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Blessings, Inspiration, Meditations, Poetry, Prayers, Reflection, Writing
This picture is of my own father holding me in his lap in the Boston Public Gardens when I was obviously not very old at all.
We can clearly feel a sense of love in his smile that has bypassed the pain and suffering of his own childhood and maturation into maledom.
Obviously I was not a year old and now I’m working on completing my 70th.
He was 41 and not expecting to have children nor did he want them as he was the oldest of 10 children in a time when the world crashed around him.
There was a love/hate energy between he and his father because he had to leave school before entering the 8th grade to help his mother take care of his younger siblings.
A very brilliant child whose dreams of the future were shattered and he never overcame the pain of that wound no matter how many successes and knowledge he achieved.
His story is in many different forms the background for what I have called the Failed Fathers of which I am one.
So I am writing on this Father’s Day as I think about my own daughter who has not spoken to me in over 20 years, who will turn 50 years old in August.
Many men are reflecting inward today thinking about their own fathers and their children. Questioning in so many ways what they could have done better or why situations failed in spite of how much they loved their children.
This is not something new but has been ongoing for thousands of years in thousands of cultures. However today the Fathers of this world are being asked to heal their wounds.
Heal their wounds not only so that they may be free of their own pain and suffering but to change the Collective Patriarchal Insanity which is willing to sacrifice its future generations because of their inner misunderstandings.
Yes, I wrote it as misunderstandings because I’m not seeking to place blame on anyone. The blaming is only an outburst of that destructive fire which burns in the hearts of so many men. Partly in trying to find relief from our own pain.
WE see and feel when it arises and attacks those we love
WE feel more pain and suffering when it has scorched and burned
WE are tortured between two worlds that both seem to want to devour us
WE place blame on things outside of us which are mere circumstances
WE fail to look too far within ourselves because it is like facing Hell
A Hell that began when we were very young, perhaps even in infancy before WE could even recognize words or meanings.
So I share this today in hope that some who may read these words will be triggered to open that Pandora’s Box within them and begin to allow healing to flow into their hearts.
Allow that healing to flow from them firstly to those with whom amends can be made, in order to establish a pattern of gratitude and recognition that being a Male is not about conquering and accumulation at any cost.
The cost is always paid by the children who are born innocent.
And so I feel my energy shifting to Bless my daughter and offer her Divine Healing Grace. For she like all of us is a prisoner of thoughts that torture her and create hateful moments of pain.
Sometimes directed only in thought to herself but also in form to others and I have to accept some responsibility for all of it.
I AM the Divine Masculine who has not understood my True Meaning because it was perverted thousands of generations ago.
So GENTLEmen it is now time to reinvest in Our Sacred Self and heal first our own wounds and then bring forth the amazing True Power of the Divine Father we have never not been.
May you each be Blessed on your journeys
I send you Peace, Light and Love
Charlie Riverman Bergeron
Reflections of Riverman 
Reblogged this on Sanctuary of the White Rose.
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Reblogged this on Blue Dragon Journal.
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Absolutely beautiful. Reblogging to sister site “Timeless Wisdoms”
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Pingback: For the Failed Fathers – Timeless Wisdoms
Beautiful, Charlie. Thank you for this heartful, soulful reflection. Happy Father’s Day to you. Blessings, Jamie
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Thank you for reading and feeling it as we all attempt to cease the perpetuity of this pain within our hearts that keeps us separated.
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Thank you for this post. It touched my heart.
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Thank you, Charlie. I am sorry for your pain. I hope her heart softens and she is able to initiate reconciliation.
I have a different pain, where my father is part of my life, yet he doesn’t seem to know me, or like me. He has never really seen me for who I am and what I have to offer the world. I think he sees me as a failure. I always felt a desire to do well and live well, yet instead I find that I struggle, because instead of doing what is easy, and what most people do, I do what I love. Also, I am alone, without the life partner he would have wanted for me when I was a girl. This doesn’t mean I don’t have relationships, they just tend to be complex and unconventional.
All parents do the best they can, coming into the job with zero experience. I was not up for a trial-by-fire myself. I am fortunate to have both my parents alive in their 80’s.
I have siblings, but it will be lonely when my parents are gone, especially my Mom. Each of them married 3 times. My sister and I from the 1st marriage and my 3 brothers from my Dad’s 2nd marriage. It is rare that we are all together any more, alas. Dad is 87 and I feel an urgency to prove to him who I am. I would love for Dad to see me thrive, and know that I am cared for, before he passes, but he may not realize who I am until he is on the other side, so I have to make my peace with that.
Namaste
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Thank you and Blessings to you for your open hearted expression. Each of us are subjected to misunderstandings which set up limitations of experience within our family experiences.
The true pains and distances we experience arise (at least for me) during these holidays in which we are somehow to pretend that all is perfect in our familial relationships.
I saw as I wrote this how many of us have unique situations which are less than comforting at times. Along with our desires that those situations could be much more improved if all concerned could be willing to listen to the other without judgment.
Yet here we are.
My relationship with my father was never truly resolved until I became his caretaker after he fell and became blind. He never really saw me or realized his role in my life but I got to see him as a man who had his own damage that he guarded fiercely.
His childhood damage form his father passed on to me and I unknowingly passed it on to my daughter.
I remain open to meeting with her before I die and hopefully help her understand her suffering. That I only wanted what was in my mind “best for her” but repeated the pattern of never allowing her to teach me about who she really was.
When she did… I unfortunately denied both us the opportunity to see each other for who we truly were with love and admiration for each other.
A vicious War of the Roses Divorce sealed our fate if you will and that pain just added the final straw.
So my message is really about forgiving all of those in our family (in this case our fathers) who are or have been stuck in their own blindness.
As to who and how they have passed on their pain to us their children and coming to a place of self-acceptance. Even though we may have many scars.
For me as in the picture I posted I can see he had the capacity for loving me yet he did not know how to express it. So too I erred with my own daughter.
The truth is painful but when we can see it without vengeance or trying to prove we are worthy we open our hearts to freedom.
We can then choose to trust ourselves at a deeper level and hope for a moment of reconciliation without the weight of guilt.
May you be Blessed in your journey with your father.
Peace, Light and Love
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Thank you, Charlie.
My parents divorced when I was 3, which I am sure was a factor, but he was never absent from our lives. . We visited him at his lake home, enjoyed beating, swimming and waterskiing (and now visit him at his modest home on the Cape) while growing up in a beach town with Mom.
He’s very hot-tempered and argumentative at times, and I like to say I have a French temper like him. I’ve done a lot of work to open my heart and forgive, not just my parents, but anyone, so I don’t hold any bitterness or resentment towards them, though I do get angry when they or my sister try to tell me how to live my life.
All of his children have learned to steer away from politic,s and at times, any kind of discussion. I think one reason I became so insistent on speaking my mind is from having been shut down so much growing up.
However, I love it when Dad waxes nostalgic, telling stories of the crazy things he did with his Marine buddies or his pals from the lake, or stories from his childhood, growing up in a big family iduring the depression. I just let him talk, and I marvel at the things I would never know about otherwise. I treasure those moments, which make me feel close to him, and help me to understand who he is, and why.
Thank you for your warm thoughts and this healing engagement. I know a number of people who did not have healthy relationships with one or both of their parents, and often, it was a catalyst for them to explore their spirituality, where they found solace, as do I.
Warm Regards,
Phoenix
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