“Longing is like a seed that wrestles in the ground.”
Some of us have deep wounds that we carry with us our entire lives.
Sometimes these wounds stay in the shadows and never allow themselves to be seen by ourselves or others. We make decisions that are tethered to these wounds without awareness that we are doing so. Unconscious choices attempt to fix them over and over again. Patterns repeat in hopes they will finally be healed; however, as long as these choices are made unconsciously, the pattern will continue to repeat. Until we make the unknown known, we may not be able to shine a healing light on them.
I didn’t know my father, and I have carried a deep sense of longing for him for most of my life. The longing was stitched with the feeling of abandonment, which at times left me feeling unworthy of love and inhibited my ability to fully recognize it. This left me restless and in search of something to fill that empty space.
I finally met him when I was fifteen years old. We became fast friends and started writing letters back and forth. He was handsome and cool with his tanned skin and blue eyes. Luckily, my sweet mom never said a negative word about him, so my thoughts of him were high. My mom, best friend, and I visited him that next summer, and we spent time at a beautiful park and played at the beach. I was excited to get to know him and looking forward to our friendship blossoming throughout the years. However, and unfortunately, he was killed in a hang gliding accident two years after we met.
I don’t have a lot of vivid memories from my childhood, but I do remember this particular morning. I was sleeping when my mom and step-dad came into my room. The pain of telling me being too much, my mom stayed standing next to my bedroom door while my step-dad sat down next to me on the bed to wake me. He said “we have some bad news to tell you” and then proceeded to share that Keith, my dad, had died when the unpredictable Sierra Nevada mountain winds caused him to lose control of his hang glider and crash into a tree. My mom was crying. I began to cry, too. My room seemed extra small that morning like the walls were closing in on me. Although I was sad, I didn’t really know how to feel at that moment. I lost someone whom I didn’t know well yet but wanted to know. I was grieving the possibilities for the future. I felt nostalgic for something that never was. From my initial perspective, I was immensely grateful I was able to meet him at all and get to know him over those short two years.
Early in my life, I learned a clever way to cope with stress and uncertainty by emotionally and mentally running away from those scary dark places of pain and disappointment. I would tuck those thoughts and feelings deep away within, which left a gaping hole in my heart that I proceeded to unknowingly search for something, anything to fill that empty space. I felt I could find an answer so I kept searching in hopes it would one day appear.
The year he died, I started seeing myself differently and wanted him to be proud of me. I cleaned up my act in many ways and started making better choices. That year, I chose a different path than the one I was on and turned a corner. I desired a new future that was much brighter than the path I was on had to offer. Although it took me several more years after his death to complete that transformation, I did. The longing pushed me; drove me. I spent the next several decades putting myself through college, diving headfirst into work, becoming a producing machine, driving myself to achieve “success” to prove I was worthy. Through the years, I realized that no level of success would completely fill the hole in my heart and became aware of what I really desired: love, peace, freedom. Finally, recognizing my lessons of longing motivated me to ease forward into a life well lived although my work is not yet done.
Over the years, as I would see fathers with their daughters, the longing would again bubble to the surface. I was missing out on something precious and knew it would never be. I continued to search for the answer, but it was nowhere to be found. The unconscious decisions I’ve made that yearned to fulfill this deep sense of longing were never satisfied. But as the longing began to slowly reveal herself to me, I started to see how her presence has impacted my life. How her broken heart has broken mine and others along the way.
I see her now with outreached arms, but what she is reaching for is not out there. She is longing for me. In longing, as with any deep wound, it felt as if the answers were to be found, but as I began to get to know her, I realized that what she and I both needed was right here within us, not out there. It is in here. This is where true peace lives. The acceptance of what is right here with me now and all that it brings to the table whether desired or not. There is no answer to find or validation that will ever bring real peace and happiness that we seek. The love we seek comes from within and in realizing that our judgments and expectations of who we thought we were supposed to be, do not exist.
Who knows why we are dealt the hands we are dealt. There are no limits to the possible outcomes that do occur in our lives. Some outcomes we are happy with and some we are not. It’s all part of our unpredictable human experience. Life isn’t always fair because life doesn’t judge either way. It’s us that labels outcomes as good or bad, right or wrong. Cards are shuffled and dealt without judgment of the hand that comes to pass.
Once I allowed my hand of longing to be seen and accept that the answer could only be resolved from within, I allowed her to be present with me as we worked through this time of reconciliation together and in the process, she began to fade away slowly into peace. As I learned to trust the process and accept the hand I was dealt, I began to feel the exact thing I was searching for: love, peace, and freedom. It had been there waiting for me all along.
Why am I sharing my personal deep wound with you? Because I want you to know that it’s ok. It’s ok if you have a deep wound that nobody knows about and maybe you do not yet fully recognize. It’s ok to allow it to come forward so that you can begin your own process of reconciliation if you desire to be free of its pain and quiet interference.
Over the last few years, I have been on a journey to find all the cracks in my mind, heart, and soul and let in the light, so that I can live my life free and clear of any judgments or unresolved pain or doubt, which for me is freedom. You can do this, too, if you wish. So let in the light and bring along your nonjudgmental curiosity for this inward exploration and see what lurks in your deep dark corners. As the poet, Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Now, I still feel some longing when I see sweet moments between fathers and daughters. It still touches my heart, but I can now enjoy it as a beautiful thing to witness.
I choose to think about my father often and carry him with me throughout my life, as I do with all those I have loved and lost. He is with me there in the silence, the wind, the sunbeam, the sound of water, a bird’s melody, falling snow.
I am truly grateful for our time together although I miss him still. I often wonder what he would be like at the age he would be now, 76 years old. I wonder if we would be close or how his hugs might feel. I wonder if he would be proud of me and all that I have accomplished in my life. I wonder about the love he might have for my daughter and how much fun we all would have had together. I wonder.
Be well! Sending love.
“Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations. ”