remain stuck in our past conditioning that suffocates that purpose, or even actively oppose it.

The thing about learning how to access our Inner Artist is that there is no set manual to do so. The manual for our “best life”, along with our ability to truly love ourselves and our lives in respectful connection with others and with Life itself, is written within us, not within anyone else.

For this reason, it is a journey that only we can undertake for ourselves. We need help to do so, because none of us, just like no other life form, grows or changes in a vacuum. We are here to spark growth in each other, and to cheer each other on in an increasingly give and take movement.

But in ultimate analysis, only we can make the choices that lead us towards a loving expression of our unique being, or away from it.

And often the journey is one step forward, and two steps back! It is not an “art” that we learn once. It is an art that we must become willing to practice, to the best of our ability, day after day, accepting that some days we will be more effective than others… but that every day that we try, is a good day.

As we learn this complex and delicate art and tune into our Selves while tuning out the effects of our wounding and conditioning, we become ever more capable of expressing what it is that we are here to express.

This does not mean that we have to be actual “artists” in our daily lives. Whether or not we engage in the “arts” per se, music, painting, dance, etc., or not, we are innately creative, because Life itself is creative, and we are a part of life.

We may be mothers, or fathers, or farmers, or teachers, or CEOs, or scientists; religious people, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, gardeners or not yet clear about anything we are or want to be or do; we may want to live in the woods by ourselves, or feel engaged and important within the hustle of a large metropolis. We may engage in many activities, or few; have many friends and family members, or choose to be alone; be ambitious and driven towards forms of material and societal success and recognition, or satisfied with a simple life.

Each of us is unique, and how we feel most in tune with ourselves and purposeful in our own journey is … well, sacred, and valid, because each life, thus each and every one of us, is sacred and valid.

But often times we don’t know this, because negative voices from our past are louder than the whispers of our Self … and our lack of connection with our inherent worth and our true purpose creates rifts within ourselves and in our interactions with others and the outside world that bring immense confusion, pain, and inner and outer conflict.

When instead we choose to tune into our Inner Artist and affirm the purpose contained within our Personal, Higher Self, we can become capable of making decisions based on love for ourselves and others – an ability to enhance Life in all its forms. And not only does our life begin to evolve in ways that we never dreamed possible, but our own increasing liberation, freedom, and ability to truly enjoy our lives inspires others to make the same effort.

But as I mentioned above, although the Inner Artist is ever-present, as is the Self, learning how to hone our Existential Artistry and actually follow the guidance we receive does often require some deliberate effort and intentional focus on our part. Even the most fortunate among us can be called to higher levels of Self expression, which require new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in the world.

And just as people with natural artistic talent need to be willing to learn specific techniques and skills so they can best express their gifts, if we want to become expert Artists of our Lives, we, too need to learn new ways of seeing ourselves, our traumas and struggles, our conditioning and our free decisions whether they be Self-affirming, or Self-denying.

We need to become willing look at what the painful experiences we encounter can mean for us, and change our thinking and sometimes even our ways of living to embrace a more enlivened, holistic and engaged way of being.

It does not mean that when we do so we will become perfect, or that we will no longer encounter obstacles; it does not guarantee a quick fix for our inner pain or an automatic solution to the complex and difficult experiences life brings to our door.

Life itself is constantly changing, and we are called to go along with it, even when doing so means letting go of ideas, people, ways of being and thinking that we believed were “forever”.

This new paradigm of Life as a Gift and a Work of Art is not only a new way of seeing and experiencing the world for ourselves and how we can collaborate and connect with others that is not only nurturing and healing, but it is an antidote for the kinds of anxieties that times such as the one we are all living in, during a major evolutionary push. As such, it is not only a huge help, but it is truly exciting!

But how, you may ask, do we embrace this new paradigm, and apply it to our day to day lives?

In the workshops I will be offering in 2026- so far three, on February 21, April 18, and June 20 2026, from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm – we will explore a variety of simple but effective tools and techniques to help you begin to see your own Life as a Work of Art. We will start out by assessing where we are now in our journeys, and from there move on to exploring what we would like to bring into our lives or what we would like to change, and, lastly, some ideas on how we can begin to get there in a more determined, and supported, way.

Join me on February 21 at 10:30 am – either in person in Oconomowoc (405 E Forest St), or on line – for the first of these workshops.

