Forgiving him was one of the things that helped me change my life forever.
I am back and I’m really excited to speak to you today, because I don’t know if you’ve seen the video that I did. It’s an interview with Dr. Herbert Harris, and in that video there is a story, and someone shared that it was particularly impactful for them to hear that story. So I want to spend some time discussing it here so that maybe it can give you some insight about your expectations and how to heal those feelings.
In case this is your first time, again, I’m Olivia Benson, Olivia S. Benson. I am the author of a couple of books, but the one we’ll be discussing today is For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon.
It’s justified, but not helpful
Now, I like to say this often, because the things that I share now and the things that I feel now is not how I have always felt. And so for a lot of women who find themselves in this situation dealing with fatherlessness, or an absent father, or however you want to call it, sometimes there’s anger, there’s bitterness, there’s resentment, there are a lot of different feelings. And in some cases it’s probably justified.
It’s justified but not helpful. So eventually for me, I had to get to the point where I realized that none of those things were going to be helpful, and I had to really get rid of it, because it was not going to make my life any better. In fact, it was going to make it worse, because if I am bitter and I’m carrying energy of bitterness, that’s what I’m going to attract. If I’m carrying anger, that is what I’m going to attract. Any energy that you have within your being is the energy that you’re going to attract into your life, because like attracts like.
All of a sudden I have this bright idea that I need to call my dad
But in any event, like I said, I did an interview with Dr. Herbert Harris, and it’s had quite a few views, and I hope you’ve seen it already. But someone commented about a story that I told where I was getting divorced. Now if you’ve been here before, you know that my dad and I did not have a very close relationship. He was not present. He was not participating. He wasn’t a dad that was involved in any significant way.
He did pay child support. I will say that. And he also paid school tuition, because I was in a private school, so he did that — and these are all things that are in the book, by the way, and I don’t want to say things and make it sound worse than it was. The other thing that he did was he paid rent for the place where my mom, my brother and I lived. So those were things that he absolutely positively did. He failed in terms of a number of other things, but he did do that, and so I want to make that clear.
So I’m fast forward many, many years and I’m married and then divorced — and all of this information is in the book in detail — and I’m getting divorced. And all of a sudden I have this bright idea that I need to call my dad, because I am getting divorced. Now I hadn’t spoken to him on a regular basis. It was a whole thing to find him. But apparently at this point in my life I thought that I’m just going to call my dad and I’m going to talk to him because I’m getting divorced, and this is a time where he, in my mind anyway, should be able to help in some way.
He just stayed on the phone for as long as it took
I did manage to reach him, and what I recall is that I said a few words. I probably said that I was getting divorced, and following that I just absolutely burst into tears, and I wept and wept and wept. I mean, I can’t even tell you. And on the other side of the phone there was absolute silence. Now as terrible as this seems, it was better than him hanging up, because that could have been another reaction.
He’s got this woman — basically his daughter, but still this woman who he doesn’t have a very intimate and close connection with — and she calls him, says a few words, and then bursts into tears over the phone and is just sobbing and weeping. And at that time, after I got off the phone — first of all, one thing that he did was that he said he would send me some money, and he did. That was one of the few times where he actually came through. He said he would send me five hundred dollars, and he absolutely did. I don’t remember how it came, how I got it or whatever, but he sent me five hundred dollars, and I thought that was pretty, pretty good, because he had made many promises before. If you’ve read the book, you know this — made many promises that he had not fulfilled. But he did do that.
But the thing was that he never said anything. He did not hang up the phone. He didn’t say stop crying. He just stayed on the phone for as long as it took. He just listened. He was silent. And eventually, I imagine, I pulled myself together, and that’s when we talked about the money, and eventually the conversation ended.
Now it was a pretty unsatisfying or dissatisfying experience, because I’m maybe, let’s say, 30-something years of age, and there was a part of me that still wanted to hear a dad respond in a way that a daughter that is suffering because of the loss of a relationship — respond and be like, oh, I’m so sorry to hear this, or it’s okay baby, everything’s gonna be okay, or whatever the case might be. Or the way that some dads might respond and say, oh, I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill the guy that hurts my baby, or whatever the case might be, those kinds of things. So it was not very satisfying in terms of whatever illusory response I expected.
So I got off the phone and I was like, well, it is what it is. I did not attack him on the telephone. He was silent, and I didn’t say, but don’t you have anything to say, what are you gonna say, I mean this and that and the other. I didn’t do that, just the same way that he was silent and he didn’t respond. Once I got done crying, I was kind of like, okay, what can I say, he doesn’t have anything to say and I can’t beg him to say anything. And so I accepted that this was the response he had. I didn’t understand it, but I accepted it.
I was expecting my dad to turn into Dr. Phil
And many, many, many years later I came to understand a couple of things, and one of them is — I’ve said it in the book a few times — somebody can’t give you what they don’t have. I was expecting, I guess in a certain way, I was expecting my dad to turn into Dr. Phil, right, and give me advice and console me and any number of things. But eventually I realized this was an unrealistic expectation.
