A couple of posts on different threads recently have brought up for me the thought that fatherhood is a not so often explored pathway here on the forum and so I thought I'd open a thread specifically about and for dads (but no this is not meant as a boy’s only show, nor to exclude anyone who isn’t in that role for whatever reason!)
What it means to us to be one, what we struggle with, what we fear, what we need to learn, what we actually have to offer and what we can share with each other to support those who are striving or struggling with being a healthy male parent.
This forum is an incredibly sanctuary where real sense and being can be owned and shared. But out there – what do we face? A very dark an increasingly destructive decrying of fatherhood, mockery of men in general who take up this role (you’re all useless at it anyway!), with precious few successful role models and even more blame and derision. So it’s not surprising that if one takes this garbage in, it can lead to garbage out. It appears that suicide is the number one killer of men in their 40s-50s. In the prime of life, when they are most needed. This is a horror story!
The strange thing for me is that all my conscious life I too have had a really bad relationship to the idea of ‘Father’.
I suppose it’s due to a bit of Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee programming – my religion and my own male parent combined. I grew up in an intensely catholic household with a very religious mother. Because I gathered that the only suggestion of love came from her, I would do anything to please her – and hence became almost mystically religious myself. Mother Mary holding her dying son; that was my image of true grace. But I was increasingly troubled by that bearded monster in the sky who glowered down from on high and monitored every thought and deed of mine – and told me I was always, always wrong. No matter how much knee bending, prayer ringing, sobbing confession I did, the feeling never went away. This is what Father meant – perpetually angry, unpleasable, judgemental, cruel and implacably indifferent. Thou shalt not…!
In turn, I have to admit, I hated my dad… or at least feared him… but yes at times in my life real, visceral hatred. And I also loved him – or at least wanted so much to love him. Or be loved by him, which was impossible of course. He had no ability, nothing inside to fuel that idea. Long boring story but he delighted in humiliating me, and getting the whole family to join in. I was highly excitable as a kid and this led to endless opportunities for ridicule – ‘wee-gosh’ was the joke cry when I would allow this out and his nickname for me was ‘feebie-do’ (feeble kid) which he gleefully allowed all family members to call me (survival from the pain was everyone’s game). He made me feel utterly worthless, year in year out. Anyway that’s just context.
What all this meant was I grew up into a man who had a hidden loathing for fatherhood – or fathers – or rather a central male, manly, father figure. I became a feminist before the word was fashionable, I happily said I preferred women to men, my closest friends were female, I secretly revered the divine female essence, I became a creative arts person whose work was driven by a desire to express the sacredness of the divine female creative force of light and love… and at all times I did not want anything to do with father!
But then there was always King Arthur. And my first hero, Hector… and eventually, over the long years, they called me home.
It’s funny but only now in my 50's am I slowly, slowly waking back up to the Father. Of course having been one for nearly 18 years has done something to me. But not until now have I begun to allow back in the idea that a true Father is something great in itself not just the son of his mother. Something that stands on its own terms not in relation to the matriarch. Something equally as important, equally as powerful, equally key in shaping a holy world.
I have to thank the last 10 years and the mounting lunacy of fourth wave feminism, social justice BS and the filth that is our media. It’s made me really pissed! I know what I have done as a father, I know what I give – or try to give – every day. I know that what I do matters to my two wonderful kids and how they relate to me as dad – as something different from mum - something they need just as much and need to keep close. Its been - and will no doubt remain – an unbelievably tough job, that has brought me to my knees at times, has seen the worst of me as well as the best, that has brought me more pain than I could ever have imagined but equally more joy (mostly from giving joy), and that in truth I have too often at times have resisted, pretending I am only playing at it, so as not to have to fully own the implications.
But now, I realise how I love being a dad. I relish the idea of father. I embrace it. I want to take back that idea and make it my own again. I want to allow the emerging balance of equal and opposite to find permanent shape again in my consciousness.
Most mornings when my precious teenage daughter and I greet she jokingly says in a pho-haughty voice, ‘Hello Father!’ to which I reply with equal pho-majesty, ‘Hello Daughter!’ We always laugh. Then hug. We both know that we love these roles.
