When I talk, I’m not telling you what I heard. I’m telling you what I know.
It’s another day here on planet Earth. Fortunately, I’ve made it. Hopefully you’re doing well, and here we are still trying to figure things out.
So much going on on the planet, and as you know, if you’ve been here before, this channel is just, at the moment at least, about a particular subject, and that is how to heal from having daddy issues. It’s for the women and the girls who suffered the daddy issues, for the people who support them, as well as for daddies who maybe realized that they didn’t do as well as they could have with their daughters. I’m Olivia S. Benson and the book that our discussions are currently based on is For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon.
I’m also the author of another book, which is available on Amazon, and that book is Answers from Within: Answers to Work-Life Issues in the Age of Spiritual Evolution. As I said before, at this time we’re discussing For the Love of My Father, and last week we started our discussion in chapter 7, a chapter titled Getting Ready to Love Another. Getting Ready to Love Another. And the essence of the chapter is that after you come to the realization that you have these particular issues with regards to daddy, whether he was absent, whether you just had a bad relationship with him, whatever the case might be, this is super important stuff.
You’ve got to realize that you got some work
I wasn’t able to pretend like it didn’t happen and just go on, because there was stuff underneath that had been buried, my experiences had been buried, but there was clearly stuff underneath that needed to be addressed in order to really have — we’re not just talking about, you know, short-term relationships or things like that. And I will say this, despite what some women might say, the majority of women really would like to be in a healthy, long-term intimate relationship. This does not apply to everyone. Everyone does not want that, and that is okay, but there’s a good majority of women who dream about being in a good long-term relationship. But like everything else, it takes work, particularly if you have had daddy issues, and I said this before, your issue, as it was mine, was having daddy issues.
Other women may not have this particular issue. They may have something else that they have to deal with, but if yours is daddy issues, you’ve got to realize that you got some work. If you want a healthy, long-term relationship, you have some work that you need to do. I encourage you to watch not only this video, but the others. There are a few that I really like, but last week’s, dealing with being honest about your issues, I thought was very interesting.
This slice of the pie
It’s For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon, and you were here for the discussion last week, and that was really about, okay, we recognize that we have issues, and we sort of recognize that there’s no reason to hide your issues, and that it’s important for you to know what the issue is — and I’m only talking about with regards to daddy, because there are millions of issues that we could, trillions, gazillions, billions of issues that we could talk about that humans have, but I’m simply talking about this slice of the pie related to women, girls who have absent fathers, which is a significant part of the population, not just in the United States, but all around the world. An absentee father is a problem in many, many parts of the world, and it has a significant impact because the women are affected in a long-term basis and it has a generational effect. So this is just a slice of the pie in terms of issues.
We should know what ails us
So we said last week, listen, we should know what ails us, and I believe it’s important for you, if you’re interested in having a long-term relationship, to let your partner know what your issues are or were, because it’s very possible that you could have completely healed from this particular issue in your life and you’re fine. But just like the joke that I made about exchanging lists of issues, this person, whoever it is that’s about to enter an intimate relationship with you, should know, you know what? This is a thing. This was a thing for me. If you’re all healed and you feel that you’re good, this person should know that this was a thing for you.
I call it soul scarring
And there’s an example that I use in the book, and it’s sort of like when you break a bone. You break a bone and you heal, or people break bones and they heal, right? I don’t know if you’ve broken a bone. Everybody hasn’t broken a bone, right? But you break a bone and it heals. Somehow, I don’t know how it happens, but when it rains, there is a little bit of sensation around that place where you broke that bone. When it gets cold, there’s a little bit of sensation around that bone.
And so the reason it’s important, even if you feel that you’re a hundred percent, a million percent healed from this issue, the reason that I believe it’s important for this person to know that this was one of your issues, is because there is a sensitivity around that issue. I call it soul scarring. I don’t know if this is an official term, if it’s been used before or what have you, but I call it soul scarring because it’s healed, but there’s a mark that is left that this was an issue in your soul.
So this is important, not just that if you have current issues, but if you have issues that have been healed, that you’re going to be honest and you’re going to tell this person, this is what I was working on in my lifetime, in my life. If you listen to last week’s video, you would be telling that person and that person would be telling you.
Most of us are seeking love
Now, the thing about it is why this is important. Most of us are seeking love. We just want to be loved. Of course, we want to be loved by our parents. We want to be loved by our friends, but we significantly want to be loved in an intimate relationship.
