Karen Jones revisits her grief to talk about why she helps women with relationships.
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People ask me all the time why I got into my line of work as a relationship coach. I usually tell them that it was because I was trying to solve my own problem: how to stop being with unavailable men, so I could end up happily married.
But the truth is that my long journey of discovery, and personal freedom, had started many years before I ever kissed my first boy; I needed to figure out my relationship with my father.
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I was a pretty typical two-year old girl; I was the apple of my daddy’s eyes, and he was the sun and the moon to me. And then my mother left him.
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I was a pretty typical two-year old girl; I was the apple of my daddy’s eyes, and he was the sun and the moon to me.
And then my mother left him. We were in Turkey at the time, because he was stationed there, as a pilot with the U.S. Air Force (he retired as a Major, after 20 years of service).
I went from living with my daddy, seeing him every day (unless he was flying a mission), to seeing him once, or maybe twice, a year.
I had no capacity to understand that his wife, the love of his life, had left him and taken his precious children with her.
What I knew was that my daddy, whom I loved with every cell of my being, was suddenly gone from my life. He was there, and then he was gone; he’s left me.
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What I knew was that my daddy, whom I loved with every cell of my being, was suddenly gone from my life. He was there, and then he was gone; he’s left me.
I don’t know what happened over the next few years—I’m sure I protected myself from any further pain by blocking it all out—but I know that all that vulnerable and tender love toward my daddy turned into white-hot anger. I was devastated, and how it was manifested in my life was in the most cruel expression of anger: I hated my father.
My sisters and I had the “required” summer visits with him; we went bowling, played Scrabble, and visited relatives we didn’t really connect with.
In short, B-O-R-I-N-G.
My father had no idea how to relate to young girls. So he lectured. Or he was quiet, while we did whatever we were doing when we were together. When you’re a young girl, that silence can—all too easily—be interpreted as lack of interest … in you.
I was devastated, and how it was manifested in my life was in the most cruel expression of anger: I hated my father.
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I became a troubled young teen (yup, all the predictable stuff: drugs, not doing well in school, and too promiscuous with boys who didn’t help to heal the wound of that missing father).
I won’t go into more detail here, except to say that I did a shitload of work to heal myself and to figure out how to live a life that was aligned with who I was, my true values, and with what I really wanted in my life. After one failed marriage, I met and married the most spectacular man; we’ve been married 20 years, and I look forward to the next 40+ years with him.
My relationship with my father had improved over the years, so that we could talk on the phone fairly regularly, and it was okay (quite different from my childhood, where the deal between me and my sisters was that whenever he called, whoever was “unlucky” enough to answer was “the only one home”, so no one else would have to talk with him that time). He still tried to do the “Dad” thing and give advice, but it usually fell on deaf ears. (After all, he’d left me—what right had he “earned” to tell me what I should do?)
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My father was an alcoholic. Even when he’d been a commercial pilot, he was violating the FAA regulations on a daily basis, because he went to sleep every night with a blood-alcohol level that was way above the legal limit.
The alcohol was taking a toll on his body, which got more pronounced after he retired and had nothing else in his life that was limiting his drinking in any way.
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The alcohol was taking a toll on his body, which got more pronounced after he retired and had nothing else in his life that was limiting his drinking in any way.
When I would go to Florida to visit him, which I was doing every year, I knew that “visiting” meant spending hours at “his” bar, watching him play his favorite trivia game, and socializing with his friends.
One day I got a call from the bartender at his bar (I had given her my number the last time I’d visited him, in case she ever needed to reach me), telling me that he’d been hospitalized a few days earlier. She didn’t know what had happened; she just knew that it was serious.
That started a three-month journey that ended with my sitting on a plane, after getting a call from the rehab facility, letting me know that he was in very bad shape, and that I should get down there right away.
This is the letter I wrote to him, on that plane, in December of 2002:
Dear Dad,
Who could have known that we’d end up here … me racing to your deathbed; you, perhaps, holding on, and sacrificing your comfort for me?
I am only able to catch fragments of thoughts, feeling. I hold the magnitude at bay, afraid I won’t’ sustain the barrage.
What a complex relationship we’ve had. So many paradoxes within such a small space. Love and hate. Trust and deceit. Despair and indifference. Longing and rejection. Tenderness and jagged-edged weapons.
I ache for our innocent love. The simple purity of daddy and daughter. I can only hope that our hearts have the wisdom and strength to contain us, as we go through this last chapter of our time on this earth together.
I want us both to bask in the warmth of forgiveness. To revel in a faith that transcends our limitations this time through. To know that the way we loved each other was, and is, enough.
I’ve learned profound lessons because of you, Dad. They have, and will continue to, serve me well as I strive to live my life well. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to see the best of me as a result of our relationship. I’m equally grateful that I’ve had a chance to know my worst. Through it all, I know you’ve loved me.
I love you, Dad. I hope that where you’re going is your version of paradise. You’ve earned it.
So when anyone asks me why I do what I do? Yeah, it’s because I wanted to figure out how to get romantic relationships right, and I wanted to help other women figure it out, too.
But really? It’s because there are so many men like my father who are being devastated by us women, because we don’t understand the depth of their love, or the way they express it. And it’s hurting us all. So much. I want to change that. I need to change that.
Photo—camerabee/Flickr