I want to say, proudly, I am Father.
Anyone else?
What it means to us to be one, what we struggle with, what we fear, what we need to learn, what we actually have to offer and what we can share with each other to support those who are striving or struggling with being a healthy male parent.
This forum is an incredibly sanctuary where real sense and being can be owned and shared. But out there – what do we face? A very dark an increasingly destructive decrying of fatherhood, mockery of men in general who take up this role (you’re all useless at it anyway!), with precious few successful role models and even more blame and derision. So it’s not surprising that if one takes this garbage in, it can lead to garbage out. It appears that suicide is the number one killer of men in their 40s-50s. In the prime of life, when they are most needed. This is a horror story!
The strange thing for me is that all my conscious life I too have had a really bad relationship to the idea of ‘Father’.
I suppose it’s due to a bit of Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee programming – my religion and my own male parent combined. I grew up in an intensely catholic household with a very religious mother. Because I gathered that the only suggestion of love came from her, I would do anything to please her – and hence became almost mystically religious myself. Mother Mary holding her dying son; that was my image of true grace. But I was increasingly troubled by that bearded monster in the sky who glowered down from on high and monitored every thought and deed of mine – and told me I was always, always wrong. No matter how much knee bending, prayer ringing, sobbing confession I did, the feeling never went away. This is what Father meant – perpetually angry, unpleasable, judgemental, cruel and implacably indifferent. Thou shalt not…!
In turn, I have to admit, I hated my dad… or at least feared him… but yes at times in my life real, visceral hatred. And I also loved him – or at least wanted so much to love him. Or be loved by him, which was impossible of course. He had no ability, nothing inside to fuel that idea. Long boring story but he delighted in humiliating me, and getting the whole family to join in. I was highly excitable as a kid and this led to endless opportunities for ridicule – ‘wee-gosh’ was the joke cry when I would allow this out and his nickname for me was ‘feebie-do’ (feeble kid) which he gleefully allowed all family members to call me (survival from the pain was everyone’s game). He made me feel utterly worthless, year in year out. Anyway that’s just context.
What all this meant was I grew up into a man who had a hidden loathing for fatherhood – or fathers – or rather a central male, manly, father figure. I became a feminist before the word was fashionable, I happily said I preferred women to men, my closest friends were female, I secretly revered the divine female essence, I became a creative arts person whose work was driven by a desire to express the sacredness of the divine female creative force of light and love… and at all times I did not want anything to do with father!
But then there was always King Arthur. And my first hero, Hector… and eventually, over the long years, they called me home.
It’s funny but only now in my 50's am I slowly, slowly waking back up to the Father. Of course having been one for nearly 18 years has done something to me. But not until now have I begun to allow back in the idea that a true Father is something great in itself not just the son of his mother. Something that stands on its own terms not in relation to the matriarch. Something equally as important, equally as powerful, equally key in shaping a holy world.
I have to thank the last 10 years and the mounting lunacy of fourth wave feminism, social justice BS and the filth that is our media. It’s made me really pissed! I know what I have done as a father, I know what I give – or try to give – every day. I know that what I do matters to my two wonderful kids and how they relate to me as dad – as something different from mum - something they need just as much and need to keep close. Its been - and will no doubt remain – an unbelievably tough job, that has brought me to my knees at times, has seen the worst of me as well as the best, that has brought me more pain than I could ever have imagined but equally more joy (mostly from giving joy), and that in truth I have too often at times have resisted, pretending I am only playing at it, so as not to have to fully own the implications.
But now, I realise how I love being a dad. I relish the idea of father. I embrace it. I want to take back that idea and make it my own again. I want to allow the emerging balance of equal and opposite to find permanent shape again in my consciousness.
Most mornings when my precious teenage daughter and I greet she jokingly says in a pho-haughty voice, ‘Hello Father!’ to which I reply with equal pho-majesty, ‘Hello Daughter!’ We always laugh. Then hug. We both know that we love these roles.
I want to say, proudly, I am Father.
Anyone else?
