Father’s Day.

Father’s Day means a lot more to me now I have children. Life means more to me now that I have children, in ways that are hard to describe, because it’s simply hard to make sense of the changes. My wife said to me before our first child was born, that she was looking forward to becoming a Family, and not just a couple anymore. It was a profound but obvious statement. I liked the way it sounded, the way it felt to hear it.

 I never thought I would have children. I imagined I was too selfish. I have always related to Pia Melody’s Developmental Immaturity Model. As a result seeing my self-centeredness as the spiritual part  of my addiction and as the core of developmental trauma, I must say I always worried if I would be capable of the differentiation necessary to be present enough to be a parent. 

Of course I have made a lot of progress with this over 28 years of recovery. As a therapist, I have done the work necessary to be present for my clients and not be that first child hero enmeshed with my mentally ill mother, trying to make her better through them. But kids are a lot tougher than clients. Kids don’t go home, they are home. It can be a marathon, and trying to self-care, differentiate and regulate your state so you don’t go nuts inside yourself, and then act out nuts outside yourself, well that’s the challenge these days. It humbles me now lecturing about Developmental Trauma, and healthy parenting and being a parent to two wonderful energetic boys full of life. It helped me appreciate the roles my parents played, and the way they played them. The actually did do the best with what they had, and now it’s my turn. 

But my best is a different frontier than my parents. I have as Jung stated, made the unconscious conscious, and it is my awareness therefore that directs my life, my new fate is where I choose to focus my attention, not where my attention ends up as a result of my inability to manage my state. This has been a revelation, an internal revolution. I am by no means out of the forest, but I am ducking more branches than are hitting me in the face.

It’s been a long road to get here. I had to do a lot of work. Get Clean and Sober, deal with other Addictions as they raised their ugly head. The relational issues have been an enormous battle. To be in a relationship, means you have to be inside your own skin, and be comfortable, before I could be in my own skin and be comfortable around another. I had plenty of practice with some truly awesome people. I have hurt people along the way, some relationships never recovered. Some even unwilling to hear the amends. I just had to keep moving forward.

I think of my father’s illness last year, over the last few years. I had patience, to visit him a lot, just be present,   take the boys, he loved the boys. He was gentler, softer, more cuddly with his grandchildren than with me. I don’t think he thought I had it in me to settle down, be a Dad, and yet I think he knew I would be pretty good at it.

We had changed our relationship over the course of my recovery. The first few years he could see I was getting better, went to University, worked, got married the first time, all the things that life offers to say things are moving forward, but we were no closer really, he just felt safer. As I started to hit my first marriage relational issues, I started to get therapy, and from here it opened that Developmental can of worms. Life and relationships would never be the same. My marriage didn't last, but the therapy has remained, and I attended Co dependant Anonymous, and from there started my first 12 men’s group, with some guys from CODA after we had a mixed retreat and we had the idea to have a men’s and women’s group. The women met for the 90 minutes allotted, there was about 20 of them, and he six guys talked all the way through lunch, and we didn't stop for four and half hours. We then started our first closed Men’s Group, so we didn't have official traditions, and made our own group rules.

We read fairy stories, listened to Robert Bly, read Iron john and Roberts Poetry, read John Lee’s Flying Boy and Sam Keens Fire in the Belly. It opened up a whole world, never even imagined by me. I met my first indigenous mentor, John Falcon, who taught me the pipe ceremony and the Sweat lodge traditions of the Hopi Indians. I walked that path for some time in awe and respect for the Great Mystery. My father never joined me on that journey ever. The closest I came to ever talking to him about it was when he was about to have his first heart surgery at 64, I gave him Gerald Jamplosky’s autobiography that he wrote at the same age. He never read it. But the way I was around him changed. There was some sticky moments in the beginning, were I went against the family message of , “Don’t upset your mother “ and I talked about my reality growing up with mums mental illness, and I talked about my adoption. He never really understood that part of my recovery. 

But the main thing that changed is that we stopped shaking hands when we met, and we started to hug.

It was very unnatural at first, and neither of us fell into it comfortably, but we did find our rhythm as time went along. In the last decade of his life especially the last few years, when we hugged, he snuggled his neck into to mine, I always liked that. You see, as an Englishman’s son, a coalminers son, his father never hugged him, said that he loved him, cuddled him as a boy or man, my Dad never did it to me, cause he never felt comfortable in his own skin. Never felt comfortable to be vulnerable. I have come up against this myself. The vulnerability I had to deal with living in my skin was one thing, but as a father, seeing their vulnerability, as I held their newborn bodies, and daily as they grow into beautiful boys, my heart stops at the thought of them going through this life, but my heart is also full of love too.

I am grateful I have the privilege to raise children, especially with a beautiful loving mother.

So on this Father’s Day, the first with my Father, and with my beautiful boys all tucked up in bed, I will leave you with a poem I wrote about the first time me and my Dad hugged. I dedicate it to my father, Alan Stokes, and all he Fathers out there, that did the best with what they could, and may we always strive to be better…..

Older Now.

We’re older now

My lines are beginning to match his

We've talked about old mates and prostates

Like it was not possible before

He hugged me at Christmas

We had talked about it, and although

It was not requested, just gestured

I felt it melt something in my heart

It was uncomfortable for two though

As we did not know what to do

For both our Fathers

had not done this before

Since then, when we meet

It is still with uncertainty

My one hand will go out

To meet his two spread wide

We quickly reverse our positions

Only to fumble into each other’s arms

Friendly strangers who share the same history

Although mine is much shorter than his.

He asked me to go bush soon

Just me and him, I'm so excited

I don’t know where to begin

So many questions

Yet I have been fed silence for so long

I am scared of the consequences of the truth.

We are older now. His hairs gone grey

Some fallen away,

And to his surprise

I got mine cut the other day

Look more like a man my mum did say

Everything changes to our dismay

 I know I share mistakes I have made

From plans a wreckless youth outlaid

He understood, he made the same

He only tried to shield my pain

So here we are older now

Each facing off a sacred cow

His life is coming to an end

And mine is taking another bend

So we are going bush, to find some Gold

And he is going to teach me the things he knows

And I am finally willing to learn instead

Of thinking I know it all.