The Letter My Father Will Never Read

On Forgiveness Inside Complex Love

Hi Friend! Welcome to the Creative Mystic. Here we talk about a Soul Revolution in the making, both yours and mine. Topics of awaking, remembering, and self-discovery are all on the menu. While finding our new rhythms we will also find our people. I’m so glad we found each other. Please take a seat and enjoy a moment for yourself within the lines of my heart’s words.

Port Townsend WA Skyline 2010, image by Leah McCullough

Today I going to share a personal story of freedom and forgiveness. In the end I hope to convey the idea that this isn’t really a story about another person, it’s a story about life as a soul.

I have been estranged from father for nearly 8 years. Our relationship has been struggling since my daughters were born more than sixteen years ago. There isn’t an easy road inward to explain the why’s or how’s this struggle began. The point is the loss. The feeling of abandonment. The truth of my part in it all.

Our last contact came after he received a letter I wrote to him as part of my personal healing process.

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It’s just a story

I had just returned from a walk on the beach where I was camping. I turned my phone on to check emails prior to heading home. Delivered with a ding was an email from my father. It took reading two sentences of the message to throw me back into childhood reactions.

I held the phone towards my husband, hand outstretched while my chest caved in. He looked at the screen and saw who it was from. Except it wasn’t an email from him, it was my letter to him, my words with a red strike through them with notations near each sentence. 

There was a time when he would do this for me when I wrote college entrance essays. Back then his notations were about use of words and suggestions for sentence structure.

This time there were no suggestions for improvement. That time had passed. The notations were ones of denial, disinheritance, delusions.

I had been disarmed in two sentences filled with large red strikes. I had stopped reading because I couldn’t stomach anymore lies. My husband read the letter instead.

“No father writes a letter like that to his daughter, no matter what she’s done,” was his response when he was finished.

He gently set the phone down between us on the table and told me he hoped I would never read the email. The choice was mine to make.

I stared at the empty screen for a long time willing my heart to calm. In the end, I powered on the screen, placed my finger on the trash button, and watched the message fly away into oblivion.

We grow and then we know

The gestation period for freeing oneself from childhood trauma varies based on the ability to view the trauma with the perspective of a witness, not as a victim.

It takes time, lots of therapy, and hopefully a good support group.

My journey of regressed memories surfacing to the first steps of healing started when I was 13. I’m two weeks shy of 48 I feel like I’m nearing the finish line to freedom. The blame game isn’t self-serving, it’s limiting behavior that keeps us small.

I no longer desire to be small.

By writing my letter and retelling all the memories I had been told to never speak of freed the little girl in me of the shame she held for keeping secrets she knew were wrong.

I didn’t write the letter for him. I wrote it for myself. In defiance of what I had been told was wrong. This defiance was a continuation of the active role I use to play in my family as the scapegoat. The letter was a tool to harm.

I know now that words that hurt others also hinder my personal growth.

Truth Telling isn’t Forgiveness

It’s life altering when you realize your parents aren’t gods.

Children of alcoholics carry the burden of regret for what we couldn’t fix. We attempt to heal our past through our current relationships. We struggle to align with a balanced life while waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I’m sharing this story today because I have a desire to send a post card that says: “I forgive you.”

Except he doesn’t even have an address.

So instead I write my message on the universal platform of energy that we call the web, imagining it’s similar to a soul message because it’s etheric and intangible.

When he and I are both done with this lifetime, we will still be two souls walking a journey towards a lifetime of eternity. This is why I want freedom now, before we both turn another year older.

We are here to live this one beautiful life and wade through the messes we find ourselves in with as much grit, love, and forgiveness as we can.

In extending forgiveness I am giving myself a free pass to let go of what I cannot change. The stories no longer matter and neither does my need for amends.

Today I hold visions of safety, peace, and happiness for him. It’s not my job to judge his behavior or give him mercy. In this way I bestow peace upon myself. 

May my words find their safe place in the Eternal Heart, and may they provide healing wherever it is welcomed. 

In Love for the Grace of Truth,

Leah 💕

Notes of Change:

Some of you may know that I have changed my name many times over the years as I’ve explored each new iteration of discovery while healing from childhood trauma. I was born with the name Leah, a name what was also my maternal grandmothers name. When I first set out into deep healing I began to hear the name Lena in my meditation. I claimed the name without know that Lena was the name of my grandmothers aunt. Her story is one of strength and courage. When I learned this I knew it was fitting.

I have come far since the time when I was claiming names for myself. In the last few years I bridged both names together to come to terms with birth families and creations of our own making. I’m ready now to live in the name I was given to honor my linage of women that have mothered in times of challenge and abundance.

In order to heal the linage, I must claim my own. Thank you for being a witness.