If daddy didn’t tell you that you were the most beautiful girl in the world to him, you can be the most beautiful girl in the world to yourself.
It’s me, Olivia S. Benson. You know why you need the S if you’ve been here before. I’m the author of a couple of books. One is Answers from Within, which is this book, Answers from Within. And also the author of the book we’re going to be discussing today, which is For the Love of My Father, A Spiritual Guide for Healing from the Absence of a Father in the Age of Spiritual Evolution. By the way, both of the books are available on Amazon. And For the Love of My Father will soon be available on audiobook.
If you’re watching this video, it’s likely because you’re someone who has or had issues with your father, or you are a father that unfortunately created some issues in your daughters. All good. Either way, my mission, the reason that I do this, the reason that I really take the time to do this, is to help women heal from these issues by sharing my experiences. Because I believe that it’s so important for women to heal certain issues so that they can move forward in the world.
And I think what’s different about what I’m sharing, as opposed to, let’s say, a book that’s written by a psychologist or someone along those lines, is that I’m telling you what happened to me, the traumas, and the healing and the solutions. And I call it an In My Bones Experience.
As to dads, I believe that what I’m doing can help, because it will help you if you’re a father and you know that you were one of those absent dads. It will help you to see from the other side what your daughter might have experienced. And it has a lot of insight — I’m talking about the book, by the way — and the things that I talk about will give you insight as to how you can possibly make it better, at least try to make it better, with your daughter.
Of course, right now, even though I talk about having two books, in the last videos that I’ve been doing, we’ve been talking about For the Love of My Father. And essentially, the book and the continuing topic is about healing daddy issues created by the absence of a father, or by having a bad relationship or a difficult relationship with your father. Based on my life experiences, I eventually came to understand that the only way I was going to be able to heal this huge issue in my life was to come into a greater spiritual understanding of life on the planet. Meaning, in essence, that I had to get to know God. And there should be a big boom when I say that, but that’s exactly what I needed to do.
But Then You Read
So, if you follow me on Facebook, Author Olivia S. Benson, or on Instagram, Olivia S. Benson, you’ll see that this week I made a post, which I saw on somebody else’s Facebook, of course, and it’s a post of a quote from James Baldwin. And it said, you think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
And I just found the sentiment from James Baldwin to be so deep and so amazing. And one of the things that it led me to think about was my voice, or the absence of a voice when I was growing up as a child, sort of in the middle of what I call my parents’ war, how helpless I was. And also the fact that I thought that my experience — and that was just thinking this, wasn’t just as a child, but from childhood to adulthood — sort of feeling like, this is the only, I’m the only person that is suffering through this experience. And that’s what James Baldwin speaks about.
I Felt Very Much Alone
I felt very much alone, and as though I was the only person in the world that was having this experience. And there’s one story that I share in the book, I’ll try to do it here briefly.
But basically, my parents were having an argument outside in public on a corner. And I was there, probably maybe 10, maybe less. And I stood there sort of helpless watching them arguing — you know how kids look up at their parents — and I watched them argue, and felt myself so helpless in the midst of this, and couldn’t say anything and couldn’t do anything.
And then eventually, I burst out in tears. I mean, bawling and screaming, and of course, to the embarrassment of both of them, but sort of coming from that sense of helplessness, because there’s nothing that I could do watching these two adults who are supposed to be the ones that are caring for me. And this is sort of what they did, without any concern about me standing there. And that gave me, aside from the sadness and the anxiety and everything else that went with that, a kind of a sense of helplessness about things that were going on in my life.
Ask for What You Want
There was also a time in my life where I remember there’s one guy when I was growing up, one man when I was growing up, who I knew absolutely adored me. We called him Uncle Harold. He wasn’t my actual uncle, but we called him Uncle Harold.
And Uncle Harold would take my brother and I to certain places, and he would say, what do you want? And I would hesitate, I wouldn’t say what I wanted. I mean, we’re talking many years ago, but he would take us, let’s say, to Burger King. And I couldn’t say, I want a hamburger, and I want french fries. I would be so hesitant to ask for what I wanted.
And I remember very specifically Uncle Harold saying to me, ask for what you want. And that’s something that Uncle Harold said to me, but my father never said to me — but of course, we didn’t have that kind of day-to-day interaction.
So the experiences that we have can sometimes damage your abilities to speak. They damage your voice. And when I say voice, I’m not talking about your physical voice, I’m talking about how you come out into the world. Not your physical voice, but the way you speak, and things along those lines. So a lot of the anxiety, a lot of the fears, a lot of the helplessness, they had an impact on me. And eventually, what I was fortunate enough to know is that when you embark on this spiritual journey of healing, then you can develop a proper voice.
