Tag Archives: Grief

BELIEFS ABOUT FATHER

Posted on by under Emotional Injury, Fathers, fear, Gender Wounds, God's Love, God's Way of Love, Grief, humility, Parenting

dad

Dennis Arthur Falloon (My Dad/ Big brother)

My father recently passed and even though I know he continues his life, in his spirit body and that he is still the same man, really in the early stages of a life that will continue for a long time, I felt so many emotions because the story of me and my dad is complicated. I have gone from angry, confused, very sad and grieving and full of regret. I am still in the process of unravelling and allowing all this to move through me. It is coming in fits and starts. Not a river, but more like someone turning the tap on and then off again.

The other part of this is that lately God has been showing me in many law of attraction events that working through my block to Him in relation to how I feel about men and myself in relation to men is really vital right now, if I am to progress. The emotions and beliefs I currently hold are blocking me from my true Father. God’s truth is that the person I understand as my father is in fact an older brother, who had the role of caring and teaching me. I can say and understand this intellectually, but I don’t know this in my heart, which means I don’t know this at all. To think God is my father, to read this, to hear this from Jesus (in fact my dad stuff also affects how I feel about Jesus) – and Mary, is one thing, but to know this truth deep in my heart is really knowing it, really feeling it and that is an emotion I don’t have and in fact I am not yet truly convinced emotions will help me. It is in my thoughts a lot and maybe a few times in my life I have opened the door of my heart slightly to feel what this means, but mostly I can’t and I can’t because my experience of “father” has been difficult, confusing, frustrating and mostly painful and I have held on to the emotions, either in denial, resistance and/or fear.

How we feel about father, about men comes through the belief systems of our parents and environment. So how my mother feels about men, how my father feels about himself as well as other prominent people in our younger lives, whether it is grandparents, teachers or others. Some of these beliefs are generational and some from our parents experiences. Then to add to that are our experiences with our fathers and other men around as children, and how that effects future relationships with men. From those causes come the effects of how we relate to male relationships and how we view ourselves in those relationships. The most powerful effects come from us holding onto these emotions, suppressing them as children and then as adults. Sadly, most of us are trained to suppress our emotion, which means most of us are living in the fear and other negative emotions created from our childhood.  Even if you think your childhood was okay, you may only have to examine your current life and your relationships to get an idea if you are carrying mistaken beliefs or error-based emotions in you.

For myself, I have a number of things I am clearly aware of and many others that have yet to come to light for me to fully understand and Jesus teaches that these awareness’s all need to be feelings and not just thoughts for me to really know why I do what I do.

My father was 22 when he married my mother, who was just turning 18 and most of my life I have heard my mother’s version of what happened in that marriage. She claimed my father was distant and violent. She described him pulling her down the stairs by her hair and other such stories all culminating in the day he left, well abandoned us, leaving my mum a single parent with two small children. This was about 8-9 years after they married. After he left at some point, mum and I and my younger brother, Dean moved into a caravan. We had very little money and I can remember mum begging the lady in the shop for some bread to give us some toast. My mum’s family did not help and apparently not my father either. During that period my mum had a male friend visit. He had been one of our neighbours in our previous house and was going through a divorce himself. It wasn’t too long before they decided to get married and within a year or so mum had had my other brother.

Mum was married to him for about 5 years or so and it was not a good time. I don’t remember my father’s violence, but I do remember my step-father’s. I remember my mother’s breakdown and suicide attempts were during this time ( probably what would now be post natal depression on top of the abuse that went on). We were all vigilant when he was there. He ruled the house through fear. At that time I was very grateful that we lived in the countryside and could roam out of the house most of the day. Also, at that time mum was friends with the vicar from our previous home. He was regular visitor and I went on brownie camps with him and others. There was something odd about him and I can remember some uncomfortable feelings around him and even writing this brings up fear in me.

