I don’t believe that people can change. A sapling doesn’t change into a tree; it grows into a tree if cared for properly. If not, its growth is stunted. Rather than changing, I believe we grow into ourselves; like a sapling into a strong tree, becoming more what we were born to be, as we care for ourselves and reach our true potential.
I am growing. I feel it in my limbs. There are all these little amazing things, so small no one else would notice, that I am feeling, observing, and that are happening. Like a tree at the very beginning of spring, tiny specks of growth are budding everywhere.
Although people can’t change, they have the power to change their stories. Heatherash Amara writes in Warrior Goddess Training that transformation starts with how we use our words – how we speak our story to ourselves and others.
“Each word we choose can hold the vibration of healing, peace, and love, or be brimming with fear, victimization, and judgment.”
I am going to tell you a very personal story that I have been telling myself for a very long time:
Your dad doesn’t love you. He is ashamed of you, even though he knows hardly anything about you, and he doesn’t care to get to know you. He doesn’t talk about you and he rarely thinks about you. Seeing him brings nothing to your life but a week of heartache and tears. There are two people in the world who are more or less obligated to love you, and there must be something wrong with you if your father doesn’t.
It’s a sad story. It’s made me cry hundreds of times, and has made me feel great sorrow for the little girl in the story who grew up without a father’s love never feeling like a princess and that she was the most important little girl in the whole world; without that one man who would do absolutely anything for her that she could always count on.
A little over three years ago I decided not to speak to my dad anymore. I did it for me, to spare me from additional hurt and disappointment. It was a good choice at the time. I didn’t have any other tools at my disposal.
But now I do.
I saw my dad for the second time in three years last week. I knew in advance that I might see him. The second the thought occurred to me, it was gone. No trepidation, no anxiety, nothing at all. It wasn’t until I saw the back of his head that I remembered I might see him. Oh, there he is, I thought.
Once we met up, I observed and interacted with him, calm and composed. Nothing he said upset me, except his own self-deprecating humor – it was sad. I gave him a hug goodbye, and went on my way. Be it maturity, new tools, compassion or something else… it was that afternoon that my story began to re-write itself. I realized that he couldn’t hurt me anymore. It was my own attachments to my own idea of what a father/daughter relationship should be that had been hurting me for nearly 30 years. I thought that by not having his doting love, there was a part of me that didn’t grow right, that I would forever be a member of the Daddy Issues club, that I was left with a twisted, rotted limb that dangled dangerously in the wind and I’d never be whole or beautiful.
Later that night, I received a text message from my dad about a surfing movie he had watched and thought I would enjoy. One thing my dad does know about me is my passion for surfing and love of the ocean. He did think of me…
Since seeing my dad, new growth has formed and new words have graced the pages of the previous story. I have decided to let go of my expectations once again and work on accepting my dad for who he is and our relationship for what it is, not what I wished it would be, even if it means talking once a year instead of not at all.
I am going to rewrite the story. The next chapter will begin with a phone call to my dad, inviting him to dinner.
Bravo!
beautiful