You Can Fluctuate Between Extremes
And let me explain. Sometimes our circumstances in life are such that they’re so hard that, as children, we feel we have no options. There’s nothing you can see, say, or do, because these two people are fighting on the corner — not physically fighting, but arguing — and just nothing you can do. So you feel helpless. And also, needless to say, that even if I said something, it probably wouldn’t have any impact. So no voice.
And then you grow up, and you can fluctuate between extremes. So one extreme is you feel so helpless, and so abused, that you can’t speak up, you can’t say things, you can’t speak up for yourself, and you can’t stand up for yourself. The other extreme, which happens a lot, is that we just speak up too much, or we’re too loud, or we’re too harsh, because we have to compensate. And that’s easy to understand.
You feel like you have to be big, and bold, and brash, to make sense of — not to make sense of yourself, but to compensate for that void that you had. You weren’t able to speak before, but you are able to speak now. And also, you have to develop what I consider to be a certain chutzpah, a certain amount of guts, because — and that’s who I’m talking to, people who’ve grown up, women who’ve grown up without their fathers — you know that your father’s not going to be there to protect you. Your father’s not going to be there to speak for you. Your father’s not going to be there to defend you. And you know you have to do it for yourself. So we tend to go to the extreme with our voices.
The Power Is in the Present Moment
But then what? Okay, so daddy wasn’t there, but everything he did is in the past. It’s already happened. And if he didn’t do it, that’s in the past. Right? And so there’s no going back. Let’s just say that there’s no going back. And if he is alive and willing, and even if he was able to attempt to make it up to you, it’s not going to change what happened already.
And then on top of that, what if, let’s say, he’s not alive, number one. And number two, what if he just doesn’t want to do it, or he can’t do it, or whatever? What if it just can’t happen, that he’s going to come back and make it up to you? How are you going to balance your voice, balance your life, balance yourself?
Well, in my case, what I realized was that — and I’m hoping that this is where you are — I had to do the work to heal myself. And in the book, of course, For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon, I shared the tools that I used to help me heal myself using spiritual principles and spiritual law. And once I was able to do that work and wake up to really realize what this life experience is all about, despite whatever my dad did or didn’t do, I came to realize that the power is in my hands and the power is in the present moment. And that is absolutely positively the same for you. The power’s in your hand, and the power to change is in the now.
Once we forgive daddy for his absence and release the emotions — all the emotions that are currently still alive in you at this moment associated with the trauma — because absent daddy is not just, he wasn’t there. There’s a lot. And I call the whole ball, we’ll call it trauma, because there’s a lot in there.
And for example, I thought to myself, what if you have an absent daddy? This is something that I thought about recently. What if you have an absent daddy, and your daddy therefore never said to you, you’re a woman, and your daddy never said to you, you’re beautiful, or complimented you in any way? Well, the next step is you forgive him, right? For whatever his inability to be there, do that, or anything else. And then you find your true voice, a centered voice — not brash because of past hurts, not angry because it’s the only way you know to overcompensate, but a voice that’s centered and balanced in who you really, really are.
You Reparent Yourself
And guess what? If daddy didn’t do certain things, now you are in a position where you can do it for yourself. You can’t go back and drag him. If he’s dead, he’s gone on. And if he’s not able to, for whatever reason, you can’t wait for that. But you can be your new best friend. You reparent yourself. You’re going to reparent yourself.
And guess what? If he didn’t say, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world to me, guess who is supposed to say that? You are the most beautiful girl in the world to you. Now let’s be careful, because we never want to go into comparisons. This is where the rub is. You’re not more beautiful than the next girl. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world to you. All kinds of wars explode between humans because we tend to want to do the better than. And that is problematic.
You forgive daddy for his absence and everything that happened as a result of his absence. You find your true voice with balance. You get to know who you really are at a spiritual level. And then you realize that in whatever ways he failed you, you now have the ability to reparent yourself. And one of those ways you reparent yourself is something as simple as: if daddy never told you that you were the most beautiful girl in the world to him, you now have the ability to say that to yourself. Not better than any other girl, just the most beautiful girl in the world to you.
The book is For the Love of My Father. It’s available on Amazon. I’m Olivia S. Benson. Please consider checking out my website, OliviaSBenson.com. My Facebook page is Author Olivia S. Benson, and my Instagram and Twitter pages are Olivia S. Benson. There you’ll find my posts and other things that I’ve written.
And remember, if daddy didn’t tell you that you were the most beautiful girl in the world to him, you can be the most beautiful girl in the world to yourself.