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Epiphany on the highway
by Mata HEpiphanies never seem to arrive in convenient places. My latest arrived at 10pm in my car on a drive back from Massachusetts. I hope it changes my life; and, I believe it will. Life change is often the result of a small change of view – a tiny shift in perception. Then “whammo” the world looks different, and dominoes are not automatically falling over each other the way they once did. Old broken places feel as though they might just heal. Slot A no longer painfully connects to Tab B.
Life feels possible in a new way because of a little something that someone said –a wisp of overheard conversation – a remark in passing. Suddenly the scales fall from our eyes; and we feel that a part of our lives have been somehow adequately explained for the first time. And there is both joy and peace.
Let me stop talking in riddles and tell you the tale. I was listening to an interviewer speak with three doctors who had authored a book together. It is called The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect with Their Fathers by Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins.
These men are all African American men from inner city Newark who had met in high school, become friends, and vowed to each other that they would succeed in life. They are all active in their community, and have written about their histories in two other books : The Pact (the adult version of their story) and We Beat the Street: How a Friendship Pact Led to Success ( a version for grades 7-12).
They all had experienced “fatherlessness”. Their book, The Bond was written by them and by their fathers – a chapter each. Publisher’s weekly says “The book includes chapters written by the authors' absentee fathers, who, refreshingly, do not make excuses for their shortcomings but give insights into their failures-including their own lack of a father figure-and provide an understanding that humanizes them and enables their sons to forgive them.”
OK, I am about as far from these guys as one can get. I am a much older white woman from New England, Polish Catholic, blue collar roots. My dad was in the home.
But sometimes I wished that he were not. My relationship with my father, up to and beyond his death, has been both complex and difficult. I have memories of him that are wonderful and memories that are horrifying. I have struggled to understand the language of forgiveness, what it means to find the phrase that allows me to let go of the sense of loss, the memory of injury – the phrase that allows me to understand that abuse from him wasn’t about me. The phrase that allows me to no longer live from the wound. Healthy roots do not grow in woundedness.
So, over the years, I have done what anyone yearning for freedom from this would do – I have done both sensible and foolish things. Everything from prayer and therapy (sensible) to pasta and chocolate (foolish). But, through a lot of work spiritually and psychologically, I found myself free from most of what I call “the afterburn”..but not all.
But oh how I longed to be – to not have the endless recitative available on demand on endless brain-loop about the catalogue of injurious things that he did. I just couldn’t understand how the loving father and the abusive father could have lived in the same skin. My head got it. My heart did not.
OK…let’s cut from here to the front seat of my car this past Sunday, when the good doctors were being interviewed. I was interested on all sorts of levels, not the least of which was the fact that 3 young men were so openly tackling emotional issues (bravo!) but also that the issue of reconciliation with a father was the topic.
One man spoke of a particularly difficult father – and he said : “I finally realized that he had just lost his way.”
I pulled my car over to the side of the road. …..”he had just lost his way”? Could this explain my father, as well? Could it be that he had lost his way, too?
Oh Lord, that described it – my father was not 100% abusive, nor was he 100% loving – somewhere in his own history of having received bad fathering, he lost his way. In his heart I believe my father wanted to be a good man, was in fact a good man – which is why any abuse always seemed so impossible to understand. But that is what brokenness is – losing ones way – not walking the path that is known as right. Falling in the darkness of ones own soul. Losing the way.
There is no blame in that, no need to punish back in that – and no denial of the abuse in that. For some reason those words allow me the freedom of letting go of the part of my relationship with him where he had lost his way. Where he thought being cruel was being strong. Where he mistook force for authority. Where I was victim.
I hope this is helping at least one other person who is reading it. Epiphanal phrases are often very individual. If nothing else, check out the book. The Bond".! Read about The Three Doctors
The struggle to make sense of various parts of our lives is part of living conscious lives. The struggle for awareness, the yearning for freedom, the climb from abuse to wholeness – all are a part of the best moments of being human. What waits on the other side is joy.
Please share your epiphanal moments here – you never know – what gave you insight may well help another woman out here who is waiting to hear exactly what moved you to a deeper and healthier place. Was it a word? A phrase? A moment?
