Unleash Your Inner Self Series – You’ve got issues~

Daddy Issues – Article 3

Here we are, at the halfway mark of my first blog series. My hope is that you’ve received some valuable insight so far and have been able to find areas of growth and have begun your own transformation. It’s the most liberating feeling!

Before I jump into this post, I would like to once again clarify, I am not sharing my history and stories with you for any form of sympathy, pity or attention…I’m good and don’t need it. I am well into my own self-discovery journey and am at absolute peace with my past, present and future. My ONLY goal here is to be transparent and authentic in order for all of you amazing humans to feel somehow connected to me and to know that you are understood and valued. I also want to be an example to everyone proving that no matter the battles you face in life, they DO NOT have to define who you are. For anyone who needs it, I hope you get some validation and solace when reading my blog. That’s all I want from this. Once this series is finished, I will be launching a brand new set of blogs filled with positivity, light and joy to help usher you into the beginning of your new higher selves.

Oh daddy where art thou? Not in my life, just the way I like it. I mentioned before how much it tickles me how the Universe drops little signs and synchronicities when you are in alignment. Before I started this blog and drafted this first series, I hadn’t seen the boogeyman (bio dad) in roughly 10 years. (I’ll get to when I do finally meet him face to face later). Well, this morning I woke up, it’s Sunday morning and decided that I was going to start writing this particular post, “Daddy Issues” later today. I headed to the gym and then had to run some errands before heading back home and would you believe it if I told you that TODAY of all days, while at the grocery store I walked right past him. Full eye contact and all, did he recognise me….absolutely and not a word was spoken. Can you say, CONFIRMATION!

I am going to jump into my teen years which like most teens, was a difficult time in my life. Problem was, I lacked guidance and always felt very alone. It seemed as though I was dragging myself through my days, walking aimlessly with no direction in my life. Sure I had some great friends and did have some good times, and I am so thankful for those moments. The majority of those good times however, I was either piss loaded drunk or high so I don’t remember a lot of it sadly (total train wreck I was) To back things up just a bit, when I was about 13-14 years old our “happy family” broke apart and my mother was destroyed over it. If you didn’t read the earlier blogs in this series and wanted to, they can be found under ARCHIVE BLOGS. Things at home became very volatile. My mom and I were fighting all the time and my middle brother had MANY issues of his own developing for a multitude of reasons. My baby brother was too young to really understand what was happening. I was already a mess and couldn’t handle the pressure so I retreated, I moved in with my grandmother when I was 15. She did her best to guide me (much love Nan) but I was wild and out of control at this point. I only found comfort in the bottle and boys, all too often found myself in very precarious situations. 

You see, I know there are some fantastic single moms out there but there’s just something so important about a girl having a father in her life to love and protect her, make her feel like nothing in this world can touch her. I know now that a lot of my issues stemmed from abandonment and fear of not having that protector in my life. This also created some serious attachment issues. I will elaborate on that in the next blog, Relationship Release. So if you have a good dad in your life that does his best, give him a hug and thank him. He’s a precious commodity.

I used sex as a way to feel connected, didn’t matter who really so long as it temporarily filled that void. We all know that is not healthy at all! This also ultimately changed the way I perceived what real intimacy was and how a healthy relationship felt.

I am going to share the memory of an evening that occurred when I was at one of my lowest points. Myself and a couple of “friends” and I put friends in quotations because these were people I had just recently met, were all heading out to see the movie The Doors that had just been released in theatres. After the movie the plan was to hit up a house party (or 5). So I blindly followed these “friendly strangers” to the first party, I had also had no clue whose party this was. Of course, I had way too much to drink and dropped a hit of  “Acid” for the first (and ONLY) time! On top of that we were all doing ”blades” of hash at this party. By the way, I’m still only 15 at the time. A couple hours in, I’m sitting on the couch of a total stranger with no idea who was sitting around me. No clue where all my so called friends had disappeared to and really didn’t care at the moment. All of a sudden it felt like my throat was completely closing and I was feeling very off and nauseous. I stumbled outside to the balcony (we were on the 3rd floor of a triplex I think it was). I leaned over the railing and started to pass out. I would have gone over but somebody behind me caught me thankfully and carried me back into the house and laid me on the couch. FULL overdose that night, I was in and out of consciousness and I heard a few people saying, “should we call an ambulance”? For the record, no ambulance was called. I remember NOTHING after that and the next day I woke up alone in some apartment building hallway. No idea how I got there but I know whatever happened that night wasn’t good! I sadly didn’t learn my lesson from that night either, I have horror stories for days like this … .not sure how I survived my teens really. It’s sort of a miracle, honestly what was all that?!

