Daddy Issues/How Forgiving our Fathers Leads to Peace and Happiness
After being a Family Law attorney for 20 years and now doing my work with Sedona Soul Adventures for almost 20 years, I am still continually amazed at how almost everyone I come into contact with still has wounds from the past – and in most situations, it’s from things that happened with their parents.
I was thinking about it this week (since it’s Father’s Day), but especially because one of our couples who were here doing a retreat had a huge breakthrough and it all came down to their relationships with their fathers.
In my own life, I spent many years grappling with my relationship with my own father. My dad was a hardworking man and I know in my head that he loved us, but I never felt that in my heart. He grew up in a large German Catholic family (his parents had 20 children – he was number 19!) and in our stoic household, no one ever said “I love you” and I have no memory of being hugged or held.
Worse, when I was 12 years old, my father started an affair with another woman which lasted until my mother’s death 11 years later. He became an alcoholic, had severe financial problems and almost lost his business and our home. My teenage years were ones of turmoil and trauma.
I couldn’t wait to get out of all that craziness and I got married when I was 19. Of course, the marriage failed because I got married for all the wrong reasons. I got married to get away from my family situation, not because I was in love and capable of having a stable, loving relationship. In fact, having a stable and loving relationship was something that I was completely incapable of having.
I started what would become 15 years of therapy when my first marriage ended and in therapy, I made the mental correlation between my upbringing and my failed marriage. But that never healed the ache in my heart. It wasn’t until I was able (through sessions) to go into compassion for my dad and to finally forgive him that the real healing occurred – and that’s what happened with the couple this past week.
Like me, this couple had done many years of therapy.
Like me, they each mentally understood the correlation between their upbringing and problems in their marriage (but having that understanding wasn’t enough to cause anything to be better).
Like me, they thought they had “dealt with” their daddy issues completely.
In their retreat, their initial session as a couple brought some of these issues to the forefront. They had some resistance to even looking at this because they thought they had “dealt with it” already. But it was obviously still there.
In Jane’s Emotional Clearing session (they’ve asked that we change their names for privacy) that she did on her own, she cleared out the energy that her father had wanted a boy and that she was always competing for his love with her younger brother. Her energy had become hyper-masculine and it was showing up not only in her relationship with her husband, but in her work and in her relationships with her friends.
For her husband Ted, in his initial clearing session that he did individually, he cleared out the energy that he was unloveable, that his father didn’t love him, that he was never good enough. He said he felt like he cleared tons of pain away that was just lifted up and out.
And then the big breakthrough happened. In their breath sessions (which they each did separately), it was absolutely amazing that both their fathers (both of whom are deceased) came into their sessions. They each said they felt the presence of their dads, but it was different for each one of them.
For Jane, she literally saw her father. He came to her and spoke to her. He told her that he truly loved her, he showed her images of times when she was growing up that he felt especially close to her. She said she truly felt his love. He told her he was proud of her.
For Ted, it was even more profound. He felt his father’s presence, although he didn’t actually “see” him. He said he felt like his father had somehow connected with him on a cellular level and he felt “almost overwhelmed” by all the love he felt from his father. He said he cried and cried, but they were really tears of joy and of deeply letting go.
They both felt the healing in an instant. Knowing and feeling that they were truly loved by their fathers, healed everything. In an instant, they both felt that the issues between them had been healed.
In their next couples session, they saw how their issues had sprung from their feelings of not being lovable. Now that this was healed, they were able to revel in their newfound love for each other.
Like Jane and Ted, I also had a huge breakthrough with my father during a breath session. In my 15 years of therapy, I had been able to analyze his problems and my problems and I had come to a place of understanding him. But in this breath session, his energy came into my presence and I was able to really see him for the first time.
I saw that he truly loved both my mother and Mary. He was in love with 2 different women and had absolutely no idea how to deal with it. So he dealt with it by self medicating with alcohol. He was in so much pain and so much confusion. I truly felt how much he loved all of us (my mother, my brothers and my sister), but he was in so much pain he could barely function. My heart was full of compassion for him.
Luckily, this happened while he was still alive. I was able to finally have the close relationship I wanted to have with him my entire life. My dad passed away in 2004 and I was with him during the final 2 weeks of his life. One morning in the hospital, a few days before he passed, I was sitting next to him while he was sleeping. He woke up and said to me, “I couldn’t love you anymore than I do.” I’m weeping as I write those words, but they are tears of deeply feeling the love I have for him.
Forgiving my father and coming into love and compassion for him was part of a huge transformation in my life.
Jane and Ted felt like this experience saved their marriage.
For so many others who come to us, healing these wounds moves them into a peace and happiness they’ve never known before.
Almost all of us are grappling with some form of the question of, “Do I truly deserve to be loved?” It shows up in a lot of different ways:
- Sometimes our love relationships don’t work.
- Sometimes it shows up in dissatisfaction in our work.
- Sometimes we do too much for everyone else and don’t take care of ourselves.
- Sometimes it feels like we’re never good enough or we’ll never be happy.
How is it showing up for you?
Do you have any doubt that you are completely 100% lovable and deserving to be loved?
If you’re not at 100%, it’s affecting your life in some way. And if it’s affecting your life in some way, you need to do something about it. Contact us. Connect with one of our Angel Guides and let them design a retreat that can bring you into 100%.
Click here and one of our Angel Guides will call you. Or if you’d prefer, call us at (928) 204-5988. And remember, there’s no cost or obligation, you can do the retreat either in Sedona or At Home and we even work on Sunday, we’re here for you.
Vicki says “negative feelings I had bottled up for almost half a century” are healed and “it was worth every penny”
“All the practitioners were very professional. I originally thought the price was very high, but after I completed the retreat, I felt that it was worth every penny. Some of the negative feelings I had bottled up for almost half a century had been driven me to the wall. After I went through the healing from all the healers, I was able to know the causes of my problems, they have been healed and I learned skills of how to deal with them. Now two of my girlfriends have also done retreats. Thank you!”
Vicki C., Los Angeles, CA
Wishing you a week filled with loving and appreciating your dad!
