Dear Ritz:

It is not at all your fault that this has been your subjective emotional experience for more than half a century, when you were young and older, through changing external circumstances, periods of economical growth and decline.. different presidents, same subjective experience. It is your father’s doing. During the time that you were most vulnerable, most needy of him, he has wronged you. Even if he was alive now and expressed his regrets etc., he will be too late. What you needed from him was time-sensitive.

And now, while the pandemic is ongoing, the fires are raging (in my part of the U.S), civil unrest, suffering economy.. and your arthritis, and so forth.. what is possible for you?

Start with a modest hope: to suffer less. Less anxiety, less distress; more calm. Your hope for more calm long term,  is not in external circumstances changing (living elsewhere, working elsewhere, having a better health insurance, etc.) It is in changing your internal circumstance of having the ghost of your father call the shots .

anita