A Heart Spark #2- Does Your Father’s Day Holiday Bring up more Emotional Hurt than Happy?
Here’s an Invitation to Rethink your view of Father’s Day with the Power of Forgiveness.
Happy Monday my friends!!. Well, yesterday was Father’s Day! And it was so awesome to see all the truly happy and loving tributes to Dad’s blooming up all over. Sharing joyful gratitude for the essential and best parts of masculine energy that, if accessible to him, Fatherhood can ignite and highlight. Blessed are those whose childhoods naturally consisted of the sweetest path for their “becoming” journey from birth on.
But what if you are someone whose Father (or Father figure) and the growing-up experience you had with him, now make Father’s Day very emotionally hard? Each year as you go to try to purchase that Father’s Day card – the one you may or may not obligatorily feel you must -and you find yourself searching for that one card that sounds emotionally “removed” enough – that you don’t feel like a hypocrite giving it. But what you do feel is a real sadness because you don’t feel connected to authentic freedom to buy one of those sweet, mushy, amazing “Dad” Hallmark cards that pour of love. But instead you find yourself secretly wishing – while blowing the Dandelion flower – that someday it could all feel magically better.
It feels hard because maybe your experience is that your Dad wasn’t “there for you”. This could be physically, mentally, or emotionally. Each aspect, in any combination or individually, can be just as difficult and painful to emotionally manage, while we’re still in the middle of growing up, because all we want, at that point, is to simply have a Dad to give our love to, and to really feel loved by.
Maybe he was a Dad you couldn’t feel close to, whether he lived with you or not, or, for whom you seemed to never be able to make happy, proud, or interested in who you were. Maybe you felt you couldn’t be enough of anything for him; pretty enough, smart enough, athletic enough, funny enough, successful enough. Or maybe what it boiled down to is that he just couldn’t see your special shine – not because you didn’t have it – but because he just wasn’t able to see it. And what if you have spent your life feeling “less than” with the “first” most important special man in your life, whom, as the Hallmark cards say – you wanted to be your “first love”? But instead, found yourself missing out on the special “first love” that every child who does have that, seems to delight in – that experience of good feelings and ownership that he is their “Daddy”?
Maybe your Father betrayed your Mom, whether through infidelity, secrets around finances, dishonesty, abandonment, cruelty… or whatever the painful actions you see as your experience of your Father.
Consciously or unconsciously, these views indicate that you are holding onto the resentment and anger as a shield of protection, for yourself, or perhaps a way of proving loyalty to your Mom. It may feel the right-eous thing to do, and yet, the weight and cost of this – is the constant absence of your own ability to feel free, at peace, fully loving, or happy. It’s like something feels heavy. Heart heaviest when you think of your Dad.
Who, today you see as a man whom you may or may not admit you love, but who either way, because of the actual conditions of your relationship and how it developed, all you can feel in the moment is pain, sadness, missing out, resentment or anger about him – as your Dad.
I know something about this challenge. I felt much of this about my Dad for much of my young life. My Dad was a good man. He was Human, just like everyone, so he made mistakes. As my experience of my Dad, going up, was hard on me. He was hard on me. But much less hard than his folks were hard on him. Because they were very backwardly cruel in they raising of him. So, I guess you could say, I had it easier. But I still grew up feeling like I was chasing the ability to feel “good enough” on so many levels and I unconsciously wore the anger of it much of my life. I spent loads of time looking for answers to why it couldn’t be different and wishing it was, but living in subtle anger.
Until I had my first child, and the feelings that ignited in being a Mother woke me up. That’s when I decided I wanted to change how I FELT about my Dad. What I discovered was I had the power to shift my perspective of him. And with the shift I found a way to view him through the eyes of compassion, kindness, and softening of heart that quieted my own anger and opened me up to grace through my choice and willingness to my power of FORGIVENESS in my heart, for him.
When my intention of forgiving began MY whole heart’s vibration began to rise with compassion and to heal. He softened as I softened. It wasn’t a perfect shift. It was always a process of forward and backward – but always with intention to move toward love – over and over. Ongoing we struggled – in and out of connection. After all, I didn’t open to my willingness to compassionate forgiveness with my Dad till my 30th’s – so my anger had been in place for a long time. I learned that integration and a new way of connecting through forgiveness wasn’t going to happen overnight. However, in the end – our evolving relationship was sprinkled with tender intimate daughter-Dad experiences, that produced memories I cherish to this day. And a more gentle and generous loving view of the good, loving Human man and Father – that he was always wanting and trying to be.
My Dad died in 2008 of a chemo-reaction from cancer treatment. He was 81. And the longer he is gone the more I’m grateful that I woke up to the healing miracle of willingness to choose a different perspective unlocking the loving gate to forgiveness.
Deepest Truth: Forgiveness is one of the HARDEST things you will ever be called to do. And it is also the most powerful – self-loving, empowering, healing GIFT that you can give to Yourself. Yes, to YOURSELF. We think we are giving our forgiveness to the offender – but Truth is we give the gift of forgiveness and the power of the higher love to yourselves. The healing ripples of love vibrate out from there.
If you are someone who struggles with Father’s Day, or Mother’s Day for the matter… or any relationship experiences that are producing an emotional life for you that YOU WANT to change.
I would love to talk with you.
Perhaps for you the place to begin is to rethink your view of your Father and begin the process of opening up your willingness to consider the miraculous power of forgiveness to change YOUR life in a way that would surprise you.
If you would like to talk more about this powerful ignition of forgiveness – I invite you to visit my website (link below), as a Life & Relationship Coach, my core mission is to empower others to ignite their super powers to experience and live the highest most joyful version of their life. Cultivating the self-loving practice of forgiveness is more powerful than most know – to that end. If this is you and freeing the baggage of pain you’re currently toting around sounds good to you – let’s talk. I’d love to help you on that healing journey. And if you know someone who may benefit from this invitation – please pass my message along.
I welcome your comments, and please like it below, and share it …
And for more support on this beautiful journey of living a joyful loving life..Please – Go to my website: www.christineleoncoaching.com. With Gratitude always, Christine