You can check out my webpage here to learn a bit more about the themes we will be exploring and what kinds of tools and techniques I will be offering as we endeavor together to become ever more engaged and fulfilled Artists of our own Lives and of the Life of the Universe. 

And if you are already inspired to take this step forward towards creating a New Lens and a New Life for yourself in 2026, and beyond, you can sign up directly here. Please also send me an email to indicate if you intend to participate in person or online. 

I look forward to seeing you there, and in the meantime, I wish you the very best for a beautiful and inspiring beginning to 2026!

 

When Ideas Appear at the Same Time in Different Places

by | Jun 1, 2025 | Psychology, Cosmoartistic Anthropology, Essays on Living, Existential Personalistic Anthropology, The wisdom of the body

Over the past week I have had a truly interesting experience that has caused me to wonder a lot about what the collective unconscious is, how it relates to morphic fields, and how both of them become observable in daily life. 

 During a session with a client, I found myself compelled to combine two techniques that I am specialized in – Family Constellations and Inner Child/Inner Family work. It was an intuition I had in the moment, where it seemed that the best way to help my client really feel what was going on in the issue they had presented was to help them see, contemporaneously, both the larger picture of the situation with the help of Family Constellations, and the internal aspects of those wounded parts that were connected to their early childhood experiences.

 

It was a powerful experience both for me, and my client, and I found myself pondering this in the days to come, feeling that I had reached a new level of understanding in my own personal journey and in how I can best help those that come to me for help in navigating the complexities of healing our woundedness, stepping into feeling more empowered in how we can create a truly fulifilling life, and in simply being human.

I then participated in a Family Constellations workshop, where there were also several other participants who are therapists of varying sorts. I found myself almost gasp out loud when first one, then another, and then a third shared about how they have recently been integrating Inner Child and Internal Family Systems work with Family Constellations!

What I found unusual was not so much that other people are finding this kind of integration useful, both for themselves and for their clients; that seems a rather natural progression of things, as the two approaches truly do complement each other in a variety of ways that I won’t go into here.

What surprised me was the fact that in terms of timing it all seemed to be happening in a rather contemporaneous way, in many of us, but scattered all throughout the globe.

 

 

I was very touched by this and I kind of tucked it away in my mind, to ponder over during the days and weeks to come, as I would begin to explore my own way of integrating things.

 

Then, that same evening, I received a newsletter from yet another Family Constellations practitioner, who lives in yet another far-flung country, announcing how she is also integrating Family Constellations work with Inner Child work!!

Now what seemed to be possibly a mere coincidence truly began to ring of something “spooky at a distance” happening.

I know that most physicists would cringe at my applying that expression, which refers to particles being entangled at a subatomic, or quantum, level, to connections between human minds and cultural trends. I am certainly not a physicist, and so although I have read numerous books on these topics and have been studying how they can correlate with human experience for years, I most certainly do not consider myself an expert on any of it.

But after over 35 years of focused and intentional personal exploration of how our various lenses for interpretation of reality – science, philosophy, art and religion – intertwine and interact with each other, while being distinct, I can’t help but wonder if these experiences aren’t examples of how we experience this dimension of reality.

We are rightly skeptical about drawing correlations when we are dealing with subjective, or personal, experience, and our scientific method has most certainly helped humanity become more capable of drawing objective conclusions about reality, which have allowed us to advance in ways we could have never imagined.

But subjective experience is also a fundamental aspect of our existence, and many thinkers, even within more purely scientific realms, are becoming more courageous about affirming the importance of recognizing how objective and subjective reality are deeply intertwined, and how they then express into human culture through new ideas and practices, which advance our understanding of ourselves and our world, and how we can live better within it.

I have also noticed a kind of synchronicity in how Antonio Mercurio, the founder of the therapeutic and anthropological approach that he began developing in the 1970s and that I specialized in Italy in the 1990s and early 2000s, began first sharing his ideas when working with others around the same time as Bert Hellinger, who was in Germany.

While their general ideas and approaches have many differences, there are also some fundamental similarities in how they saw the challenges that face people who are struggling with a variety of mental and emotional issues.

Their common experiences of having begun both as priests within the Catholic church, who then left the church to found their own schools of thought and practice with a phenomenological approach at their foundation, seems serendipitous, or, in the words of Carl Jung, synchronous.