This whole period wasn’t good, and many things happened: some I remember and a lot of it is still blanked out. I started to have regular nightmares, repetitive and frightening and ones that I felt I had to cope with alone. My mum got away from this marriage, when she met someone else and with his help and a couple of friends we were woken one night, put in a car in our night clothes and moved out of our home. We slept in the home of my mother’s new partner, who was to become my second step father and with two new step sisters. Like many in those days, we were not really told anything or asked how we were. We just had to accept the changes.

Out of all of my mother’s relationships this was probably the best. He wasn’t violent, but they were very focused on each other. Life did not settle and my mum still seemed affected, histrionic and unpredictable. I do not need to go into all that happened, but all I knew was I felt very alone, was often and continuing from my younger years, the parent/carer to my mother. I couldn’t wait to leave home.

My step father was very hot and cold and I never knew where I stood with him and there was period where he disappeared, left my mum in a meltdown and me caring for her and my two brothers. He had a strong belief that we all needed to earn our keep and when I was 10, in the first year we knew him I was cooking bar food in the kitchens of a pub we lived in and ran. It felt like we had to earn “love.”

So I could summarise my experiences of fathers as distant, disapproving, untrustworthy, weak, angry, frightening, abandoning, emotionally and physically absent, and never feeling good enough to be loved, love was very conditional on me being “good” in their eyes and earning the right to it. I felt very unseen and unheard and lost. I now realise this is how I feel about God. I have projected all my dad emotions onto Him, feeling his disapproval, distance, anger and feeling totally unloved and unlovable, like I am the only child he will never accept. So I think about wanting to receive God’s love, but with all these negative emotions I am too frightened to open my heart to my version of God.

On top of that I felt and heard all of my mother’s feelings and beliefs about men: they are weak, useless, selfish. A good man would provide for a woman, make her feel safe and secure. Mum was never satisfied with the finances we had. Being married was seen as proof of your “alrightness” as a woman. She indicated that sex was unpleasant and their physical bits ugly. Yet at the same time I had to act like a lady. I was not allowed to pass wind or swear and had to sit nicely, have long hair (that’s what men preferred). Lot’s of messages that I had to perform and present a facade of nice, good. Her ideal man for me would be someone earning a good amount of money and demonstrate his love to me with gifts and holidays etc. That was her dream really, one she never got.

I have told you all this just to give an example of some of the beliefs and emotions that effected me and many of you will relate to too and it was through all these filters, all these beliefs and all the damaging emotions from these experiences that I went out into the world with. I had also gone to an all girls school, had no confidence in myself and so the idea of men and relationship terrified me. I was too terrified to touch myself, let alone let someone do it. Mum had made me feel ashamed and scared of my own body and feelings and other childhood experiences had left me with no real sense of myself or my boundaries and many dark moments happened from that space.

My father had left when I was 4 or 5 and I didn’t hear from him until I had left home, was living in London aged 19. I had a call out of the blue. We met up. I remember two visits and some letters and I can’t remember what happened, but at some point he disappeared from my life again. As the years went by there were two occasions when I turned up at his house out of the blue. One time, when my brother wanted to meet him, and another when my son was about 2 or 3. Each time we would have contact for a while and for one reason or another he seemed to disappear again. So the last time I saw him physically was about 20 years ago. In the last 3 years my brother contacted him and met up with him and he and his family even went to stay with my father for a few days. I wasn’t asked to join them, but I did start an email communication with my father. The last email was last summer when I told him I had had the all clear from cancer, he replied and I replied to him, but then he didn’t reply back. What I didn’t know was that about that time he was being diagnosed with cancer, but one that he never recovered from and so he passed just over two weeks ago.

After my father left us, he did meet someone, remarried and had two more sons. These two sons were the ones who decided we needed to be told our father had passed and they have been truly kind and understanding and invited Dean and I to the funeral last week. It has been a rollercoaster of emotions and also we have discovered lots about our father we didn’t know. He had many friends and family at his funeral and he was described as gentle, loving children and nature. I felt immense grief and still do. I am very sad that we didn’t get to know each other better; I am very sad that many years were wasted because of my fears and hurt, but also because of my father’s hurt too. He would come towards us, but then for whatever reason back away again so that I felt unloved and unaccepted again and again. I also felt that because I look like my mother, he could not see beyond that to ME. He was very traumatised by what happened with my mother and is the reason he said that he could not maintain contact with us – it was like he was afraid of her and her behaviour.

