Fathers Day

Today is Fathers day.

Here is a picture of Dad and me looking really happy .

Sadly, my Dad is no longer with us because he died from cancer and this makes me feel sad.

Todays is Fathers day.

Here is picture of my Dads Dad ...

Sadly, my Dad never got to be happy with his Dad because he stopped being friends with him.

According to Pops, Jim SNR was a womaniser and a bully. He would often disappear for days on end and then show up like nothing had happened. Dad told me that  he was only aged 5 or 6 when the war started between his parents. Dad became so scared that he would leave the house and walk the streets. One time he returned to an empty house. Supposedly, Jim SNR had told a neighbour that they were moving home and emptied the house of all its contents leaving the family with nothing. 

My Dad once told me that he didn't know what a normal loving father/ son relationship was. He was never cuddled or shown affection, and grew up feeling unwanted. Consequently Jim JNR never forgave his father for all his wrongdoings and their relationship fell apart like a tatty old sweater.

For many years, Dad and me didn't see eye to eye either.The road became dark, twisted  and lonely. Then one day the pain became so unbearable that I was forced to my knees. I made the unwavering decision to heal my relationship with my father.  Rather than shrink away from truth I chose to walk towards it - peeling away unresolved layers of  guilt and shame along the way, which I  had unconsciously been carrying for my father and his father before him. This toxic guilt and shame  had become so tightly wrapped around my heart that I had become cut off from my emotions. Eventually, I succumbed and what revealed itself was a hurting child walking wounded - and that child was the embodiment of father and son. I held the child closely and in that moment my relationship with my father was transformed and healed. I had remembered love.

This inner work I have undertaken is radical because it goes against the worldly grain. The butterfly effect states that a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere in the jungles of Asia can eventually start a tornado in Texas. When I changed my mind about my father the wings of love started to flap and  I experienced a miracle. Through having the courage to forgive I was able to give to my father the love I thought that I was denied as a child. We held each other and cried - father and son. And in that moment the tear in the sacred fabric started to reweave itself and the way forward became easier.

 Incidentally, today is the first time I have ever seen a picture of my grandfather. In life he may have had a hard shell but beneath the surface he was  a broken man unable to tell his son that he loved him because he didn't feel loved in his own life.

Today is  Fathers day ...

Only the love remains.

 ' We must be about our Fathers business which means the business of our Source which is love and love only. Anything loving that we do or think contributes to the healing of humanity. Any turning away from love literally holds back the planet . We are perched on the brink of a miraculous transition from the ways of fear to the ways of love.' - Marianne Williamson

Around the time Pops was diagnosed with ’that lung cancer’ a lady contacted the family saying that she was my fathers half sister. She was on a heroines journey attempting to retrace her family roots to regain her sense of self. Sadly, Hazel never got the opportunity to meet her brother before he died. But since then she has been embraced wholeheartedly by our family. I pray that the work I have done with my father allows her to be closer to him,and that her heart is repaired, even though she never met her own Father and half brothers and sisters. Auntie Hazel - I dedicate this post to you.