My dad grew up answering the door for debt collectors while his mother lay in her bed in the dark suffering from debilitating migraines, his own father off on some harebrained sales scheme. His mom was brilliant and endlessly curious and loved him more than anything, but could only do so much on her own and with her own tricky wiring to contend with. My dad took his braces off himself with pliers because his parents ran out of money. He got a job stocking shelves at a grocery store as soon as they would hire him. His own money, I’m guessing felt like a rope thrown down in a chasm on which he could crawl out of insecurity. The fathering he got, was zany, unpredictable, and full of deception (self deception most of all).
When my brother and I were born, my dad was about 30, and as I understand it, he got into therapy. Fathering us differently than his own dad did was much of the motivation, but the courage was all my mom—a curious, emotionally fierce woman who didn’t grow up in a family where anyone went to therapy (or even talked about its existence), but found it through her own wanderings and wonderings. She’s the kind of woman who was raised by a farm girl who worked out her shit with a nightly Scotch and a whole lot of stiff upper lip, but broke away—found feminism and Jung and yoga before any of that was cool. In any case, she took my dad on her iconoclastic healing journey with her.
He got some of the trauma worked through his system. He learned to see his own story with more distance so that the could acknowledge all that boy had been through without explaining it away. He rejected his paternal tradition of self-deception—broke the curse through emotional bravery. Some of the trauma remained, as it does—my dad still gets migraines, just like his own mom did, though far less of them these days. I could detect his anxiety around Christmas time every year—all these presents…were the debt collectors coming? But mostly what I remember, the downstream effect of the hours spent in that office with a therapist and many, many more talking with my mom about who he had been and who he wanted to be, is a profoundly loving father.
His love is so pure and true for me, like the oldest Sequoia under which I can always find shade, rest my back against the bark, show up just as I am.
I have no doubt it is a huge explanation of why I’ve mostly thrived in my life thus far. All that shade has been just the preparation I needed for the sun—the trying and failing in my writing life, the break-ups and leaps of love, the vulnerability to learn in public. Even as we both age and change, it’s a tree I come back to again and again for rest, and to remember the basic goodness and worth of who I am.
Not many people get a father like that, a tree with that kind of shade. It’s a bit of a miracle—given his own upbringing—that I did. If more fathers went to therapy, or whatever equivalent process helps them heal and see and tend to their own inner life, the world would be a different place. More daughters and sons would have more loving shade. More generational curses would be broken. More men would be more free.
Love you, Papa. Thanks for being brave.
If you’re inclined to donate in honor of your dad this Father’s Day, can I recommend Fathers’ Uplift, the first ever standalone mental health clinic specifically for fathers? My friend Charles Daniels runs it and is a true pioneer in truthtelling and liberating fathers so they can revel in the sacred art of caregiving.
Exquisite. Powerful for its intimacy. Thank you for this. Blessings on your father and mother and your dear family. This column has awakened me to being reflective about this coming Father's Day. There has always been much to be grateful about.
Lovely. I too was lucky enough to have a father who provided healthy shade and worked to break the cycle of inter generational trauma.