The information we have had about dad certainly changes the story my mother has relayed all these  years and she did not respond well to knowing we wanted to go to his funeral, meaning that my father’s passing has also triggered some dark emotions about my mother and how much she was a block to us getting to know and have some sort of relationship with our father and how she may have manipulated the truth because of her own fears and anger.  I am struggling to put all the pieces together, and can only now continue to let myself fall into the emotions that arise from all this.  I am switching between romanticising my father, to trying to see the truth and to find the balance, as well as not blaming myself for not contacting him, even though I can see I was avoiding another “rejection.” But it has been really good to find out more, to feel things and to want to continue to.

It has made me acutely aware of the filters through which we see and feel things and how as children we absorb emotionally so much, so many beliefs and so many emotions from our parents: all of it obscuring the truth. I want to be able to separate God (as father) from my father as my father (rather than the older brother who was given the opportunity to be my temporary father, guide and teacher). I want to be able to separate my feelings about my earthly father from my heavenly Father, but I can’t right now. It is all overlapping and difficult, but it is just as it is and until I feel more about my father and my relationship with him and my step-fathers it won’t happen.

I am also learning that thinking something really doesn’t work. I am a great thinker, I have spent much of my life in my head, trying to figure things out and getting exhausted in the process so I know it doesn’t work. It may give a temporary fix- up, but it is a plaster over a gaping wound and the only thing that will heal that gaping wound will be to open up that wound and let all the pus (feelings) out so that it is clean and ready to let in truth and heal. I was a nurse and I know how wounds heal; I know we have to clean them to allow the new cells to grow. If we don’t clean out the yucky stuff there is no room for the new. It is the same with the error/emotional damage in us; it is the pus, that once removed allows us to feel the truth of a situation and that is what sets us free.

So through the process of allowing feelings to move through us, however long they may have been in us. If I allow this now about my father, I will find out the truth about him, but also most powerfully, I will understand better who my true Father is and then and only then will I develop trust that he loves me and wants to give me His love and then I will let it in.

It is very easy to look at this spiritual path I have found – The Way of God’s Love, and say yes I want to feel God’s love, but the truth is I don’t right now. Because of the injuries I have around fathers (and subsequently men) I feel too afraid to let God’s love in, or even trust that God loves me and wants to give me His Love.

Today I heard Jesus say that we are often putting all our energy into trying to change ourselves in order to receive God’s love. We have got it all wrong, because it is receiving God’s Love that will change us, transform us. So starting with trying to change ourselves – which is bloody hard work, exhausting and often pointless, because we are often coming from our minds and willpower – we should be looking at what stops us emotionally from letting God’s love in NOW and then working through those beliefs and emotions so that we can then let this Love in and let God transform us.

The penny finally dropped with me today on that! I have been so addicted to trying to improve myself, to be perfect so that my parents might love me and accept me, I have not seen the truth of allowing God’s power to transform me and therefore not seen the true power of humility (having a passionate longing to feel all my beliefs and emotions all of the time, no matter what anyone else thinks or feels).

The other wonderful thing is that God knows which emotions I am able to deal with right now and shows me daily by the law of attraction what ones to focus on, so I don’t even need to mentally work that out! All I need to do is pay attention and be willing to feel what comes up.

So for me this time with my dad and about my dad is an incredible opportunity to experience emotions I have had buried for a long time. I have gained some understanding this week about my father, but I can feel I have much more inside. So I pray to go there, to have the courage to do it and be grateful for all that comes.

