Dear Inky:

You wrote: “everyone else on the family… are thus ALWAYS around him”- but your sister who has “been seeing Dad a lot” now “thinks he’s left because she can’t reach (your father)”- so she is not that close with him either, is she? She thinks he left because she can’t reach him, not because he told her he was leaving.

You wrote: “he says ‘It’s not in my nature’ (to reach out)” to you. I want to look deeper into his statement. Not in his nature means he is not inclined to reach out to you. He doesn’t have a desire to call you on the phone so he can hear your voice. He doesn’t have the desire to meet with you so he can see your face, your smile. Not in his nature means he doesn’t want to.

You interpreted his statement (“It’s not in my nature”) as a “cop out”, that is, he came up with an excuse as to why he doesn’t initiate contact with you, but I don’t think it is a cop out. He really is not interested, does not have the desire to contact you. It is not an excuse.

Do you agree? Let me know. Is your question: how to handle your father and/ or how to handle your other family members in regard to their contact with your father?

anita

Dear Inky:

This is my understanding: your relationship with your father is over and done with, has been over and done with for decades. It was probably never “a go” on his part. I would call it “unrequited love”. You loved him, he didn’t reciprocate.

I stated the above confidently because in relationship with him, you were, for many years, the child and he was the adult. Children naturally and necessarily love and reach out to their parent. It is so because the child is necessarily dependent and needy of the parent, not the other way around.

Whether you contact him more often, less often, or not at all doesn’t matter, makes no difference, and is a matter of no consequence (unless he requires contact so to keep you in his will?)

Unless there is a financial consequence, parenthesis above) this is a dead issue, done and over decades ago. It has been and will continue to be a one-sided affair. In other words, any value in past and future contact with him exists only in somewhere-over-the-rainbow/ wish-upon-a-star type thinking/ feeling in your brain alone.

* you often have such witty suggestions to others, but with all your wit, with the best of the-best-of-Inky’s, I believe there is nothing you can say to your father to change this unrequited love.

As far as talking to your sister, siblings, in the desert of very little to no love from parents, often compete for that very little. This may be the case here. If so, let her win that very little, or more likely, let her win and take possession of any illusion of love she wants to entertain. It may comfort her.

anita

Dear Inky:

I am glad you are satisfied with your grandfather’s inheritance choice! Your father’s allowance, I didn’t fully understand. Your last two lines- hilarious, that’s the wit in your writing that I referred to.

You wrote that you “think/ suspect that he knows I don’t need him”- it is most difficult for a child (of any age) to read the parent’s mind, more so than of strangers. It is so because of the emotional investment/ lack of objectivity. If you got to live in his head, you may be very surprised.

You wrote: “Dad doesn’t think anyone in the family, sister and step-siblings (except me, apparently) can make it ‘in the real world'” – are you referring to the allowance thing?

anita

Good morning Inky,

I am so happy that you asked me your 2 questions.

I will briefly try to tell you about my relationship with my mother, just to give you some perspective, and not to detract from your problems at all, but also to help you to see what can be overcome if you really want to.

My mother and paternal grandmother used to beat me as a young child, my last memory of that was at 11 years old. my mother’s father and oldest brother sexually abused me from the age of 2 and my last memory of that was at age 14. All have died now except my mother, who had treated me very poorly my entire life, until I was able to find peace with it all. My mother betrayed me in the worst way, she knew of the abuse and did nothing to save an innocent child, her own guilt over it causing her to beat me instead of facing it herself. Even through it all, I still loved her and wanted her to love and respect me for who I am (as children always do).

At face value, what happened to me can be judged as disgusting, hateful, painful, etc etc, and I can choose to live with that and say oh poor me for the rest of this lifetime but I have no desire to do that. How would that help me to move forward and live a happy life hanging onto the past that I cannot change? The Law of Karma escapes no-one and so the bad deeds will be repaid by them eventually.

One day it occurred to me, that I didn’t want my mother to eventually die and leave things unfinished between us; and I realised that I needed to repair the damage within myself, before I could expect any kind of loving relationship with her. On looking deeper into myself, I realised that I was also suffering from abandonment issues. My mother had deserted me emotionally and my father had left when I was 11 years old and he had been my rock. Many people carry these feelings of abandonment from childhood into EVERY relationship they encounter for the rest of their life. It is debilitating and binds one spiritually so that you cannot live a healthy non co-dependent life. This I had to overcome and at times it still rears it’s ugly head for me, but being aware of it, I can now control it.

So I learned the art of acceptance. Before you can change any situation you need to fully admit or accept that it exists/existed, WITHOUT judgement on it. The situation is not seen as good or bad, it just IS! This was followed by learning forgiveness, for all those involved. Once I felt that I had reached a point where I had accepted what had happened to me, and let it go completely, I was then able to move on with my life but also start to rebuild the frail and fractured relationship with my mother.

I came to later understand that she was also sexually abused by her father, and that she was so afraid of him, she didn’t know how to protect me either. If I were to judge the apparent ‘excuse’ I just gave for her behaviour towards me, I would say “she should have protected her only child at any cost”, right?! However, if I tell myself that, then I am still sitting in judgement of the past and not letting it go. Judging things doesn’t change them or make them better. What it does do is it holds the vibration close to me so it can continue to affect me.

The only way through this was to just accept her as she is, not try to change her, wish she were different, feel sad that I never had a nurturing mother, play the role of the victim for the rest of my life… So, I began to think of her with love, mixed in with sadness for myself of course at first, but also accepting that she is also on her own spiritual path, the same path we are all travelling on, she is just perhaps a little further back on the path or on a different branch of the same path, we all live in ignorance and unconsciously to some degree… No amount of wishing, hoping, making frustrated remarks, being mean back to her, ever made a change or even begging her to see me as I am, as she couldn’t see what it was that she was doing to me. I could only change my view point of it all.

As soon as I changed, she changed. It cannot be any other way and we are all vibrating energy and like attracts like. What goes on inside ourselves is ALWAYS reflected back to us by other people and situations in our physical world. When we change our attitude on the inside, the people and situations will have to change as well, its a Universal Law.

So, yes we now have a very good relationship, she lives in Australia and I am in Spain. She writes kind and loving things to me, sometimes I even get 2 emails in one week…it used to be one a year if I was lucky, and usually filled with hope of my demise. 🙂

Yes, the Law of Attraction, is really the Law of Vibration. It’s one of the natural laws that exist for us to use, so why not take advantage of it? Your mind and your imagination is in control of your world. The idea that the world and all it’s circumstances control your life is false and it is a belief that is drummed into us from childhood. By changing your own attitude and thoughts/beliefs about anything at all, you can change anything you want in your physical world, even they way your family members behave. You can then teach them by your own example, for words don’t teach, only actions do.

The missing link to the Law of Attraction/Vibration is in the art of allowing those things which you want to change, to actually happen. It is only our stubbornness and unwillingness to let go of control and just allow, that stops us from getting everything we want and need. (this is the hardest part of manifesting)… 🙂

I am enjoying chatting with you…thank you for the opportunity. 🙂

Wow jshehadeh – amazing post. Only people who have been tempered by trauma can achieve that sort of enlightenment. Trauma, strength, wisdom. That seems to be how it goes.

* Dear painterly and lolo1003: this thread belongs to the Original Poster (OP), this is Inky. And so, respondents should respond to Inky, not to another respondent. If the respondent you addressed here to would like to start a thread, she will be the OP of that thread, and you can communicate with her there.
anita