Father Issues
I'm not one to try and dig up all sorts of history to focus on in my healing. Being an actional person, I tend to think that rehashing old stories is counter-productive in the long run, serving only to keep me stuck in Victim Mode.
I do, however, think it useful in the short term to identify areas in which I may be unconsciously operating from.
Over the years I've tended to identify my main issues/woundings as stemming from my relationship with my mother. Occasionally my intuition might flit on the concept of "hm...gee...this is interesting that I don't feel anything around my father." But he remained a blank.
Years ago, in one journey/meditation I did around healing with my parents, I felt/saw/experienced us on a beach. We held hands, dancing in a circle. We started to fly. My dad kind of faded out of the picture behind my mother and I "got" (in that way that we get things while in trance: fwoomfwoomfwoom) that most of the issues were with my father and that we had all agreed on a soul level that she would put herself between the two of us. It was a true ah-ha moment.
However this vision was not enough for me to focus there or do any of the real work that I devoted to my mother (and other) issues. I find that quite cute...running from the what, Pamm?
He calls me now. I'm not sure what that looks like just yet, but I feel the call of healing my personal relationship with male energy. I have chosen, these last fourteen years, to learn what it means to be devoted to being with and serving male energy as it redefines and re-creates itself. But the years have come full circle (or what looks like full circle to me right now, anyway) and I'm learning the things I "need" that I've put on the back burner in my crusade of being "of service."
Years ago I did a stint around healing The Father when I did an adventure with Christianity and disconnected angry Radical Feminism. I'm not there any more and I don't know what any of this looks like today.
I do know it's deeper. And I do know that when I put the intention out there, things appear. It's already begun as I kindasorta began this a few weeks ago. It's scary, but completely freeing. This time of year is historically one where I experience stagnated, stifling, stuck energy. My birthday is soon and I've had intuitive flashes that it's about pre-birth body memories of waiting...sitting...or that since mother was a smoker I'm reliving feeling terrified and paralyzed with no oxygen, not being able to get the "life force" I needed. Stay small...stay quiet...maybe I'll survive. Whatever....
But this year I feel more energized than I have in years. It grows daily. I've been taking concrete steps toward doing life differently, learning trust in Life and Love...learning to listen as best I can then act according only to my heart...no shoulds...following the illogical...not doing what I think others need, not taking on projections. I'm both excited and scared shitless. Yum.
Time for a Quest.
Art: The Love Between A Father and a Daughter by Keith Burns from here
6 comments:
Now you have me intrigued. The Father that waits, that melts into the background, that allows the mother to be leader ( if that isn't too heavy handed of me) of the family, while his own issues force him into being the quieter, more gentle more serene figure...........If anything in this reasonates with you let me know.. Because it somehow my personal experience, as a father, and as a son. It is also so far away from the male stereotype that seems to appear in angry feminism, so far from stereotypes that I don't understand. I wonder about those fathers who bite their tounge or who from condition become bread winner and find no other 'in' into family...and then those who are more maternal than the mothers.....
For me it's odd, how you describe the mother figure above seems almost like a stereotype father, and the Father a stereotype of a female.
Of course I could be just projecting my own shit here. hugs and kisses, delighted to have read this piece.
Interesting place you took this, Warrior.
Actually, quiet, gentle, serene are not words I think of when I think of him. Melts into the background? I would say more like ran into the background of his own accord while we begged him to engage. He didn't know how to.
Ah wow and there it is, I don't seem to be able to think of anything else. I wonder if my own Father engaged more, encouraged actively, rather than passively..( is that a paradox?) how different as an individual I would have been. From a male point of view, I wonder how important it is to have a father than engages positively and what are the effects on both men and women of having the absent father?
I have no idea how important it is or the effects...I imagine it's very. But I would also imagine that it depends on the individual and their response. And here we have that old nature vs. nurture issue I still have never written about.
Well I have a question, about the person and about the role, do you think that something would be different, or what do you think could be different about you if your father filled a more positive father stereoptype? I have answers for me that I would have been more confident disciplined and perhaps more of a 'success' however when I look at whom I percieve the man my father is/was when I was growing up, then I am tempted to ask where does that line exist between the individual and the role? Can a parent be a friend? Intriguing stuff
I can't know how I would be different, Warrior...all conjecture at this point. My father was a good man, tried to be a good father. He loved us and tried his best. Always and in all ways. Parenting is the most difficult job/role we do, usually the one that is the most important to us and the one we mess up the most. I hold him no grudges, but rather appreciate him.
That doesn't mean he didn't have his stuff or that I didn't take it places. Just life.
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