There are many, many examples of this throughout history, way before there was the internet and our now instantaneous ability to access information of any type. I am sure you have noticed such coincidences within your own life as well.

I invite you to reflect on this and, if you have an example to share, please do so in the comments. It seems important to be able to notice how we are connected with each other in these mysterious, yet profound, ways.

As we become able to observe them with greater consciousness and appreciation, we can strengthen our positive, creative, life-enhancing bonds with others, wherever we may be.

 

If you’re interested in learning more about Jung’s Collective Unconscious and Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Fields, I’ve written a companion article comparing these two fascinating ideas:

Collective Unconscious or Morphic Fields? Two Ways of Understanding Human Connectedness

 Click here or on the title above to check it out. 

 

Celebrating Human Progress at the time of the Solstice

by | Jun 19, 2024 | Family Constellations, Existential Personalistic Anthropology, Organismic Principle, Services

 Happy Juneteenth!!

Happy Solstice!!

I wanted to share some musings on this moment in time and announce my upcoming In-Person Family Constellations Workshop on June 29. (For current information on my Family Constellations offerings go here).

As you probably know, the Solstice, the moment the Sun is found directly over the Tropic of Cancer, at 23.5 ° N Latitude, is tomorrow, and it marks the beginning of Summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and Winter in the Southern Hemisphere.  

For those living in the colder climates in the Northern Hemisphere, this is a particularly exciting time, with the Sun finally warming up the earth, urging nature to explode with enthusiasm!

I gave an AI image generator some prompts to describe the “relationship of the sun to the earth at the time of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere”, and it came up with the image above. It certainly captures the excitement of the moment, and radiates hope and light!

This astronomical event was celebrated by traditional cultures around the globe and over the last few decades has again inspired many to consider it a holiday. 

Recently here in the USA more attention has finally been given to “Juneteenth” as well, which lands today, June 19, and is the Federal Holiday celebrating the freeing of the people held in slavery at the end of the Civil War.

Considered our “Second Independence Day” it seems fitting that it lands very close to the Summer Solstice. It is a celebration of the Light of Reason and Humanity after centuries of the darkness of slavery had both allowed for this incredible experiment in Democracy to bloom, thanks to the inexpensive labor provided by slaves in developing the land and commerce in profitable commodities like cotton and sugar, and tainted its economic and moral foundations. 

As I started writing my newsletter just now this correlation came to mind; it had never really occurred to me before. To be honest, I kind of assumed that as a white person I didn’t really have a right to celebrate Juneteenth. I figured it was a holiday reserved for the African Americans, and important to respect what it represents for them.

Instead, I am realizing this morning that this really is not true, because when anyone in a family, or a society, is suffering from abuse, the pain and dysfunction this causes affects the entire system. The entire system carries the imbalances caused, and the perpetrators, too, are often of victims themselves of distorted ways of thinking and acting. 

So just as any family system that is carrying unresolved pain and conflict tends to continue to express the dysfunction in one way or another, and negatively affect ALL its members, the pain and violence and general dysfunction woven throughout the origins of this magnificent nation is something that affects us all, even though we may not be fully aware of it. 

It is true we have come a long way, and we can see humanity’s progress in many ways, throughout not only this country, but throughout the globe. And we still have a long way to go. I imagine we always will; Life keeps urging us forward, asking us to grow into ever more integrated and evolved Being. 

It seems all the more important to remember this today, in 2024, so we can honor and celebrate how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go, to embrace the basic Truth that all human beings, within all families, within the USA and in all countries and cultures around the globe, are of equal value. No life has greater value than another. 
We are all very different, but different is not better, or worse. 

The culture of dominance and power and control, which allows for, and even encourages, the abuse of others – usually those we see as “different” or somehow inferior –  for personal gain, be that gain psychological, emotional or material/financial, is one that many of us are working hard to overcome, in many different ways.

Whether we are focused in our efforts to heal ourselves from our own individual and intergenerational traumas, which helps us gain a form of wellbeing that inevitably helps also those around us, although in indirect ways, or we are actively engaged in forms of service that impact the Whole in more extensive ways, every little effort, every little act of love, of healing, of simple recognition and honoring of another’s pain – of empathy and compassion – and of owning one’s own faults and correcting them, counts.

