When asked, “Are you a god or a man?” the Buddha replied, “I am awake.”
Awakening is one of life’s most profound achievements—and one of the hardest to achieve. That’s because awakening requires us to see ourselves clearly, and seeing ourselves clearly is often painful, the very last thing we want to do since we are usually (and sometimes justifiably) afraid of what we might see.
This series of posts will be about fathers awakening—waking up to see themselves not as the parents whom they have intended to be, but as the parents whom their children have actually encountered and experienced over the years.
That kind of awakening often does not take place until our children have grown out of day-to-day parenting, and when the nature and texture of the bond that we have with them, and have had with them, can be seen, heard, and understood differently—with more perspective, with more honesty, and with more humility.
It is only when we have woken up to the kind of father we have been in the past that we will have the capacity to develop a connection with them as young adults that can propel both generations into a richer, warmer, more positive relational future.
As a family psychologist for over four decades, I have seen countless men wake up, but I have also seen countless men stay asleep. I have watched men consciously or unconsciously ruin fatherhood, and also watched men courageously repair fatherhood. I have helped men to rescue themselves from absentee fatherhood and, through so doing, rescue themselves from absentee selfhood, and from absentee marriages and co-parenting partnerships.
I have witnessed men who tried and stumbled and tried again to be the father that they wanted to be, their efforts slowly, and sometimes splendidly, paying off. And I have witnessed men who gave up trying to be the father that they wanted to be and died without having done so, leaving behind for their partners, children, and grandchildren an unsolvable legacy of pain, loss, and sorrow.
I have observed fathers become estranged from their families, and I have observed estranged fathers circling back years later and becoming remorseful and loving grandfathers. I have regularly guided men in the direction of reconciliation and redemption, carefully, tenderly returning to their families and the collective embrace of what every family member had been missing and longing for, sometimes without even being aware of that.
I have sat with fathers as they wept for the many reasons that men weep—with anguish and/or with joy, with fear and/or with gratitude, with self-hatred and/or with self-love. I have also sat with fathers who valiantly but futilely strove to find the tears that captured their grief, tears that would release them from the grip of their anguish if only they could summon them. And I have sat with fathers who heard me without listening, who did not understand that they really wanted and needed to cry, that it was not a shameful act if they did so, and that they would feel immensely better if they could.
An old adage advises, “The only way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” If your dream as a father is to keep a close relationship with your young adult, or to develop an even closer relationship with your adult, or to perhaps create a closeness with your young adult that was never really there in the first place during their childhood or adolescence, then waking up to assess the dad you have actually been will be a necessary first step in the direction of making that dream become a reality.
