This is what a young man in my class said to me on Friday. I had asked him about his weekend plans, and he said this. "Eh, father's day....it has never been one of my favorite holiday!" It touched a spot in my heart because I could so relate to what he was saying. It has never been my favorite holiday either. It always felt like it was a day to reflect on all the ways that my father had failed. A day I get to see all the great dads out there, and wish things had been different. No matter how much healing and growing I have done in that area…..it still stings, even now. When I look at this picture of me and my dad, I can pretend what life “might have been” if he had made better or different choices. If he had been a better man. I can see a different life, still to this day, of how it “could have been”….if only it was that easy. I look at the man my dad is in this image and I wonder why he could not have been that person in real life.
The image I have of my father in this picture is not who my father actually was, but the little girl that lives inside me, is playing pretend again, every father's day. Using her imagination to make up how he must have loved her. How when he lifted me high up on his shoulders….he must have just thought I hung the whole moon. I bet we laughed at the way the breeze felt different from that high up, he was so tall and strong. I bet he tickled my feet as they dangled from his broad shoulders. He probably told me how big I was getting and acted like getting me up there was a chore for him. I could go on and on about this day…..it feels like I can remember the moment. Like, one of those memories from those Hallmark movies. Just a little girl and her father. But it is just a picture and it is just make believe…..because the father I remember in this image is not who my father was.
The father I actually remember is a quick tempered man. One that took “some” time with me but always made me feel like I was an inconvenience. At one point even telling me he didn’t believe I was his daughter. He would say things like “Your mom slept with my brother…..you are your uncle’s kid. Not mine” He would call to talk to me on the phone only to have nothing to say. He never attended any of my milestone moments in life (graduations, baptism, wedding….even the birth of my boys), he never even acted like he wanted to be a part of those things. He really just blew me off. He was a womanizer and the way he acted towards women always threw me off because he couldn’t seem to be without one and yet once he got a women that loved him and treated him well….he would start to break her down with his words. He needed to be swooned and he needed to be adored. If you could not give this to him at all times, he would call you stupid and fat. He would turn on you and start to be sure you realized you were not worthy of him. What you were was not up to his standards. He would do this with his words, and as I found out, he would also do it by withdrawing his love from you. He would start holding back from you what he knew you needed. He was a master manipulator and I imagine he still is.
"The absent are never without fault nor the present without excuse" - Benjamin Franklin
All of this being said….I loved and still love my father very much. I have (as I stated previously) done a lot of growing in this area. I have learned that although my father did not make the best choices, and although he is less than the man he should have been….he actually loved me. It is just that his version of love is warped from his own upbringing. His sense of what love should feel like is damaged and it is broken. So unfortunately when he tries to feel the love from others he can never seem to fill that void of unworthiness, so he tries to manipulate it out of people. He tries to be sure they know they are nothing without him, and he hopes this will make them “need” him. I imagine he felt the love from his own parents in the same way I felt his….because most often in life, we mimic the very relationships that are put in front of us to defy. We take the relationships with our parents, our siblings, our childhood friends or grandparents and we “learn” what love feels like. We learn that this is what we should feel from love, and sometimes that “love” you feel cannot be further from what real love feels like.
I am about to get deep for a second…..so hold on to your hats. When we are young, we are dependent on our parents to care for us. I believe everyone, at every moment in their life is doing the best they can. This does not mean their best is good….it just means if they could do better, they would. But doing better requires a lot of self-awareness. It requires a deep dive into your own truths. Not necessarily old wounds, but truths about why you are triggered to feel certain ways. Every interaction in your life is there to make an impact….and the universe will keep delivering the same message until you go inward and deal with the underlying cause of that trigger. (Trigger is such an overused word these days, with a negative association….but when you are triggered by another’s behavior or words….that is a big red flashing light that is saying “Healing is needed” and you need to heal it from inside yourself, not from a place of outward blame) Most people are not ready to do this work, especially as young parents….so we get generational patterns that keep repeating. If our parents are not healed in their own pasts, how can they pass a healed relationship on to their children? That can’t…..they can love them. They can guild them, and take care of them but they will inevitably pass on the garbage stuff too.
"Don't forgive him! Forgive yourself for believing there was something lacking in you because he wasn't there" - Iyanla Vanzant
I believe most parents want to be the best parents they can be. I think most parents try really hard to raise good kids, and teach their kids good morals……but it is within the learned behaviors that children learn love. Children do not really grasp the concept of how much it takes to provide for them. The money, the time, and the emotional toll of knowing someone that is a part of you, is hurting. They do not really get that but they do get the time you spend, and the energy you put into being a part of their lives. They get the love behind the late night snuggles because of a bad dream. They fully understand the way it feels when they can cry into your shoulder when they have had their heart broken. They feel your pride in their good grades and in their MVP trophy. In all the moments, the vacations and the holidays, in the breakfasts spent laughing to the s’mores around the campfire. This is where they learn love. They also learn love when those moments are absent.
