It’s not just “get over it.” It’s not just “heal.” It is a process.
This month we’re celebrating Women’s History Month, and today particularly is International Women’s Day. And I think it’s a great time for women — even though all women have not gotten to where we need to get to, but it’s a good time because we’re in the process.
And one of the things that I say in my book is that addressing fatherlessness — by the way, the book, as most of you know by now, is For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon. And really it addresses the absence of fathers, particularly in the lives of girls or women. Obviously this is something that happens with boys as well, but I, as a woman, am relating my experiences and sharing my experiences with women, or girls, who are growing up or have grown up without their father.
And I think it’s an important time to address fatherlessness because there are major shifts going on in the world. And in order for women to be ready to take their place in certain places, we have to be willing to heal our issues. And one of them for many women in the world is growing up without a father. And I can say from my experiences that there’s no question that this has a significant impact in the life of any little girl who grows up without that kind of male grounding in her life.
I’ve never said easy
Now, I thought it was important — and the presentation for today is called Why Just Isn’t Just — because you can watch me in these videos, and you can listen to a lot of people speak about a lot of different things, and it’s kind of like, just heal yourself, or just this or just that. And even many, many years ago, there was a slogan and it said, just do it. Well, eventually we understood it wasn’t just. It was just in the sense that it wasn’t that easy. It’s not something that you snap your fingers to.
And I think I’ve said before in many of the discussions that I’ve had, in many of the videos, I’ve said, listen, I’ve never said easy. And just like I’ve never said easy, I’ve never said just anything. So what I wanted you to understand is that you can look at me and you can read my book, but there is more to the story. The fact that I am a whole person as I speak to you today is a result of many years of work and many years of overcoming. And just like you might be at this very moment, suffering through certain experiences or really not understanding what is happening to you — I have been there.
I found a letter that I wrote to my uncle
And as I was thinking about what I wanted to share, there were a couple of stories, and I’m going to try to make them shorter. One of them is in the book. One of them is not in the book. A few weeks ago, I was going through some boxes and I found a letter, a letter that I wrote to my uncle, the one that I referred to in the book, if you’ve read the book. And in the letter, I say to my uncle, I called my father just to speak to him. And he immediately referred to the fact that it was my birthday. And then he proceeded to say, I’m going to send you a birthday present.
Now, I was an adult at this time, and I relate in the letter, I say to my father, listen, you don’t have to do this. I had just called him out of the blue. You don’t have to do this. I am not expecting a present. I am really sort of backing him out of this promise because I don’t want to be disappointed. And I go through and I explain to my uncle that he said, no, no, no, I know exactly how it’s going to get to you, and I’m going to do these things to make sure that you get it.
Needless to say, the present never got there. And in the letter — I’m reading this letter 20 years later, meaning now, but 20 years later — I look at the letter and I see in the letter how I say to my uncle, I didn’t ask him to promise me to send me a present. And he promised, and he disappointed me again. And I can see the level of my pain and my frustration at that particular time.
And fortunately, after having gone through all the things that I’ve gone through and done all the healing that I’ve done, I can read that letter now with detachment. But I can see that woman who was thoroughly disappointed and thoroughly frustrated, and most frustrated because I did not ask him to make me a promise. He went out of his way to make the promise, and from my perspective, went out of his way to basically disappoint me.
Those are hard things. So it’s very difficult to say, just get over that. It’s not just get over it. It’s significant, and it takes some work and a lot of doing to get to the point where you understand what that is about and you can come to terms with it — and even have, which I’ve spoken about in a number of other videos, have compassion for the other person.
Because invariably, if you look at that story and you think about it, my dad must’ve felt guilty when I called him. And his immediate response was to say, oh, it’s your birthday, and I’m going to send you a present. Now, I had been away in the United States for many, many years and he had not sent me a present, but for some reason on that day, he felt compelled to do that. And the fact that he did that — now, understanding everything that I understand, I can have compassion for his circumstances.
I was disappointed then. I’m not sure whether I was angry or not, because by a certain point he had done that so many times that it was sort of useless to be angry. It was just what was expected. I just didn’t want him to disappoint me again, sort of reinforce that dagger in the heart at that particular time.
He did not have a single word to say to me
Now, the other story I wanted to share with you — that one is not in the book, but this one is in the book. And this is many years ago. At that time, I was getting divorced, and my dad and I had really never had a conversation about anything related to guys, to relationship, to marriage or anything along those lines. Really no significant conversation. But for some reason, when I decided that I was getting divorced, I decided like, I just wanted to call my dad and talk to him.
And somehow I managed to reach him wherever he was, whoever gave me a number — because I really never knew exactly where he was, but I got a number — and I called him and I got on the phone and I just started weeping. I mean, I wept and wept and wept, and that poor man on the other side of the phone did not know what to say or what to do. Now, I don’t remember at what point, but I’m sure there was a point at which I must have said, well, I’m getting divorced, and I don’t know what I could have asked him.
And I can tell you one thing: he did not have a single word to say to me. He obviously at some point realized that I — or I communicated at some point that I was getting divorced. And other than that, all he could hear on the phone was that I was weeping and bawling. I don’t know if I was screaming, I could have screamed, but I was certainly weeping and crying and bawling about whatever. And very few words came out of my mouth, and no words came out of his mouth.
