I remember lying in bed and being afraid. I wasn’t certain what the next day would bring. My brain spun in circles and recycled thoughts of worry, concern, and things that I just could not know.
I’ve had to face fear in my life, but I think one of the most complicated moments of fear I face when meeting up with my father at my counselor’s office.
After my father left my mom, brother, and me, I grew to hate my father. After about a year of so, he stopped coming to see me. I had this horrible feeling that he had written my brother and me off. He didn’t care up to us and that he had moved on, having tossed us aside.
Over time my anger and hatred grew. The physical reminders of my father no longer existed in my world. Old photos had been blacked out. I had no physical reminder of my father.
But one Christmas, my family and I gathered around the projector and played our family movies from the super 8. We projected the films onto a wall in my grandparents’ house and watched the silent films from years before.
During one film, I saw my mom running into the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of lit-up Christmas decorations, my grandmother standing over the stove cooking, and then a man sitting at a table. Young with a big smile, he turned toward the camera and waved. It was my father.
My Uncle, grandparents, and mom suddenly quieted from their usual comment. The clicking sound of the film running through the projector filled the silence, and a few seconds later the scene shifted, and I sensed everyone breathing again.
That’s how I grew up with the memory of my father.
As though he had the power to break through the screen and come out like a modern-day horror to ruin all of our lives.
Fifteen years later, when I ran into his third wife by accident, my world had changed. I worked at a local department store, and when a woman that I waited on gave me her credit card to purchase the Christmas gifts that she wanted to buy, I paused. She had the same last name as me.
I chanced to ask her about it, and that’s how I found out that she lived with my father no more than a mile from where we stood.
We met up for dinner a few weeks later, but the fear that I needed to overcome was so much bigger than a simple social gathering.
I asked my father if he would come to a counseling session with me. I didn’t think he would, but he agreed.
So on the way to my counselor, I had sweaty palms and had no idea how things would go.
I could have easily walked away and not faced my fear, but I had important questions that I need to ask. The most important of them:
Why?
That one word had more than 100 questions attached to it. But I would take as many of the “why” questions that I could ask in 50 minutes.
I don’t remember what we said to each other when he arrived, but we walked in together, and my counselor did an amazing job in facilitating our conversation.
I learned an important lesson that day.
My father wasn’t the demon I had made him out to be. He had done horrible things and had made bad decisions, but was still human.
Now I had decisions of my own to make.
How would I choose to live my life? How would I overcome what I had been through? And most importantly, could I ever let go of my hate, anger, and fear?
That’s a tall order.
A college professor once told me she had wished she had the opportunity to talk with her about some of the bad things that happened in their family before he died. I took the chance to talk with my father and realized that the fear, anger, and hatred that had been cast over my life had crippled me.
To grow, I need to let it go. I needed to find a way to deal with those emotions healthily.
I recently picked up Gay Hendricks’ Learning to Love Yourself, and he shares a revolutionary idea.
When you are afraid, love that part of yourself.
If you’re angry, think about why you’re feeling angry and love yourself.
When hate is consuming you, reach inward and love that part of your inner self.
For so long, I tried to cut those pieces out of me. And failed.
I tried to rise above them and be better than them but failed.
Now that I am older and have more experience, I am learning to love those parts of myself.
It sounds so simple, but it can be hard.
Overcoming fear isn’t about just facing your fear, but it’s about loving the part of you that is afraid.
I wanted to write this today to remind myself of this important lesson as I need it today.
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