So if you are struggling to with how you feel about God – that you doubt He is even there; that if He is he is just to awful or frightening, take time to list all the things you feel about Him and then have the honesty and willingness to see that all the things you feel are how you may feel about your parents or other adults around you (including religious ones) and try to separate God from that as you do. I have longed all my life for a father who loved me totally and unconditionally, who found something special in me, accepted me, and wanted the best for me. Because of my emotional injuries, I have tried to make my father something he wasn’t or even in the times he may have tried to do this not believed he did and I do need to find some peace through this by releasing emotions. However, the crazy thing is my dream father does exist and has done all along: my true Father God and when I get to feel this truly – wow! What a day that will be!

But in the meantime, I continue to search emotionally with and for my earthly father (probably in error and truth in different moments) and I hope through my own mediumship and emotions that I may talk to him again at some point. Or maybe I won’t need to if I feel the emotions, who knows? And I have a process of forgiveness and repentance to go through too. I do wish him well though, and I do hope he seeks his true Father too. I am still dreaming I can feel… that is where I am at…

Dennis Arthur Falloon, may you ask and it will be given to you: seek and you will find: knock and the door will be opened for you. Have courage and walk with the light ones.

For me, softening, desire, honesty and courage are required. I am fortunate enough to even have an awareness of all these different things as taught by Jesus and Mary: they have given detailed instruction on how to clean that wound – it’s all a case of whether I really listen and act accordingly, or even want to. I feel my journey with my father/Father will continue for some time, all dependent on my own will, but in the meantime I hope my own reflections help you with your own.

FATHER

When I was 5 you came to bring us gifts of love

Made with your own two hands.

A garage for my brother and a dolls house for me,

But I had a sinking feeling,

A look on your face, I didn’t want to see.

You knelt and spoke and I felt so sad,

Like my heart would break in two

As you walked back to your car.

My heart cried out, “Do you feel it too?”

 

I lost you that day for a further 15 years,

But I am sure I didn’t even cry or let out tears.

Because life got tough and no one replaced you.

In fact, I spent my time hoping it wasn’t all true.

So after 15 years you called me on the phone,

I was shocked, afraid, but hopeful,

I’d been feeling so alone.

We met, we talked, but it wasn’t simple.

I carried my scars and fears on the way,

You didn’t really understand

And you disappeared again one day.

 

This happened again and again through all my adult years.

I didn’t know how to be myself;

I longed for acceptance from you.

But I constantly felt rejected,

Even if it wasn’t true.

 

I wish you had persevered

And not given up on me.

I wish we could talk right now,

Because I can finally see.

I saw our story through my mother’s eyes

And other hurt that happened,

Didn’t make me wise.

 

You also had your story so you sometimes locked up your heart

And now I struggle to understand

What happened, what wasted times

Were spent apart.

Cause a part of me from long ago

The little me I feel

Turned into woman now, is still not able to heal.

Because I still wish for you and hold you in my heart

Mixed up with bewilderment

Of why we were kept apart.

 

So now you have passed through the mists

To the other side,

I pray to feel the emotions

I have kept locked up inside.

To grieve all the broken dreams of you,

And set myself free,

So that maybe one day

We can talk again and you will sit with me.

That we will find peace with this,

And can let each other go,

And be as God intended

As only He can know.

 

May we know our brother-sisterhood,

Instead of clinging on to pain.

And knowing our true Father

Can love each other freely,

Without self-gain.

 

I’m sorry that it couldn’t be

What it was meant to be,

But I have some faith, that one day I will know

That God loves me truly

As he does you too:

Where-ever we go,

Whatever we do.

We are both his children.

And to feel that deep inside,

Will be the greatest gift of all.

Where true love does reside.

@Maxine Bell 2017

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VULNERABLE WOMEN

Posted on by under Daughters, Emotional Injury, emotions, Expectations and Demands, Facade, Gender Wounds, God's Truth, Mothers, Uncategorized

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I went to beach today as many things have happened in the last few days that have brought up many different types of feelings in me: from anger, to fear, to sadness, to wonder, to joy, to relief. This is a relatively new experience: consciously choosing to connect with  my feelings, even the yucky ones. The sea seems to allow me better access to these feelings as well as some ponderings.

