On Father’s Day, about 18.2 million children in the U.S. alone will wake up without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home. If you include those of us who are already adults, the number easily doubles. This means that about 15% of the U.S. population may not have anyone to celebrate on Father’s Day.
Fatherlessness is one of many issues we humans face, yet it’s an important one because it is relatively common and has long-term, generational effects on society. If you are one of these people on Father’s Day, clearly you are not alone. If you are fatherless on Father’s Day and trying to figure out what to do, maybe, just maybe, I can help by sharing my experience with my absent father. So please read on.
By the time I was six, my parents had separated. The most searing memories of my childhood are the many times my father promised to come for Christmas dinner but never did. My brother and I would fall asleep on the sofa waiting for his footsteps to come up the stairs of our apartment building. My father always seemed cool and collected. So as a child, it was easy for me to believe him when he promised to come.
After he missed each Christmas dinner, my mother would send me to ask him why. His reply was always that there were twelve days of Christmas and that he would make it before the end. Although he promised to come every year, he never did. Somehow, he was able to ignore my obvious disappointment every year. This went on for many years until we moved away when I was seventeen.
After we moved and I became a young adult, I focused on surviving and improving my life. I had seen him occasionally, but he was not consciously on my mind. After my first marriage ended— ushering in all the sad things that go along with that— I realized there was much to heal. During all the years prior to this, I was pushing through life with all my baggage. I kept doing that until the divorce. It was then that I realized how much trauma I was carrying “below decks.”
Out of the blue, in the middle of the divorce, I decided to call my father. When I reached him, I didn’t say much before I started bawling. Though he didn’t hang up, he remained mostly silent. He literally just listened to me cry. At some point, I must have told him about the divorce. He offered to send me $500 (which he did), but that was it for our father-daughter talk. I’m not sure what I expected, but I later realized my father couldn’t give me what he didn’t have.
Among many things, my father had missed almost every milestone and event in my life. At certain points, he avoided me like the plague. Later, he told me he realized that by running away from my mother, he had also run away from his children.
I had suffered so much growing up, and the divorce just seemed like more of the same kind of suffering. My cup had overflowed with suffering, and I could bear no more. I knew that my choices were either to fix my life or accept that it was not worth living. I came to understand that my relationship—or the lack of one—with my father had created what I called “holes in my soul.”
Although I had answers as to why certain things happened in my life—like coming to understand my parents and why their relationship couldn’t work—those answers alone would not make me whole. I came to acknowledge the anger, resentment, agony, and chaos of my life. I grasped that there was work I had to do to heal, and no one could do it for me. I decided to rebuild my life.
Ultimately, it was forgiveness that changed everything. Once I realized forgiveness was the key to clearing the path for the real me to emerge, I could forgive my father completely. Forgiving him cleared the negative energy that was weighing me down and attracting more turmoil.
I went to therapy, I actively began my spiritual journey, and my heart opened. I learned that having a real understanding of the Divine Creator of the Universe and the spiritual aspect of life changes everything. This awareness helped me see and live life differently. I saw my father in a whole new way. Even though I had adored him from afar, there was always just beneath that some anger and resentment for his absence.
Looking back, there is no question he missed the mark in many ways as a father, but eventually it became clear that it wasn’t personal. It also became clear that there must have been a whole bag of issues in his life that led him to behave the way he did. I’ll never know what those were because he is no longer on this side of life. However, I understand that those issues kept him from wholeness and from having offspring who would have had a stronger foundation in life. Sadly, it also deprived him of a lot of joy.
Eventually, I was able to see my father with compassion. I realized he must have been in a lot of pain to do the things he did. His own pain generated more in his children, and then he would have to watch them suffer too. It is bad enough when we suffer, but it is next level to watch your children suffer because of something you did or didn’t do.
The things I see most clearly now on Father’s Day aren’t my losses, but my father’s. Some fathers (or mothers) may feel they are getting away with something when they abandon their children, but they actually lose a lot. My father never had the opportunity to get to know me as a woman, a professional, or a mother. He never had a real conversation with me to understand and enjoy my sense of humor, or even to come to know something as simple as my laugh. He never had the opportunity to see some of himself in me.
These are relatively small things, but there were bigger ones. As always, it’s the little things in life that often matter most. So, after a long journey, I developed the ability to give myself compassion and to do the same for my father. I grew to empathize with his circumstances and his lack of understanding of life.
I speak to women because I have the experience of being a girl who grew up without a father. But, obviously, all of this applies to boys who grew up without fathers as well. I speak to all the inner children damaged by their father’s absence and the consequences.
I share with them that despite all they endured, they still carry the potential to light up the world. I share that they can heal and fill those “holes in their souls” with the nourishing energy that comes from forgiving. Father’s Day is an opportunity for us to celebrate ourselves, bumps, bruises, scrapes, and all. A day to behold the miraculousness of the compassionate being who emerged from adversity. On this day, we give ourselves the gift of forgiving our fathers so we can be set free.
Olivia
For more on my journey to healing from my absent father, check out my book “For the Love of my Father: A Spiritual Guide for Women Healing From the Absence of a Father in the Age of Spiritual Evolution” here: https://www.oliviasbenson.com/for-the-love-of-my-father/
For more information on my journey to finding solutions to my work-life issues, please check out my book titled “Answers From Within: A Spiritual Guide for Finding Answers to Work-Life Issues.” You can access it by clicking here: https://www.oliviasbenson.com/answersfromwithin/