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Some blogging epiphanies:
Click here for a writing epiphany from Cheryl’s Musings
Lara at Ramblings of a Suburban Soccer Mom writes about her epiphany about taking risks
Kit Topazwrites here about having had a health epiphany related to allergens and diet.
In Parenting After Adoption, Rebecca tells us of an epiphany she experienced around her adoptive child’s fear of attending church
Carolyn, in i Becoming a Woman of Purpose, tells of her epiphany about life-coaching.
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Comments
Great post, and such a good phrase to
remember
Loved it. I was incredibly lucky in the father department, but believe me, there are lots of other opportunities to use the phrase!
Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen
Thanks, Kalyn!
I think you are 100% right. As the days go by, my guess is that the phrase resurfaces in a few areas. Thanks for your kind words.
Mata
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
Thankyou for your beautiful post
I always look forward to your posts, and this touched me deeply. My family is big and close and mostly happy - to me. But i had a sad epiphany one day when my realised that my sister had a very different view of our same childhood.
I don't want to tell you about that, though.
As a university student, deep inside exams and post-break-up gloom, I ran across a quote that said
"I just have to cope. Nobody said I had to cope well."
This was quite literally and eye-opening event to me. I realised I DIDN'T HAVE TO SAY I WAS HAPPY. I threw away my stiff upper lip, and was gloriously immature for weeks. i stopped worrying about upsetting people by letting them see that I was upset. I got unstuck.
Fine epiphany!
Getting rid of the stiff upper lip is just such a joy, isn't it? I think your description of what happened "I got unstuck", is a perfect description of what happens after an epiphany. We get unstuck.Thanks for your comments!
--Mata
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
thank you
Your post was lovely. It applies in many ways to me as well (also Polish Catholic) and there's a lot of familial demons there for me as well, especially around my father, but I don't share it on the internet because he's still alive and if he were to find it I know it would hurt him. But needless to say, I agree, and someone once told me too: he did the best he could. Which I believe, it's just hard when the best they can hurts you. So, I'm trying to heal this wound so I don't inflict this on my own (theoretical) children.
Healthy Manifest
yes indeed
Lyssann,
Dzienkuje!
It is very hard when "the best they can do hurts you." My heart understands and I hope you find the healing that you seek.
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
Thank you mata
What a wonderful phrase: to have simply lost their way. Not acting out of intetion, but more lost and unable to find the right way back.
Maybe holding this idea will help.
Epiphanies are wonderful. I too look for them and the moment when they make some part of my life more clear.
Debra
A Stitch In Time
Deb's Daily Distractions
Debra
Sometimes, I think epiphanies are out there looking for US! :-)
Yes, your phrase "not acting out of intention" is exactly 100% right. That was so freeing.
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
My Car Epiphany
Mata,
Great post! Funny I've had several epiphanies in cars...the most important was after a long hard cry on a hilltop in my car..... I realized raising my kids was going 100% my responsibility and felt the weight of it entirely, after this moment I absolutely embraced this and it entirely revolutionized my life.
My battle cry after this was ....whatever it takes, my three kids with not suffer or go without because they did not have a Daddy.
They became the energy and mission that has brought them and me many rewards and driven me to accomplish things I never imagined...their need drove me to great heights and I am still on that ride up!
Look where that epiphany has taken me...I was featured in the NY Times just today!:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/automobiles/autospecial/24WOMEN.html?r...
I now have three very happily married kids and six , yes count 'em six grandchildren.
Jody DeVere
President
www.askpatty.com
www.carblabber.com
GREAT article !!!
Whoooo hooo! Great article and picture! (Love the shirt, too!) I understand the thing about cars....they are my "thinking place", sometimes accidentally, and sometimes deliberately.
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
Lovely Epiphany
Thank you Mata, for sharing these wonderful stories. I believe epiphanies are merely stories wrapped in spiritual lessons, and we get the lessons.
Being able to forgive is an epiphany journey, not just a destination. It is important to learn the lessons and grow along the road to forgiveness.