Of course because of my untamed behaviour I built a “name”” for myself which made it very easy for guys to show interest in me. I became addicted to that attention and thought I needed it. It was worse than the drugs and alcohol themselves. But then that interest would quickly fade and there I was feeling hollow again, such a viscous cycle. I somehow managed to graduate and with decent marks actually. Scary to think what I may have accomplished had I actually applied myself and received the encouragement to do so. By grade 12, my anxiety was at an all time high, I skipped Prom all together and pretty much turned into a hermit. High school grade 12 trip…nope wasn’t doing it!

Does any of this sound familiar to you? You know, abandonment issues don’t have to just come from an absent parent, any number of events can cause this and it’s a real problem when it comes to trying to function in good healthy relationships with people. From this, trust issues are born and as I mentioned earlier, also creates a distortion between attachment and connection.

I know that part of the reason I ended making all of these poor decisions was a direct result of those nasty “daddy issues”. I worked hard and moved past my demons and so can you. I no longer let them define the way I see love, sex, relationships or myself most importantly.

The exercises I gave you in my previous blog are the same ones I used to work through these painful memories and learn to love myself, maybe for the first time ever. I will recap them here for you:

• Meditate and allow yourself to thoroughly scour your childhood/teen memories.
• Make a list of all the traumatic events that you recall, every single one of them that make you feel a certain way.
• Deal with each event separately, how?
• Each night while you’re lying in bed, choose a memory and bring that day or night into your mind as clearly as possible. Try to remember every detail, feel all the feels and then picture your adult self coming to the teen you and comforting them. Tell your teen self what you need to hear at that moment. Give your teen self and hug and provide comfort. Walk your teen self to a clearing filled with bright light and usher them off into that light… …letting go of all those feelings of sorrow and pain with your teen self. Watch until the feelings and the teen fade into full disappearance.
• Repeat this exercise for as long as you need to until those memories no longer invoke feelings in you, that’s when you have regained full control! 
• Affirmations should become a daily practice as well.

Now to fast forward to when I did actually meet the boogeyman. My son had just turned 3 and I thought he deserved to know more about his family history. Perhaps if bio-dad met his grandson maybe it would change things for us too. I had a lot of reservations about doing this, I mean if he wanted a relationship with me he was the parent and the responsibility should have been on him to do so. But me now being a parent myself, I put my child’s needs first. I reached out to my paternal grandparents first, and set up a time to meet with them. They were sweet and kind, if any good came from this meeting it was to meet my grandmother. She was such a soft, kind lady, she passed from cancer just a couple years after I met her so I was very thankful for the time we had. During our visit they said they would reach out to my father to see where his thoughts were. It took some time to hear back but after a few weeks had passed he agreed to meet. I remember so vividly, he showed up at my place. I welcomed him in and one of the first things out of his mouth was, “so why did you reach out now and not earlier, do you need something”? At that point I should have slammed the fucking door in his face. But me being me, I accepted it and tried to make the best of this meeting. Over the next couple years we TRIED to develop a relationship but I always felt like just a visitor in his life. Never really treated the same as his son and daughter… .so, I backed off and had no more contact with him. I Didn’t need anything else making me feel bad. I did that well enough on my own…..BLOOD ISN’T ALWAYS THICKER THAN WATER! 

If you have anyone in your life out of obligation that does not lift you up and bring positive to your life…..let them go. You do not have a responsibility to anyone but yourself. This includes friends or family. You don’t have to completely cut them out (unless you want to) but you can put enough distance between you to allow yourself to feel free from their negativity.

I know I skipped 3 or 4 years of my life here but I will fill in the gaps in my next blog. 

Before I jump into this post, I would like to once again clarify, I am not sharing my history and stories with you for any form of sympathy, pity or attention…I’m good and don’t need it. I am well into my own self-discovery journey and am at absolute peace with my past, present and future. My ONLY goal here is to be transparent and authentic in order for all of you amazing humans to feel somehow connected to me and to know that you are understood and valued. I also want to be an example to everyone proving that no matter the battles you face in life, they DO NOT have to define who you are. For anyone who needs it, I hope you get some validation and solace when reading my blog. That’s all I want from this. Once this series is finished, I will be launching a brand new set of blogs filled with positivity, light and joy to help usher you into the beginning of your new higher selves.

Pick yourself up! Brush yourself off and keep moving forward, working towards a better you, you’re in there!

Until Friday night…

Be Happy, Be Kind and most importantly LOVE YOURSELF <3