Now, at that particular time, I couldn’t put two and two together to see what that was. But many years later, I can look at that and I have more compassion for him than anything else, because what would I have expected him to say? This is probably a man who has never had a conversation about how he felt or what hurt him, or his life issues. And so to some extent, it’s kind of unreasonable for me to call him and start weeping on the phone and expect him to be able to be a guide, or expect him to console me in any way. I don’t think that he ever shared his issues or his dramas really with anyone. And I don’t think that anyone ever consoled him or taught him how to console, to such an extent that he did not have anything, literally anything, to say.
Now, I will give him some credit, because I’m not saying that he was intentionally unkind or mean or anything along those lines — quite to the contrary. He was sort of helpless, found helpless in a particular moment. And for that, I had great compassion. Now, what I give him credit for was that at the end of the weeping and the bawling and the crying and everything else that went on, you know, the snot-nose crying, he said, I’m going to send you some money. And I kind of eventually understood that that was all that he had to offer.
And he did send me some money. It wasn’t a lot of money, but really, given his past history and the fact that many times he had disappointed me and things hadn’t worked out the way that I expected, it was kind of touch and go. But he did offer, and in that particular case, he did come through. He did send me a few dollars, whatever it was, it was significant to him. And it was enough for me to at least feel like he had offered something in this particular situation. He had no words, he had no consolation, he had no advice, but he sent me what he could, the money that he could send me.
This stuff is not pretty
So I don’t want — when you read this book, and it’s the stories and it’s well put together and I’m having these conversations — this stuff is not pretty. It’s ugly and it’s painful. And when you’re a little girl and you are out there in the world by yourself, you don’t have a father to protect you or someone to stand up for you or what have you, it’s not easy. And there’s so many things that can go wrong. How many little girls that grow up without their father end up getting involved in relationships that are not good relationships, or having sex too early, or becoming pregnant too early. These are hard things. These are not easy.
It’s not just get over it. It’s not just heal. It is a process, and it’s a very challenging process to really understand what has happened and then to be able to say, I’m going to do the work. Because just like I said in one of the prior videos, why this happened to you doesn’t matter. It happened, and it requires you to do the work to heal. We’re never saying that it’s easy. There’s no way that anyone, any spiritual teacher or anybody else, would ever say to you that it’s easy.
It’s not just in terms of justice
And that’s why just isn’t just — in addition to which, just, what is just, as in justice. There’s no such thing. We don’t know why you ended up in this situation. Is it fair? Nobody cares whether it’s fair or not. There’s no such thing. It’s not fair. It’s not easy. And it’s not just in terms of justice. So you have to understand that.
And especially if you are a guy — for example, if you’re a guy watching this video and you have a woman in your life who’s grown up without her father — this is someone who has suffered. There’s just no way that you can walk through this experience kind of unscathed, unharmed. When you grow up without a father present in your home, it makes you develop in a particular way. And it makes you someone who realizes that you have the responsibility for your own survival. You might have a mother, you might have another relative, or maybe even other women around you in your life. Maybe no other men, maybe some.
We want what we don’t have
And I know a few months ago, somebody wrote me and she said that her father had died. So in other words, she was not abandoned by her father, but her father had died. Now, this situation also requires — it depends. Did you have a good stepdad? Was he present? Or whatever the story might be, you might’ve had another male presence. But if you grow up and you do not have a male presence to love you, to fill in and to do the things that help a young woman or a girl feel whole, in balance between a mother and a father — in other words, with the presence of the feminine energy and the presence of a male energy — there’s going to be some work to be done.
And sometimes you have circumstances in which you have a stepfather, because I have friends where a mother has remarried and there is a father, a father figure. And there are still some young women, some girls, who basically resent the stepfather. And really they are seeking still the presence of their biological father. Now, it’s hard to judge, because sometimes it depends on personalities. It depends on a number of different things. But one of the things that we as humans tend to do is that we want what we don’t have. And one of my friends, based on her circumstances, what I said to her is, you had a good stepdad. He was present. How about liking what you have as opposed to yearning for your father who was absent in your life?
We are required to do the work
So the essence of today’s video is that it’s not easy. It’s not pretty — the suffering and the pain and the stories. I’ve only given you two very basic stories about my dad’s disappointment, how he went out of his way, in my view, and at that particular time went out of his way, to really disappoint me. He didn’t call me, I called him — by making a promise that I had not solicited, that I didn’t ask for, and just bluntly disappointed me and sort of left me hanging at a time where I wasn’t ready to handle that.
I mean, today is much different, how I feel, how I would process it. But at that time, based on the letter that I saw that I wrote to my uncle, I was clearly disappointed that he had done this to me again. And then the story of me calling and weeping and bawling about my impending divorce at that time, and him not having anything to say. Those are very, very difficult things. And believe me, there are more stories that I could share. There are more stories in the book. And I’m sure for every person that’s out there that has an absent father, there are many others. There’s more suffering. There’s more pain underneath.
So it’s not an easy thing. And it’s not just a matter of getting over it. It’s a matter of going through all the processes so that you no longer have the emotional charge associated with those experiences, so that you can look at it and have compassion. As I said, I have great compassion for my dad. I’m like, oh my God, what would I do if I had no words to respond to somebody who’s crying and bawling on the phone? He didn’t have it. And I was requesting from him something he could not give me.
So just isn’t just. “Why” doesn’t heal anything. We are required to do the work. We are required to seek our spiritual healing or spiritual understanding and our spiritual growth. You guys know the book is For the Love of My Father, basically a spiritual guide for healing from the absence of a father in this age of spiritual evolution. My website is OliviaSBenson.com. You can order the book there or on Amazon. And also I have products available on the website. Happy International Women’s Day.