It’s possible to come into the world and have this experience and heal from that experience.
Welcome to another conversation about healing from the absence of a father or from having a bad relationship with your daddy. I’m Olivia S. Benson if you’re new to the channel, and of course the conversations are based, at this moment anyway, on my newest book For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon. I’m also the author of another book which is titled Answers from Within: Answers to Work Life Issues in the Age of Spiritual Evolution.
Same dad, different stories
Last week we did something a little bit different. We had sort of like a discussion interview with my friend Janara from Kyrgyzstan, and I thought that was pretty interesting because she’s originally from a completely different part of the world, and she of course had a certain experience with her dad which was positive.
But the interesting part about that is that she had two older sisters, and those older sisters didn’t have the same experience with daddy that she had. And so we had an opportunity to look at things from two different perspectives, because as I said in last week’s video to her, I’m sort of like, you know, the first group. And even though in my case it was very different, because I didn’t see my dad’s behavior very different from one set to another, but in her case her sisters would have had a very different experience of their dad and might have felt very differently about their dad than she did, because she absolutely adores, until this day adores, and has a great relationship with her father.
And I believe that’s why I titled last week’s video, it’s kind of like, Same Dad, Different Stories. In other words, it was the same father, and two different sets of children might be perceiving or having a different experience of what that particular father was. So if you didn’t have an opportunity to see it, maybe you can go over and take a look. Janara is absolutely charming and heartwarming, and she is, you can tell, a very, very genuine person.
So before that we were in chapter seven — we haven’t been following any particular order, by the way — but we were in chapter seven, and the title of that chapter is Getting Ready to Love Another. Chapter eight, by the way, is titled Balancing the Whole Equation, but chapter seven is Getting Ready to Love Another. And there were so many things in that last discussion that I wanted to go back and go a little bit deeper about.
An experience that can fundamentally change who you are
One of the things that I said was that growing up without your father or having a bad relationship with your father is an experience that can fundamentally change who you are. And I believe that I explained it there, but you know, there are lots of children who grow up with both their parents. There are many, many people in the world — in fact, I don’t know that I can say the majority of the children in the world grow up with both their parents, but there’s a significant amount of children in the world that do have both parents and that do have a father.
But when you grow up without having a father present, and depending on who your mother is also — which was another interesting thing about the discussion with Janara, because in her case her mother was very helpful to her father in terms of helping him be a good father to his first set of children, which is a thing that can be problematic. Men and women, but men have the situation where they frequently leave a relationship and leave the children with the mother, and many times when a man goes and remarries or enters another relationship, that woman doesn’t necessarily support him being a good father to, let’s say, the first set of children. But in Janara’s case, she spoke about the fact that her mother insisted that her father go to her sister when her sister was getting married, and she really worked to bring the families together. So that’s an important thing.
But generally speaking, if you as a little girl or as a young woman grow up without having the presence of your father, and in many cases without the support of any male figures in your life, it does change who you are. Because that sense of being happy-go-lucky, maybe, and or being protected in some way, shape or form by a father or a father figure, or being supported by a man, is just something that you are not going to have, or more than likely have not had. That was my experience. That is why I speak of this issue, because I want you to know — I want you to know that it’s possible to come into the world and have this experience and heal from that experience, and be able to be happy-go-lucky and to have a good life and to be able to be productive and to be able to love men, and not say things like all men are this or all men are that. That is absolutely not the case, but depending on what your experience might have been, you might have that kind of negative feeling because of your experiences with your dad.
You sort of feel like you’re all alone in the world
Something else that happened, I had this experience earlier in my life. Since daddy’s not there, and since maybe you don’t have a whole lot of other male figures in your life, you sort of feel like you’re all alone in the world, like you got to make it happen and there’s nobody else physically present. That is a genuine feeling. It is a valid feeling.
What happens is that until and unless you get to understand yourself as a spiritual being, and until and unless you have an understanding that the presence of God lives within you, that sense of being alone is very real. But once you understand that you didn’t come into this world alone, you came in with the God essence within you, and you learn how to tap into that, then you can overcome that sense of being alone and having to do everything alone and being ultra responsible. Because you know that no one’s coming down from the hill to save you if you don’t save yourself, you know.