I mean, normal to want it, to desire it, but unrealistic in the context, once you understand. Because my dad, first of all, he probably never had anyone to Dr. Phil him. And for my entire life he had not been present, he had not had any significant conversations with me about life. Even though he did come to my wedding, we didn’t have a conversation before the wedding, we didn’t have a conversation after the wedding. So for me, looking back at it many years later, for me to have expected that, I think was very unrealistic. Nothing wrong with it, but when you look at the scenario, you understand that you’re asking something from someone who, maybe based on personality, based on life experience, and based on a number of other factors, had no capacity to do what you expected them to do.
Now this doesn’t really make them a bad person, because if he didn’t have it, he didn’t have it. If he hadn’t had that life experience, he didn’t have that life experience. If he had never done it, he wouldn’t in that instant be able to say, oh sweetie, honey, this is just not what I wanted for you — all the things that my vocabulary would be capable of saying now. If he didn’t have that life experience, if he didn’t have someone do that with him, if he hadn’t healed himself and healed his life, how was he going to all of a sudden be, oh yes, let me help you and let me console you?
And part of the thing is that — and this is in the book — I realized that, and I hope that the women listening to this understand, that sometimes the men who become absent fathers have suffered great pain and great damage, and they haven’t had anybody to heal them, to help them, to support them. And they simply just continue to exist in the world, and then they have children. And in my case, my dad had me among others. And there’s no way, unless they awaken to a certain level of spirituality, a certain level of existence, there’s no way that they’re going to realize, listen, I have suffered some internal damage and I need to work on myself to restore wholeness, and when I do that, that will allow me to be a more whole human being and allow me to be a better father to my children.
So eventually, as I looked at that story, I sort of felt like, wow, I expected something from him that was very unrealistic. And I had great compassion for how he must have felt on the phone. I mean, nobody wants to hear — I don’t want to hear another human being cry, period, right? Because that tells me this person is suffering, and I don’t want to see other people suffer. For what, far less, if your kid calls you, your daughter calls you, and she’s on the phone and she’s bawling, and you don’t know what to do? That’s a horrible, horrible feeling.
For me, I’m sure there are people in the world that are so cut off from their emotions that maybe it doesn’t have an impact. I’m not saying that that was my dad. My sense of the situation was that he was stunned and paralyzed, because he didn’t know what to do and he didn’t know what to say. And that happens often, because women have a lot of vocabulary and women can talk and express themselves, and sometimes men have no vocabulary to be able to express their feelings — in addition to the fact that they’ve been taught not to express their feelings, because if you cry or whatever, you’re weak, or in the olden days they’d say, oh, you’re like a girl. So if he felt something, how would he express it? What would he say to me at this particular moment? And even if he was in pain hearing his daughter cry, how would he figure out how to express his pain? And I think that the only thing that he could do was be in silence.
The only demonstration that he could make
Now I will say that the fact that he sent the 500 dollars — I had not received a gift, any money, nothing from my dad, just out of the clear blue sky. I can’t remember, I think I got a graduation present when I graduated from law school. I know I got a graduation present when I graduated from law school. But my dad didn’t regularly give me gifts or send me money or anything along those lines. And he did send the 500 dollars.
And I know that the way that men communicate their feelings is usually in a very tangible way. So I now know that when he sent the 500 dollars, that that was an indication of how he felt about it and of his willingness to do something. Maybe he couldn’t say anything, but at least he did something. And for that I eventually became very grateful, because that was the only demonstration that he could make. So I now accept that for what it is.
You lose even when you think you’re winning
And many times when I think about it I say, wow, I feel compassion for him. Because of his circumstances, because of his life, because of the fact that he wasn’t able to grow in certain ways, he missed out on a lot of joy — the joy of having daughters who adore you, or having children, boys or girls, who adore you and who would do anything for you. And that means that you cheated yourself by not doing what was necessary to address your issues and become a better person, become a better father. And as a result of that, you lose even when you think you’re winning. Because you’re having children and you’re away and you’re not having to be held back by the responsibility of being a parent, in the long run you really, really do lose.
And I know Father’s Day is around the corner, and there’s a story in the book at the end about my last interaction with my dad. And I say it often, you probably heard me say it in these videos: I adored my dad, and I still love him. Despite all the things that happened, I absolutely love him. And there’s a story of our last interaction, and also the story of the dream that I had after he passed away.
And I know Father’s Day is right around the corner. This is very difficult if you’ve had an absent father, if you suffered as a result of it. But the bottom line is that you’ve got to understand where he is coming from. In my case, forgiving him was super, super important, and that is one of the things that helped me change my life forever.
I’ve done another interview with Dr. Herbert Harris dealing with him being an African American male and that experience of being a dad, and we know that Father’s Day is around the corner and we wanted to address some issues. I hope that this video is helpful to you, to consider granting some compassion to your dad and his circumstances, and helping you to figure out how to forgive him for his failures.
I am Olivia S. Benson. My website is OliviaSBenson.com. The book is For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon. I am on Facebook, Author Olivia S. Benson, and Instagram and Twitter, Olivia S. Benson. Make sure you go and listen to the video that I did a few weeks ago with Dr. Herbert Harris, and the interview that we will be posting before Father’s Day, dealing specifically with fathers and daughters, to in some ways try to figure out — if your dad has been absent, or if you are the absent father — what are some of the things that you can do to heal this issue.