Because of Dad The past few months have been one of the richest growth spurts of my life. Dad’s stroke allowed me to grow emotionally, spiritually, as an individual, and within my family.
I have realized how much resentment I had been holding in my heart. How everything I felt had a tinge of what I wanted but it had a huge amount of what I didn’t want, it had a huge amount of my buried past, the past that I “forgot”, the one that I shunt.
I love my father so much, he is one of the people in this world that I love the most. Maybe for that same reason my dad is the person I resented most in this world. He taught me how to fight for what I believe, how to be myself in spite of etiquettes or traditions, how to stand against a crowd to defend myself or the people I love. At the same time he showed me what pain looks like. How to not let go of the past, how to not believe in who he was, he taught me all this by example. I could write 100 books of the bravery of my father and 100 others of my disillusion of him.
This last 5 months taught me that I love him above my perceived failures of his, that I respect him and admire him above my created reality of him. Now, all I want is to be able to be close to him.
It has taken me awhile to understand that what I saw as his “failures” was my lack of love for myself and my lack of compassion for his pain. Do not get me wrong he is not perfect and there are behaviors I do not condone, tho, I wouldn’t be right here if it wasn’t for his teachings including the painful ones.
There were three months of frantic time, to do whatever was necessary to give dad the best chance if he survived. That time that I was “removed” from my life, all of it, work, home, spiritual practice, etc I believe opened my eyes to be able to accept, forgive and love unconditionally my dad. This too, gave me a path to accept, forgive and love myself unconditionally.
This journey, this using all my energy to focus on family, love and health finally show me how much I was living in the past, how I had not forgiven myself nor my family.
This awareness allowed me to search for new ways of interacting with myself. Like every time, ask and you shall receive. I found a little book that talks about loving ourselves. It has a very simple premise: every day, all day almost like a mantra repeat “I love myself”, all day, every day “I love myself”. It’s amazing the deep rooted beliefs I found after 3 or 4 days of connecting with that phrase: “I love myself”. With awareness and a big curiosity I tried to catch myself when I “change” my mood. From peaceful to angry, hurt, upset.
It was a great time for that experiment, “Thanksgiving”, family time!! Marck, Marilyn (my mom in law) and myself were getting the house ready for the family dinner. Marck kept complimenting how “awesome” everything his mom made. I was doing things too, why didn’t he say anything about my “awesome” skills??!!! I was getting angry, hurt … and I started repeating … “I love myself, I love myself …” once, twice, 100 times … Initially I thought, you know, Marck is always complimenting me, he is very thoughtful of myself and our relationship, why was I upset?! At that moment I had a great discovery, I am looking for approval!!
I knew I had the habit of been a people pleasing, tho, I didn’t understand how much it actually affected my life, how much it modified my behavior. I am working on recognizing and accepting that I am enough. I am working on loving and accepting myself fully, completely. You see, If I love and I accept myself, I do not need anybody’s approval. As Abraham (Esther Hicks) would say, I stay on my line. That gives me the confidence to weather any circumstance, anybody’s mood. Because I am at PEACE.
Like everything, this is a practice, some days I forget and I see myself coming back to my old habits.
I am in that tug of war, I move forward a little bit and I move backward a little bit. At the end of the day I know I am moving toward my future with lots of tools, it has been an amazing ride!
I believe the answer for all our problems is to love our family, our country, our planet .. tho, the most important love, is the love for ourselves!! Everything becomes wonderful when I know that I am perfect the way I am and that I love and approve of myself.