On the other side of your pain is a success.
In case you’re new, I’m Olivia S. Benson, author of a couple of books. One is called Answers from Within: Answers to Work-Life Issues in the Age of Spiritual Evolution, and the other is my new 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.
Both books are available on Amazon. Right now, we’re discussing For the Love of My Father, which is essentially about healing daddy issues created by the absence of a father or by having a difficult relationship with our fathers. Based on my life experiences, I can tell you that I eventually understood that for me, the only way to heal this issue in my life was to come into a greater spiritual understanding of life on the planet — meaning I had to get to know God.
There are a lot of us that have these issues, and it’s not only applicable to women. It’s for men, the men that deal with women who have these issues, as well as a dad who might have been that absent father, and it’s very insightful from both sides of the table.
Also, please check out my website, OliviaSBenson.com, my Facebook page, which is Author Olivia S. Benson, and my Twitter and Instagram, which are both Olivia S. Benson. You have to put the S, because otherwise it would be Mariska Hargitay from Law & Order, so make sure you put the S when you’re looking for me.
It Took Just About All of My Life to Figure Out What Happened
Obviously, if you’re here, you probably have or have had daddy issues in your life and are probably looking for answers. I was in that place for the majority of my life. It took just about all of my life for me to figure out what happened and make sense of what happened in my childhood, and to really make sense of my life in the face of so many, so many difficult, challenging experiences and so much pain and suffering. Without a doubt, pain and suffering.
Let me pause here for a second and focus on two words: pain and suffering. When you read the book, if you haven’t already, you’ll see that I talk about pain and suffering a lot. This is important because sometimes some of us want to make things seem like they’re not as bad as they are, or just glaze over things because they’re difficult to deal with. But most of us deal with raw pain.
You can’t dress it up. It’s just raw, difficult, gripping pain on a daily basis. Even though we try to hide it, to me, there’s no point. It’s painful. Many of these experiences are painful. If you’ve had an absent dad, you will experience pain as a result of that absence, and I don’t think there’s a need, or in reality a way, to really dress it up or hide it.
Knowing Why by Itself Will Not Heal You
I know this from experience, from my first-hand experience as a kid and particularly as a girl. If your daddy wasn’t there, or you feel rejected, or you felt rejected or hurt, there’s no other way of describing this experience other than pain and suffering. And then once you look at that and you know that’s what’s underneath — most of us, and I can speak for myself, I think for most of my life the big question was why.
But if you’ve been here before, you know that there’s a video that I did probably a few videos back and the title of the video was Why Why Doesn’t Matter. Because even if we had a true answer as to why the things that happened happened, it would not by itself heal you or be the answer to your quest for healing. Knowing why by itself will not heal you.
So if you are in pain and suffering as a result of the difficulty growing up without a father, or having difficulty with that father, I understand from my own life what that feels like. Thank God I’m on the other side of that experience and I’m now able to really speak about it.
Recently I did an interview with Doctor Herbert Harris, which is posted on his YouTube channel. His channel is at Herbert Harris Millionaire Maker on YouTube, and it will be posted here shortly, but please go and check it out. And in that interview, I said if I had not healed this issue in my life, I’m not even sure I would have ever been able to write this book. But if I was able to write it, I would have written it through buckets of tears.
The Pain Was the Price He Paid
In the book, I mention Eckhart Tolle a number of times, because he in his writing and his work talks about pain and suffering as well, and the effects and, in some circumstances, the power of pain and suffering. But recently I saw this clip, and it was an interview by Joe Scarborough, and he interviewed Tyler Perry. By the way, I shared the clip on my Facebook author page, Author Olivia S. Benson. So I shared it over there, because I thought it was very powerful.
And Scarborough is basically asking Tyler Perry, who of course is a major movie mogul — I mean, a gazillionaire and a number of other things — but he asked him about his journey and the difficulties and what he would say to people about that journey. And among the things that he said that I thought would be helpful for us dealing with this issue of healing from daddy issues was how he used his pain. And he said the pain was the price he paid, and that if he went through that pain and didn’t hang in there long enough, he would have missed out on the benefits of having gone through the experience on the other side.
And he says this because he’s explaining to Joe Scarborough that there were times where he literally wanted to die, and he describes an experience in which he sort of asked God to take him because the pain and the suffering were just too much. He had experienced homelessness. He had experienced hunger and just about anything that you can imagine that goes with not having a place to live and not having food to eat. And he just said the pain and suffering were just too much.
Just Take That Step
But he had certain little things that happened in his life that allowed him to just take the next step. And I think that that, for many of us — because you get tired, and it’s exhausting, and the depth of the work that we’re talking about when we’re talking about healing and looking at issues, it just seems like the job is so big, and it also seems like the result is so far away. And so what he says is just take that step. The days that he wanted to give up, something would happen, and then he would be able to get up and do what he needed to do.
And I think this, his story of course is exemplary, because we’re talking about someone who went through challenges that many of us, the average person, has seen. Hunger. Financial difficulties. Not having any money, not having a place to sleep. Many people in the world experience that. And he’s saying, what I needed, what I learned was that — and what I would like to say to people going through their processes is — just take the next step, and also realize that on the other side of your pain is a success. And he says, if I had given up despite the experiences, despite what things look like, if I had given up, I would not have come to the other side where I would have become the person that I am and be able to do the things that I am able to do.
One Step at a Time
And while what he’s speaking about and his example is kind of big in terms of what he became, this is really a principle that applies when you’re looking for healing with anything in your life. And so if you are like me, a woman who is seeking healing from the effects of growing up without a father, or having a bad relationship with your father, and everything that that created — because if you have that experience, and as we’ve been saying in the previous videos and the discussions that we’ve been having, that experience then turns into challenges with relationships and challenges perhaps with your children and a number of different things down the line — but at least if you realize that you can get your arms around this challenge, and you can do it by taking it one step at a time.
If Tyler Perry could come from sleeping in his car, sleeping in the street, not having food to eat, financial difficulties, and just keep stepping through the ugliest times, then we can continue to step through the process of what it’s going to take to heal from not having a dad present in your life and the consequences of that, or having a bad relationship with your dad and the consequences of that, and live to create a life that is whole and that is productive — knowing that the pain that you have experienced is really part of the process that will lead you to the other side.
Keep Stepping
So I hope you go back to the Facebook page — and by the way, again, it’s Author Olivia S. Benson. You can like and follow the page, and of course if you have a comment, please feel free to leave one there as well. And then of course you can look at my website, which is Author Olivia S. Benson, and my Instagram page Olivia S. Benson, and Twitter Olivia S. Benson.
But the essence of the conversation today is that Tyler Perry, who became an amazing media mogul, who is, as I said, a billionaire, has given us in that interview two basic things. Keep stepping, and remember that pain is part of the process to getting to the other side.