So along the way I’ve also spoken about the fact that one of the things that we have to realize is that if you have this experience, it has an impact on you, it alters who you are. And the feeling of being ultra responsible, and that there’s nobody else that’s going to help you and nobody else is going to save you, that is something that you have to recognize. It’s not the truth, the ultimate truth. It’s a reality in that it happened, but it’s not the ultimate truth, because once you realize that this did happen, but that you’re not here on the planet by yourself, you are a child of God, you are divine, the presence of God lives within you, then you can change your perspective and you can change your feeling about life, and in many cases your feeling about men.
And I said this before: how would it be possible for you to entertain a healthy relationship with a man if you have negative feelings towards men as a result of your relationship with your father?
The importance of telling the truth about your experience
One of the things we discussed in the prior video was the importance of telling the truth about your experience. Telling the truth. So this poor guy — and in this case I’m talking about, you know, male-female relationship — this poor guy gets into a relationship with you, has no idea about your challenges with your dad and your preconceived notions, even subconscious, because sometimes we don’t even know that that’s what we think, but that’s what we feel and that’s what we think and that’s what we attract. And this poor guy is going to walk in and be completely surprised. He’s not going to know what hit him when one day you explode, and it’s not just about what he did, it’s about a whole bunch of things that he had no idea about.
And my feeling is, and my experience is, that that person has a right to know that this is your drama, this was, if you’re healed, this was your baggage, and so that on those particular days when something triggers you or hits you in the wrong way, he would know that okay, this is coming from this XYZ place because of her experience.
You get to crown yourself princess
I also spoke in the last video about living hard. And when I say living hard, I mean, you know, it’s not all roses and, you know, periwinkles, and everything’s not beautiful. And in fact the truth of the matter is that if you grow up without your father, you are really no one’s princess. You are not your daddy’s princess. And that you might have a little bit of resentment about, because there are lots of little girls in the world who are absolutely their daddy’s princess. But maybe in this particular lifetime that was not your experience.
But guess what, I have good news for you. Once you realize what is happening, you get to crown yourself princess, and you get to treat yourself like a princess. Daddy might not have been able to do it, God bless his soul, for whatever reason he just didn’t have it in him, and there’s no point in going back and, you know, beating him up and attacking him or speaking ill. He didn’t have it in him. But now you have the ability to crown yourself princess and queen, and that is the good news.
Anger is only one out-picturing of what is going on inside
The other thing I spoke about and wanted to clarify: I referred to women being angry sometimes without understanding why. And anger is only one out-picturing of what is going on inside. Some people are angry, some people are resentful, some people are bitter, and any number of other emotions that can result. Anger is usually directed outward, resentment is usually directed inward, but it’s all as a result of having had this experience, and it is as a result of having had this experience and remaining unhealed in the experience.
And I know, you know, I’ve been a woman for a long time, and for most women there is nothing more delicious — not everyone, but for most women there’s nothing more delicious than being in a healthy relationship. And I know that I was willing to do whatever was necessary to be ready for a healthy, whole relationship.
And this is the good news: that if you realize that this is one of your issues — I’m not saying it’s your only issue, because most of us have multiple issues, but I’m only trying to hit one piece of the pie, a little slice, not even a big piece, just a little tiny sliver of an issue that you could have as a woman who grew up without your father — and if you could get your hands around it, realize this is a problem, let’s say this is a challenge that I face, this is the life that I came into, and I realized that I can get my arms around it, that I can heal, that I can seek spiritual healing for myself, and that then with that I would then become the vibrational frequency that would attract that right ideal mate to me. That’s what we’re looking for, and that’s what we can relax into.
You’re not by yourself
You’re not by yourself. God is right here with you. And when you get to understand that beyond just talk and beyond just intellectual knowing, but that you actually know it, and you know God is with you, you’re not by yourself. Even if daddy wasn’t there, even if you didn’t have any uncles, if you didn’t have cousins or brothers or whatever, you’re not by yourself. God is always present. But you have to connect with that, and when you connect with that, now you can relax, now you can begin to let go of the anger and resentment and the bitterness and everything else that comes as a result of those very, very challenging experiences.
Janara had a great childhood experience, her sisters did not, and everybody has a different bag to deal with. We all have some baggage, we have different ones, but the essence of it lies in getting to know yourself as divine and getting to know the presence of God that lives within you, and connecting to that and living from that internal reality outward. In order to do that, always, we got to clean up, we got to do our forgiveness work, and we have to be willing to be open and receptive to love.
As you know, the book is For the Love of My Father: The Spiritual Guide for Healing from Daddy Issues in the Age of Spiritual Revolution. I am Olivia S. Benson, and my website is OliviaSBenson.com.