I sat on a large rock and was feeling some sadness about some things that happened to me as a child as a result of my mother’s anger and frustration at life. Thinking about her, myself and most of the women I come into contact with or observe I see how much we are holding on, how much we do not want to be or appear vulnerable in any way. The reasons for this are very old, of course. Thousands of years where we were treated as a second class citizens with no voice and not even the right to our own bodies. The amount of emotional injuries this has created in use through generations of women, what is passed onto us, and what we experience ourselves is massive. Even reading this will trigger many of you. But the truth is we need to feel it. The wounds around gender for men and women are many and deep: there is alot of repentance, anger and fear as well as huge amounts of grief for us to release. In fact, I believe if we could tackle the gender wounds the world would change beyond recognition.

For me, I have felt and continue to feel many things about gender. How I feel about women is affected by my relationship with my mother and how she feels about women and how my father feels about women. How I feel about men is affected by my father,  and how my mother feels about men. As a daughter I have felt my mother’s rage and I can feel how many women, including myself, have had a simmering rage in them about injustice, low self esteem, the way we are treated, not feeling heard or seen, or being treated as a sexual toy.  But the irony is, in our injured state we seemed to have shut down much of feminine nature. I am not talking about the desire to buy hundred of pairs of shoes, or straighten our hair. For me much of this is actually facade and/or avoidance of our true feelings.

So how have we dealt with our anger?

We have pretended we are not that angry. Instead we have learned to manipulate and control, using sex or other means. We “manage” the household so well, giving instructions left, right and center. Somewhere inside we feel if we control everything we will be safe and no one can hurt us. We become addicted to controlling our environment to feel safe and protected. If someone interferes, be it husband, child or another we feel threatened. It is then we may express our anger or just squash it down, bite our teeth and quietly project our anger out to whoever is in the way. We won’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

We fight back, become more like men ( or how we think men are) : tough, unemotional, free with our drinking and sexual behaviour. We convince ourselves we are equal, even when if we look deep inside, the messages from our environment are still permeating our soul: you are not so capable, you are not as strong, you are not as intelligent, your emotions are a weakness, you need to have sex with me to please me, to keep me; it is my right. We are afraid to be vulnerable.

We end up using our body and sex to manipulate and get what we want and then we deny the damage this has done to us. We are afraid to feel how casual sexual encounters or even dealing with sexual projections makes us feel. We don’t want to acknowledge our regrets or the affect on our self worth. We think if we act like men sexually, we are equal. But still for many in this world, we are not. But even men, are damaged by the false beliefs they are taught about sex. So it goes on, we do what we like, we deny how it made us feel, we don’t deal with what we really feel might be true. We are afraid to be vulnerable.

The irony is, in our efforts, to be “equal”, we become just like the injured men we dislike. We lose touch with our true feminine nature and the beauty of its expression. The irony is, the world needs this feminine nature to exist. It exists in God’s creation and it exists in us, and in men. The world needs our softness, our gentleness, our nuturing feelings, our feminine strength. The world and we need to allow all the gifts God gave us. So let’s admit we are afraid: of being hurt, humilated, and oppressed. Afraid that maybe what we have been told about being second class may be true: good for the kitchen, good for the bedroom and maybe not alot else. Of course, this is not true. In God’s eyes we are all her children: all equal, all equally loved and valued. It is our false beliefs, our wounded selves that created the untruths. To heal the wounded self, we need to be truthful about what we really feel, allow ourselves to feel it so that it can leave our soul and if you choose, pray for God’s help and love. ( For me things work quicker when I do that).

I have been the holder- on, the control freak, the silent angry, terrified woman projecting everywhere. I have been sexual injured many times in many ways and certainly not known how to love myself in this space. I walked in shame, blame and blamed. I have been tough, a survivor, a warrior, a fighter. What I haven’t been until now ( and it comes slowly) is myself, a woman loving and celebrating her vulnerability. What I haven’t been is powerfully gentle and soft. What I haven’t been is self- honouring and true to myself, not matter what pressure from outside forces. What I haven’t been is sexually free to say NO. Until now…. and now I am enjoying feeling the shift; I am enjoying finding out the truth of my anger, fear and grief; I am enjoying my recovery and discovery.

