About a year ago I found myself writing a letter to my father expressing my anger and hurt at how he had treated me as a child. I did it following a session with a homeopath who told me that the continual anger I was feeling needed to be directed to its source in order for it to be healed. It didn’t feel right to me but because of the vulnerable state I was in I was easily persuaded that it would be to my benefit.
In the letter I ranted about all the things that my father had done to me, and all the things that he hadn’t done to/for me. And then I said I wasn’t blaming him. That I didn’t expect any apologies or any explanations. That he didn’t have to answer to any of it…
Did I feel better?
Absolutely not!
I thought that by detailing all my criticisms I would feel heard. That having expressed how I felt I could release all the vitriole and venom that I had held in all these years.
But in actuality I felt worse.
My father left a message to say that he wouldn’t answer every point, but that things did need to be said. To this day he has not responded….
I had put it out there and got nothing back. I was left with it just hanging there, feeling even more unheard.
This morning I woke knowing that something had changed in me, that the blame I held for him had gone. In its place was a softness, an understanding that he really was only doing the best he could given his own upbringing and experiences. I know this is a cliché, and one which I have used in the past to negate my own feelings, but today I really know it to be so.
And with it I have a softness for myself too. One that sees that I was only doing the best I knew how when I wrote the letter, that it came from the best of intentions however misguided it may have seemed at the time.
And more importantly I now realise that I am the one who has to witness any sadness and fear and pain that I feel. I can be the space for all those parts of myself that need to be welcomed in and held like a young child. I don’ t have to do anything with them. By simply acknowledging them, sitting with them, I can give to myself what I was seeking from outside and which I would never truly find.
I have always had a problem with forgiveness. To my mind if you try to forgive someone it means that you have to go against what you’re actually feeling. It’s like a child being told to say sorry to a playmate they’ve hurt when they don’t actually feel sorry. They give the apology begrudgingly, and this is also how it is received.
But when you have actually forgiven someone, when there is no longer any residue in your mind or your heart, there is nothing to forgive….
So today I will write a very different note to my father…
Comments