3 Things I Learned Through a Broken Relationship with My Father
Amanda’s story of forgiveness, permission, and growth
Amanda grew up in Southern California. Sun, beaches, and the ‘perfect family.’ Two parents committed to one other, an older sister, and surrounded by their faith community.
Two days after graduating high school, Amanda came home from a concert, Glee, and as she walked in the door, she saw her mother sitting at the kitchen table. A pit grew in Amanda’s stomach, “I just felt it,” she shared with me over a cup of tea.
“They were good parents, really good parents, just terrible spouses. They wanted to fit a mold, be the Mr. and Mrs. that are well known in the church, you know, host the events and all of that.’
Amanda’s dad was cheating on her mom with another woman from church and her mom had chosen to leave, leaving Amanda with her dad.
Amanda decided to leave too. She couch hopped rather than living with her father.
The older Amanda got, the more she realized how broken her childhood was. It wasn’t ‘perfect.’ Her whole life she lived in a place where you couldn’t air your dirty laundry, you had to keep up an appearance. Things were hidden.
“This guy who raised me was wonderful but he didn’t know how to tell the truth. And eventually, he chose what he desired. I could have survived and forgiven an affair but as a pathological liar, it’s been difficult.”
‘So now, now, I have this broken relationship with my father.’
3 things I’ve Learned Through a Broken Relationship with my Father
1 — We’re All Human
“I was loved so well growing up but my parents are just like all of us, they’re broken and they’re fumbling. I went through a season of being mad at them for being human. Then you get older and you realize you have to forgive them for being individuals and not just being mom and dad. They’re human too.”
2 — If you don’t forgive, physical distance doesn’t matter, you still carry it
“My father and I were best buds and now I wanted nothing to do with him. I moved to Oregon. I didn’t talk to my father. I thought that would make it easier. But if you don’t forgive someone, physical distance doesn’t matter. You still carry it.”
“My first year and a half in Oregon, we didn’t talk. When I visited California, I didn’t want to see him.”
“It was Father’s Day and I said to myself, ‘I can’t keep carrying this.’”
“My father had a relationship with this other lady. She had gotten a divorce. My dad had gotten a divorce. We’re all broken. Her kids and family are broken. My father’s kids and family are broken. We’re all broken.”
“If I don’t do something, I’m going to hurt the same way the rest of my life. I reached out to my dad. I knew he couldn’t tell the truth so I had to communicate carefully. I couldn’t beg him to understand how I felt.”
“It’s hard to reconcile the person who raised me with the person who did this but I wanted to figure out how to still have this person in my life.”
“That’s the challenge. Grieving someone… who is still alive.”
“This is the same guy who made crappy decisions, who lied to me, who let me down.”
“Forgiveness is loosening your grip from their neck and allowing them to be who they are. You give them permission. You’re not waiting to be disappointed by who they are or who they aren’t.”
“So now… our relationship is… we’re navigating it, it’s new. There are so many layers to forgiveness. It’s not one and done. And you don’t get back what you had before.”
“There is divorce everywhere in my family. Brokenness is all over the place. Either I become part of it or I own my part in the story. And I have a desperation for my life to look different.”
3 — Permission and Growth
“The older you get, the more you give yourself permission to be who you are. There are a lot of great people in my family. But the way in which they do relationships is different from that in which I have and want to experience.”
“It’s not to say I want to be ‘better,’ I just want my story and relationships to look different.”
“The more you get to know who you are, you learn your own cycles, you have tools to experience the next better thing.”
“Being in your 20’s is really hard and no one really warns you about that. You think at 21, ‘I’m finally an adult.’ Then 22 comes along and you have another 7 million identity crises. It takes a long time to grow up.”
“You can get hurt differently and respond the same. There are cycles. But there are tools to learn and grow.”
“I started reading like a mad man. I read Brené Brown. I studied the Enneagram (I’m an 8, Challenger). All my thoughts and feelings were articulated. There was an incredible gift that I needed things to look different and I needed to cope with pain differently and engage in a relationship differently than my parents did.”
“I recognized my parents were great but they didn’t have the tools to know what to do, how to handle, or permission to feel. When they got into arguments, my dad would withdraw and my mom was the opposite. So there were a lot of things said that couldn’t be taken back. They didn’t know how to bridge the gap and do it better. They didn’t know how to communicate with one another.”
“When you see and understand that not everyone sees things through the lens you see life through, it’s the worst and the best.”
Epilogue (as told by Amanda):
There’s heartache but those moments bring you to your knees. You get to know Jesus, prayer, the depths of your soul. The heartache is defining, it makes moments sweeter.
I would have liked to have fast forwarded everything. The hard part is, once you forgive someone, you realize how much time you wasted holding on, being angry. Sometimes your feelings are so big, you get swallowed by them. You don’t want to go to sleep angry, you want to forgive instantly… yet, if you asked me 6 years ago if I could have forgiven my father, I’d have a different answer than I do now.
The life I thought I was supposed to have at 18, I felt like my dad took it away from me. I was supposed to graduate high school, go to college, get a degree, get married. There was a ‘template.’
But now, my life looks different. And I’m thankful. Because it’s not a template. It’s mine.