Not everybody thinks that’s important, but there’s some people who think it’s extremely important, and I don’t understand how we would think that it would be possible for us to be in a genuinely honest relationship without revealing to that person that you have issues around your relationship with your father, and keep that sort of hidden, and the person doesn’t know that you have an issue with one of the most significant people in your life, that, or at least the person that should have been the most significant person in your life. This is a big deal.
Something that can fundamentally alter who you are
Having either no relationship with your father or having a bad relationship with your father is something that can fundamentally alter who you are. You have to live in a very different way. For example, with me, I didn’t grow up with my father. I didn’t grow up with any uncles, even though I did have them. I didn’t have the support of siblings. Just really no male figure present, either older or in my same group. Just absolutely positively none.
That is going to alter who you are, because you see life in a way where you absolutely positively know that you have to take care of yourself. There is no sense of, you know, Daddy’s gonna come and help me. Daddy’s gonna do this. Daddy’s gonna do that. Or for that matter, any other male. I have had a lot of female support, which is fine. My mother’s been present and I’ve had, I can’t even tell you how many women who have supported me all along the way. But to think that there was going to be a male figure in my life, that strong male presence, that was not even a possibility.
So that changed who I was fundamentally, because I came into the world knowing that, or I don’t know if I came in knowing that, but at some point it was made very clear to me that I would be responsible for myself in every possible way, and that there was no way that I could depend on any man to save me, protect me or any of those kinds of things.
Now, of course, this is much different now because I am married. I’m in a wonderful relationship and I can depend on my spouse in many, many, many different ways. So coming from that experience, I want you to know that it’s possible to go through all the hardship, all the suffering and all the different things that happen when you have an absent father, and that it’s possible to transform your life and then begin to live in a completely different way.
But it’s not possible if you don’t know what ails you or you don’t recognize it. You don’t recognize your issue. You don’t recognize that you have daddy issues, or that the absence of your father has had an impact on you. If you don’t recognize it, and then if you don’t verbalize it, and then we sort of magically expect that we’re gonna be in a healthy, intimate relationship without revealing to the other person that you have issues, that you have, if you read the book, below deck, you know, below deck parts, and that your programming has been affected by what happened with your father.
This is absolutely key. Very simply said, if you are a woman who grew up without your father, if you’ve had a bad relationship with your father or any way you can describe, and I’m talking about women here because that’s my experience. When I talk, I’m not telling you what I heard. I’m telling you what I know. It is my experience that your partner must know or should absolutely know. You can do anything you want. You don’t have to. I’m just obviously sharing my experience that the person who comes into your life should know that this was your life experience and that you have had to live your life in this kind of way.
You live hard
Now, it’s an interesting thing because, you know, it’s kind of like hard. You live hard, and sometimes I see women who are extremely angry. They are just mad all the time, and I have male friends who tell me like, I don’t know what’s the matter with some of these women out here. Why are they so angry? Well, you know, if you have to live hard and you don’t know God and you don’t have any other perspective on why you’re having this life experience, yeah, you might be a little bit, or a lot, angry, because it is just hard.
Imagine yourself: you have no dad, no uncle, no stepdad, no brother, no male figure. Women like to say that we’re all this and all that, and it’s true, but you know, we need men in our lives to some extent. It really brings some balance, and if you feel that you are in the world by yourself with no male protection, then it will make you hard.
Now, if you understand that there’s a reason why you’re having this experience, and that regardless of what’s happening or what has happened, you are a child of God and God is with you, and that God will help you through this experience, and getting to know God will help you through this experience, now you can get a little bit more relaxed, because you’re not alone. But if you don’t have any understanding of who you are, why you are, and a knowledge that God hasn’t just thrown you down here to live a hard life, that could make you angry, and I would understand exactly why.
Tell the truth about who you are
And this is why I have written the book, because I want to tell you that there is a way, there is a way that you can have this challenging, difficult experience and that you can come out on the other side and you can be okay. And particularly in this chapter, this person who eventually shows up once you’ve done the work, you need to tell the truth. Tell the truth about who you are, what your life experience has been, so that there’s a good foundation for this intimate relationship.
And the best part of it is that the right person is going to show up, and in my case, he’s going to think that you’re the most amazing person ever because you went through all of this and you’re still standing. And I know this to be true for me, and I hope that you do the work, read the book, do the work, For the Love of My Father, available on Amazon, and then on the other side, somebody’s going to show up for you and think you’re the greatest thing since sliced cheese.
My website is OliviaSBenson.com. We have a lot of things that I’ve written over there, and we have t-shirts and mugs and things along those lines.