Even though this was written for and about women mostly, I know there is a similar journey for men. What a wonderful world it would be if we all did this: allowed ourselves to be vulnerable, to be open, to be truthful and to sit with each other as human beings, as children of God: accepting and accepted, loved and loving.

What a wonderful world it would be…

MOVING OUT, MOVING ON….

Posted on by under Uncategorized

ImageMoving house is always interesting. Moving house on a tiny budget with a minimum income is another experience. We have three more days in our current house, which is being sold by the landlady because she has to financially. It is not a tragedy to leave this house, we were ready to go and the need for her to sell was the gentle kick we needed. This house has served its time, as have many houses for me. Before we even knew each other, Robby and I had both moved many, many times.

Mine started as a child: we moved frequently. I was used to forming friendships and then saying goodbye and never seeing them again. It happened many times. Part of my childhood was spent in an area of the country full of Royal Airforce bases. My class at school was full of kids who had also moved frequently. The difference was I was the only one without a dad who was a pilot or an aircraft engineer. Getting used to it was one thing, liking it another.We didn’t get asked how we felt, we just moved.

This nomadic, unsettled life seemed to infuse my being as I have continued to move around as an adult: restless, seeking, making choices – sometimes good, sometimes bad. It is as though I have never given myself permission to put down roots. Putting down roots is what happens to other people. However, this time, I have been tuning in to myself more: feeling the variety of emotions, moving again has brought me. Having so little money to move with has made both of us feel very vulnerable and triggered fears about feeling safe in the world. We haven’t even found a home yet so we are faced with the unknown and the likelihood of another temporary place. Anxiety about money, accommodation, being judged for not having money, not being able to provide the basics of life for ourselves. It has helped us reflect on the level of self- love, or rather the level of lack of self love we have indicated by not creating enough to have a secure roof over our heads.

This lack of self love and self worth, the past feelings of “being undeserving” to have a home, to have a place we love, that expresses us as individuals has been a huge reflection, a sad and fearful place. I have looked around at my things as I have been packing and clearing. Much of it is furniture I bought because it was cheap, not because I found it beautiful. There are only a few splashes of “me” and fewer of Robby. I have most things I need, but it is a story of “making do.” Ironically, last year I fought a battle in court for my son, who has special needs, to get him into a great college. I didn’t want him to go to the local college whose standards for young people with special needs was adequate. Like many parents, I knew my son deserved better than adequate, he deserved the best for himself, the greatest opportunity to learn and grow into an independent adult. But for myself, I have accepted “adequate” without question. Why? Somewhere down the line, of course, that is what I was told as a child. But I am not a child anymore, and regardless of any false beliefs or messages given to me back then, I can make a choice. It is much the same for Robby.

So this time, we choose differently. In allowing ourselves to feel all the fears and truths in this move, it has created a deep desire to change what we have: to create an abundant life and take steps to create a home we will love. It is time to put down roots: to put together a home, brick by brick ( or straw bale by straw bale is our dream). We have chosen a beautiful part of the UK and that is a good start. Devon has things I love: stunning coastline, wild moors, wild, natural rivers, pretty rolling hills and woodland.

We do not how yet, we do not even know where exactly, but we do know it is time to use our will in a loving way for ourselves. Being truthful about all the fears and pain of being in this situation has empowered us to change our perspective on what we can do and given us more focus and determination than ever. We are still pretty scared, but feeling the fear is not the same as letting the fear dictate your every move. Fear it just there existing anyway, but acting despite of it, is what helps it go. Feeling any grief over how we got here too has been important and something new for us to really acknowledge. Feelings just need to be felt, but it doesn’t mean they have to stop you from making changes and choosing to be responsible for yourself. In fact, in my experience the denial is what has held me back. It can feel terrible for while, but the truth really does set you free.

