Modern Goddess Magazine

Today I am tired. Today I am filled with grief and loss, longing and earnestness. My father does not like my daughter, he does not like me… he talks about it to others and it hurts me so deeply. I know that it is not personal, that in reality he just does not like himself, but today it feels so bad.

Today I am swirling in the memories of past abuses, past neglect, past pain. I am learning to be in my body and so it is, I believe, part of the process of healing that I have these new experiences placed before me so I can have a human reaction. I am learning to be beautifully humane to myself. To allow each moment, each experience to wash over me… permeate my body and soul, pierce my heart so I can look closely and heal from the deepest inner place.

I am experiencing what it is to forgive in the midst of the mess. I am learning to allow myself to be angry that I will not choose to abandon him for a few minutes to demonstrate my pain, because he is 82 years old and so there is no time to create any of the drama that my ego so sorely craves. I must choose to love him and practice the truth that only love is real because his days are very likely numbered. I am learning to relax into the vibration of forgiveness to myself first and then to my father. But mostly, I am learning to allow. Allow myself to have anger, loss, grief, where before I leaped into forgiveness because it was the “right thing” to do or because I had learned to confuse having a process with “feeling sorry for myself”.

Today I let forgiveness swirl around in the mix of all that is, while I cry, and allow my mind to react and my heart to grieve and in the process I am learning just what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is really just love showing itself in a form we can use as a tool. As I allow for my authentic experience in the moment, forgiveness becomes the Alchemist necessary for my transcendence. Forgiveness is so patient, she waits with such love right there in the light. “Go ahead.” She says, “Feel it all… with your body, with your mind, with your heart.” “Especially with your heart, for it is into the heart that the ego must fall so you will see your way back home.”

I know that place… home… where my joy is so big I cannot stop vibrating. Where I look at others in any form and see them as myself. Where I look at my father in all his meanness, and can only remember the best of what he has given to me. Where I hold him in such tender love and compassion because I know the suffering he has seen in his 82 years here. Where I am on my knees in gratitude for everything he has done right in his life. I remember his beautiful strong arms as he picked me up laughing with a joy so palpable I knew I must be the most amazing thing, him holding me close to his warm, brown skin that smelled of safety. I feel so thankful that today I was so tired that there was space for a surrender… to myself… the gift is almost more than I can bear.