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As long as we have an internal war, we will stand divided within ourselves and our connection to personal power. The main connection to life is the energy and alchemy of love.
I was not raised in a perfect atmosphere of human interactions as a family, but I was raised in love. The sense of perfect was a paradigm of what a physical family would look like and act like. It was not based on the effectiveness of what it felt like and what it generated. If it felt right, we would stay connected. If not we experienced abandonment issues and silently became angry.
I knew the experience of love by what was given to me. The love and support was the food of existence I was nourished with, given to me by my mother’s family. I knew the glove of love and recognized the feeling of the hands of healing touching me to remind of my safety. I was raised in an echo of love, therefore, I could recognize when love was not there to be received.
My father’s rage interrupted my sense of feeling like I was being loved. I did not understand the where and the why for of the core reasons of his rage until I read his private journals while I was packing his house after his death. I realized and actualized the hidden history, the fact it is impossible to give something that has not been given to you. My father’s conception was committed in an act of rage. He had lived in a sense of lack his entire life.
I had become aware of my grandmother’s behavior and how she did not touch or caress my father at any time. I knew she loved him, but she never touched his physical body in a typical loving way though of a mother. She had two additional children whom she seemed to have a comfortable physical relationship with, but not my father. Another aspect of the story was the point my father had a different father than his other two siblings. His way of being was entirely different than his siblings. My father seemed to live in a state of isolation, unspoken rage. In reading the letter I found out the brutality of the marriage of my grandmother and my father’s father.
The rage of my father had come from the rage of his father, passed on to me. The legacy of male rage was being passed to me like a baton. Unknowingly, I accepted the gift of abandonment wrapped in fear. I accepted the legacy of the detachment of my spirit from my soul, the nourishment of the food necessary to sustain my balanced existence on this planet.
The rage of my father was one of feeling emotionally abandoned. His mother was traumatized by the rage-filled relationship of the parents, the rage coming from his mother. So every time his mother would look at her son she saw the face of the father who abused her. Internally she was living in conflict and the division of her soul and spirit. She loved her son but hated the source of his seed. This internal conflict is the source of a lack of connection.
This very lack of connection is the reason I feel creates the cycle of rage. The feelings of abandonment create the silent rage that eventually becomes the food we begin to feed ourselves and all the others around us. I did not think I would inherit the rage of my father until there came a time I felt afraid, insecure and I wanted to snatch my power source back.
I realized my fear was the source of my rage. When I felt inadequate or less than in any way, I began to choose rage as my response to my fear. The surge of power that came over me in my state of rage made me remember I was alive and I had the power to conquer anything. Because it was not a feeling that had longevity, when it passed through me, in seconds I was again living in fear.
Growing up and experiencing my father’s rage taught me to be a real man you could reclaim your power by taking control of every situation. The majority of the time I would choose love because I was raised by my mother and her family, but when I felt cornered, I choose rage. It was then I became an echo of my father.
The echo meant I would choose isolation as a means to establish a sense of safety. My echo of rage was my ticket to freedom. Alone I was safe, I thought. It only turned out to be a temporary means of escape which produced long-term problems in my relationships. In conclusion, I did not achieve my goal of being loved and connected to my world around me. Because of my experience of knowing love, I knew I could get back to the state of love and being loving.
I feel it is possible to change our modern from problematic to a state of transformation. It is possible to change our collective echo of fear into an echo of awareness. The awareness is the opening portal which allows us the chance to change our habits of living and being from reactionary to proactive.
Knowing the source of my pain and accepting the story of the pain allows me to become acquainted with the real story being revealed. My sense of isolation, self inducted, which was ignited by fear begins to write a script to justify the anger created by my fear. Knowing this truth allowed me the choice of making a different decision outside of resentment. I am able to live in a quest to be a human being united with other human beings living and working in development of new rituals of living which create transformation in our society.
Awareness empowers you and allows you the ability to attach yourself to the real truths of life and not the reactionary fears of life. When we are based in love we can handle our personal rage. Because of the presence of compassion in the process of expressing love, you can step back and take a breath in order to see the entire story unfolding. When you take off your blinders and allow yourself to see the larger picture, it enables you to understand the human storyline and your part in it.
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Terrell, I resonate with your story. I also grew up with a wounded father, though didn’t know it at the time. When I was five he took an overdose of sleeping pills and ended up in a mental hospital. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, whether it would happen to me, and how I could prevent it from happening to others. For more than 40 years I’ve been a therapist and author healing my own wounds as I’ve helped others heal. My new book, coming out in June, is called My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father… Read more »