But the best thing is, the truth we have realised is: we deserve this.

 

 

True Tears Come

Posted on by under Grief, Hurt Self

ImageIt always amazes me how deep our grief goes. For many of us we don’t even know how much grief, how much sadness we hold inside us. We live, we breath, we move through life, but we age, we have times of depression, of struggle, of illness, of feeling something isn’t quite ok, but we often can’t  name it. We are often encouraged to let the past go, to live in the now, plan for the future but our bodies, our minds, and actions tell us if this is working..or not.

But its not so much us holding onto the past, it is just that the past holds onto us when we haven’t admitted the truth of it. It’s not so much about the stories even: there are so many sad stories, so much loss in many peoples lives. It IS about locking up all that grief, all those fears; it is about how much we are encouraged to “not cry” as children; how we are taught to control ourselves; to convince others and then ourselves we feel better, we feel ok.

The truth is, for  many of us, we can believe we “got over it”, but we haven’t. How do we know? Because all through the rest of our lives that unhealed, unfelt pain impacts us. We play out the hurt in our daily lives and our relationship with ourselves and with others. My father left when I was about 4 years old. I met him a couple of times as an adult and each time it didn’t work out. He just couldn’t do it. Now you could say, come on you hardly knew him, let it go, forgive and forget. I thought I had many times, but the truth is I never cried when he left, even though I remember him walking down the pathway to his car, I never cried. I remember feeling scared, but I never cried. Over the years, I thought about him, sometimes longed for him, dreamed he loved me – somewhere out there. And when that failed, I imagined my dad to be like Dick Van Dyck in Chitty Chitty Bang; a little self absorbed, but ultimately loving his children beyond anything else.

I was never someone’s “special girl” and I thought I had eventually accepted it. The truth was I had just numbed myself to the pain of losing him, of feeling and being unloved by my parent, of never feeling good enough to be loved. The truth is I have played out my deep fear of abandonment in every relationship: trusting no-one really, waiting for them to discover I just wasn’t lovable. I tried to be in control, end things before they did. My lack of self love took me into relationships I never should have had. LIke many women I mistook someone desiring me as love or completely convinced myself I was better on my own. And I was in complete denial of my anger towards my father for walking out that day and never coming back.

Robby will tell you as he has had to live with me trying to play this one out again. The difference is this time we are both trying to heal this type of grief completely from our soul. We have been praying for and slowly seeing the truth. Robby has been there whilst I finally admitted how angry I have been at men. I have been there as he also discovered how the pain from his own upbringing started to shift. Our fears have been jumping up one after the other. We never knew we had so many.

In the past I have tried many ways to heal: therapy, healing, workshops, positive thinking, EFT, yoga, affirmations etc. They helped, but nothing like what I have discovered in the last two years. These days I just pray, from my heart with a desire, a feeling. ask for God’s love to help me.This is how it works: you pray and the Law of Attraction brings you something to trigger the grief. (It can take more than a few goes if your pretty locked down) .

Tonight, for me, it was something as simple as a movie: The Last Song. A movie about a daughter and her estranged father. Over the course of the summer they heal their relationship and it was as I watching them, and feeling his real love for her, it really hit me that I had no memory of any father – daughter moments. That my father just couldn’t do it, that he didn’t love me for who I was, in fact didn’t love me at all as far as I could tell. The tears came and came, and then I realised it was not a personal reflection on me as a person. Gosh I was a child. It wasn’t me, he just couldn’t go there. I cried for not having a father, but I really cried for all the times I had felt small and unlovable and it had stopped me following my dreams. And I had many dreams and wanted many adventures. But my inner pain and the feelings of inadequacy it created, stopped me. Letting out that pain, crying tears of real grief are what reveals these truths. When we hit the real grief, the causal pain and release it we feel lighter and brighter. It is truly a weight off your heart.

It is correct that Truth can set you free, but real Truth also needs Love, unconditional Love, God’s Love. Truth is the key and Love is the hand that turns it.