To be honest, I had no clue that I would end up writing these words when I sat down to send out my newsletter! My intent was mostly to just get out my announcement regarding my June Workshop! (My In Person Family Constellations Workshop is on June 29 – go here for more info and to sign up)

But as I have been writing this I have been realizing that indeed, Juneteenth is not just a celebration for the African Americans whose ancestors suffered directly from the horrors of slavery, but it is for all of us, who dream of an ever more beautiful, just, peaceful and enlightened world. It is a reminder of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous words:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. 

So Happy Juneteenth to us all, and may the Solstice bring us warmth, hope, and light, so we can continue to move forward, one tiny step, one day at a time.

“Today is a new day, and I can choose to create Love, and I can choose to create Beauty, for myself and others”. (Antonio Mercurio)

 

Amo Ergo Sum

by | Dec 16, 2015 | Whole-Person LifeArt Consulting, Cosmoartistic Anthropology, Essays on Living, Existential Personalistic Anthropology, Family, Love, Self-Love and Self-Care

  happy holidays from the center for the development of the person  

“If we did not have our wounds to heal and we only had the Beauty of Life, we would become static and immobile in the ephemeral enjoyment of Beauty” – Antonio Mercurio

Here we are, in the holiday season, and at the end of yet another year with the beginning of a new one just around the corner!

I have been thinking a lot, recently, about love, and hate.

Of course, with the things that are happening around the world, the violence and the hunger and the warming earth, it can be easy to get caught up in thinking that we are never going to get this right, and that we are doomed to destroy ourselves, each other, and this beautiful and delicate globe we call our home.

But then ….. I manage to step back a moment, and remember where I have come from, and look at the progress that others I know are making as well, and I can see that there is much more to all of this than meets the eye.

There is nothing more challenging, and yet more moving and wonderful, than delving into our very lives, with all our wounds, and pain, and loss, and deciding to transform all of that darkness into love, beauty and new creativity.

Every time we manage to shift our focus from resentment to forgiveness (which does not, necessarily, mean reconciliation – the transformation must happen on both sides for that to happen, when too much pain has been caused – but we can forgive, and let go of the pain, hatred and self-justifiable anger); from the need to retaliate or obtain justice to a desire to activate our ability to create beauty in even the most difficult of situations, we are releasing precious energy into our own lives, into the lives of others, and into the Whole of which we are each a single cell.

The more of us that choose to truly experience this, and activate this type of existential Art within their own beings and their own lives, the more we can contribute to the transformative process that Life has entrusted to us as a species.

This is, in essence, what is captured in the affirmation “Amo, ergo sum” – I love, therefore I am: as Antonio Mercurio has so eloquently pointed out, the ability to create love and beauty is both a great gift, and a great task assigned to us. While we must use our ability to think (“Cogito ergo sum”), to use our higher mind, as Descartes declaimed centuries ago, ushering in a new (and most certainly necessary) era of rationality, the time now has come to activate our hearts, in concert with our minds.

Only our hearts can bring us to the kind of deep integration that can heal our own wounds and further the healing process in the entire species.

It is my sincere hope that we can all open our hearts – and our minds – this season, and realize that we are not each others’ enemies, no matter where we are from, what religion we profess, which political party we adhere to, or how much money or education we have, or don’t have: we are each one of us human beings, here to learn to love our own lives and see them for the gift that they are, and work together to create ever new levels of love and beauty.

My best to all, and may each one of us come to know how truly loved and precious we truly are, because when we discover that, and truly understand it, we discover the same thing is true of every other Life

That is when Peace on Earth becomes possible, as it begins within each one of us.

Martha's Signature

764px-La_Vierge,_l'Enfant_Jésus_et_sainte_Anne,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne

As Antonio Mercurio pointed out to me a few years ago, this painting shows beautifully what a gaze of love is, from mother to daughter to son/grandson (even above and beyond the purely Christian connotation).

I look at it often (I have a print of it in my office), and I show it to my clients, to remember to gaze upon ourselves with that kind of love. When we can love ourselves freely and responsibly (free from our conditioning and from commitments made from obligation), we can love others with truth and authenticity, and also open ourselves to receive love in a healthy, balanced way.