Children almost expect the good kind of love. They are taught from very early what their parents love should feel like. They watch it in the movies, they see their friends getting love from their parents and they read all the story books about all the loving families. They hear the songs about “a momma's love”or“daddy’s little girl". They feel all the feels…..but what happens is they see that, and they see what love should feel like....but they have not received that from their parents? What happens when they see all those wonderful things and those wonderful things are absent from their life? They start to learn that love hurts. Love is painful and it is absent. They feel like they must be doing something wrong, or that somehow they have failed to measure up to what their parent wanted when they had a family. Maybe if I was a boy (I use to think this…maybe if I had been born a boy my dad would love me, crazy right)? Maybe if I was skinny? Maybe if I was smart? Then my father would love me? What if I could be better….then my dad would see me. Maybe if I tried harder to be better…..what can I do better, where can I improve myself? Where can I improve and how much more can I give? The damage starts there, but it only multiples as they grow into adults.
It gets tricky to receive love from others, because you feel like you will eventually just let them down. You will never measure up, and you really are not smart enough, skinny enough, or funny enough to deserve their love anyways. This is something I still fight in my daily life. Am I measuring up? Am I enough? This seems like the worse thing to deal with but then add the fact in that it is also tricky to understand HOW to GIVE love. As a little girl, my dad was supposed to teach me how to feel the love. His role was to teach me what the healthy love of a man feels like (and we women should be teaching our boys this….but that is a whole ‘nother blog…lol). It is supposed to feel supportive and kind. It is supposed to feel easy (why do we always say “relationships are hard work!” I do not want to work hard at loving someone. It should be easy and fun…it should feel like a beautiful flow).
Your father is supposed to teach you that a man is dependable and responsible. He will work hard and be present in your life (even when he is not interested in what you are saying, because let’s be honest, we women can really talk a lot…lol). He is supposed to be strong and fearless in his love for you. Not afraid to tell the world what an amazing person you are…even when you are less than amazing. Love is supposed to sit with you in the dark, while charging you up. Love should protect your heart, and at the same time act as a defibrillator when it seems to be broken for good. Love should be tender but fierce, it should make you feel like you want to scream, cry, laugh and dance. It should let you fail but not alone. It should teach you how to be independent, but also reassure you that you are never on this crazy ride solo.
When the love of your father doesn’t teach you those things…..you never learn it, or what you learn from it is negative, so as an adult it becomes your responsibility to heal. I have chosen to heal, because my father chose not to. I have chosen to give love freely, because my father withheld his. I have chosen to build others up because my father showed me what it felt like to be torn down. I have come to understand that the whole time my father was absent from my life, he was never NOT in my head. So, I made the choice to heal. I finally decided to say goodbye to my father. He will always have a place in my heart, but his role in my story is over. I posted a tribute to my mom this morning (short and sweet….I am learning, lol) and in it I said “Without you being you, I could not be me!” I find this statement to be also true for my father. Had he made a different choice, maybe I do not sit here this strong and beautiful women. Full of love and compassion….maybe it would have all been different. I said to fellow classmate, and friend, the other day “I am starting to really understand as a mom, that even in my failures, I am teaching my kids something. So, whatever my future holds, I am going to make sure it makes an impact on my kids in the most powerful and loving way. Even through the hardest times, and my most colossal failures, they will see me doing my best to be my "best self!”
I have to say, over the years, father’s day has gotten easier. I choose to honor the amazing fathers in my life (and there are many!), and I have chosen to acknowledge my mother on this day, as she did everything she could to fill that void in my life. She did all the right things to help me figure out down the road what she always knew, and that was that I was more than worthy of my father’s love, but the real question was, was he worthy of mine? I imagine the answer is no, but I like to think none of us are truly worthy of love, or better yet….we are ALL worthy of love. We all fall short of being our best selves some days. It can be difficult to work through all the things that mold us. All those relationships that “taught” us what our worth is. But it is your responsibly, and yours alone, to do that hard work. When you heal from the childhood trauma that was yours…. you heal all the other generations as well. I believe whole heartily that when you can heal the trauma in your bloodline, you heal that trauma not only for yourself and your children, AND their children…..but all the generations that came before you.
"I can be changed by what happened to be, but I refuse to be reduced by it" - Maya Angelou
So this blog goes out to all the girls who's fathers broke their hearts long before any boy had a chance. We say a very happy father’s day to you….I wonder what he thinks about on this day? Does he wonder about his choices? Does he wish he had done things differently? Does he see where he needs healing? Is he doing the work? Whatever the answers are…..I love him for what he was able to give and I love him for the role he played in making me who I became. He didn’t do the hard work that got me here, that was all me, but he provided the journey that required me to do the hard work to get here. For that, I am grateful!
I love this! Especially "when you heal childhood trauma you heal all other generations as well".