Thanks for the conversation.
Wishing you inner peace, passion, and purpose!
Coach Carolyn
Becoming a Woman of Purpose
http://spiritwomen.blogspot.com
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a life path -- I have been thinking of doing a post on forgiveness, opening up the "hows" and "whats" and "whys".....maybe this spring.
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
Found a way
I would have had to pull over my car and think on that phrase too. It is beautiful. Lost his way. i truly believe that NO ONE sets out to be abusive or neglectful or in any other way harm and disappoint people. I always try to get to the causal bottom of the behavior, but event hat implies a desire for an answer that may be obfuscated by a simple truth. Lost their way. That's so great. And it implies that we may be able to help them get found, without blame, anger, dread, power, control, etc...
Beautiful.
___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE
make some good news!
www.JustCauseIt.com
You are so right
That's so great. And it implies that we may be able to help them get found, without blame, anger, dread, power, control, etc...
And even if we cannot help -- still no blame on us. Some people just plain get lost. But until I saw my father as having lost his way, there was no manner in which I could help with the finding. He died without his epiphany there. But I also forgave him on his deathbed. It was a big moment.
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
A Simple Epiphany
The first thing that popped into my mind when I was thinking of epiphanies was a very simple one I had a few months ago while reading a book. It was a bad book, and I was not enjoying it in the least. And yet, I kept reading. It finally dawned on me - I can stop reading this terrible book. No one is making me read it. It is not something I am enjoying doing. I have many more productive and fulfilling ways to spend my time. And that was it. I stopped reading it. The obsessive, organizer, control freak in me had a hard time putting that book down without finishing it, but the realization that I could stop doing something that I was not enjoying, no matter how trivial, was a great epiphany for me.
Heather Stork
http://3boysundermyroof.blogspot.com
The power in simplicity
Sometimes the most powerful epiphanies come from such simple images. I recall -- many years ago -- when I was going through a divorce and feeling devastated beyond belief, that I was walking down the snowy streets of NYC through the slush and ice -- and I thought "All I have to do to get through this is to keep putting one foot in front of the other."
It hit me that I didn't have to have a whole plan, or a big solution in mind -- I just had to stay in positive motion. I find myself thinking of that moment whenever I get "jammed up" in my life.
Thanks for sharing your moment..It sounds like a terrific lesson!
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
this spoke to me
Fidget
Finding Yourself Despite Yourself
It took a long time for me to realize that even though my parents don't love me the way *I* need them too, they do love me. I've had to let go a lot when it comes to my dad. I'm working on letting go the stuff about my mom. She's human and i know she loves me the best that she can given her own screwed up go at life.
yes...
It is hard when those who are "supposed to" help us find our way in life, have lost their own. My heart understands your struggle. Every moment of progress made is a huge life dividend. Hang in there !
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
The epiphanies my children will have
I hope these are the revelations, the epiphanies, my children will have some day about me, their mother:
"Well, She sure tried."
"You know, I never realized she was living on such little sleep" (That will be said when they've had their babies!)
And most of all, I hope they have the epiphany that I was someone who could so easily lose their way, and never stop hollering heavenward till I was found...in Him, eternally secure and undeservedly so.
Lauren at Faith Fuel
Hmmmmm
I think the best thing a child can feel about a parent (other than love, of course) is that acknowledgment that the parent gave it their best. What finer tribute?
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool
My Mother Was the Perfect Mother (for me)
Oh, what a great post. A couple years ago my mother had a stroke and as the oldest daughter this put me in the uncomfortable position of facing that I didn't even know if I loved her, much less could be available to her (2 states away). Ironically, for all the right (wrong) reasons I discovered that she was holding my feet to the fire on exactly all the issues I WANTED to be dealing with like whether such a thing as unconditional love really exists. I wrote a whole series about it if anyone wants to hear the confessions of a reluctant daughter and how my mother and I made our peace. Start at the bottom for chronology's sake. And YES my mother has read this. And NO I hadn't considered that when I posted it. She thought is was a great spiritual exercise for me! Here's the series
Laura
Dragon Slayer's Guide to Life