My father passed over almost 6 years ago, but very rarely does he come into my thoughts. Recently in a conversation with a friend who was talking about his daughter, the subject of the relationship that I had with my father popped up. This friend asked me, “What was the relationship with your father?” My reply was that “I could not relate to him, and anyway, he has passed over” – as if it did not really matter because he was no longer here.
How Wrong Was I?
My friend persisted and asked: “But what was the relationship you had with him, for the relationship is still there?” I struggled, not wanting to go there and feel the pain, but I very quickly surrendered and much sadness came up – sadness that I had buried for a long time. The deep sadness was that when I was a child my father could not express his love to me: the love that was his most natural essence and who he was.
As a child I could feel my father’s deep buried sadness, covered with layers and layers of protection. This sadness ran so deep it felt to me it consumed him, but I could see past his hurts and see his divinity to see how deeply tender and gentle a soul he was and this is what hurt me the most:
That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.
Not being truly seen nor met by my father somehow I felt less, and by feeling less I chose to hide my love and lost my-self in the process. This resulted in my blaming men for not providing me the space to fully express all of me… and the kick-back was, as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously, for example, taking on other people’s stuff – thus I was no longer able to discern what was true and what was not true.
By absorbing everything over the years, with heaps more hurts accumulating one on top of the other, the original truth that I made myself less turned into: “I am less because I am a woman, I am less equal to men,” and then to – “the inequality between the sexes is because of men, which explains my lack of commitment in relationships.”
In having regular esoteric healing sessions with my practitioner, I have worked on my childhood issues/hurts, making it accessible to come back to the original truth and truly ‘see’ my father again – all of him – along with the acceptance and understanding of his choices. With this acceptance I had a real sense of “we saw each other” and with that our relationship felt healed, and somehow expanded. I love my father deeply… words I have not spoken in a long time.
Fathers and Daughters / Mothers and Sons
While I was still digesting the beautiful revelation and healing with my father, I heard my friend saying: “What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?”
If there is any truth in this possibility, then I would say to my daughter and all the daughters of this world, “Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” Also I would say to my son, and all the sons of this world, “Do not hold back the love you have for your mother for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.”
I love my father deeply… and I love that his reflection of who he truly was has supported me to see the same reflection in all men: that in each and every man on this planet – when they discard their self-made coats of armour, masks, and walls of protection – there is a gorgeous, tender, playful, cheeky, deeply sensitive, precious, and very vulnerable, innocent, divine little boy bursting with so much love. And let’s be honest, this world desperately needs the caring, exquisitely warm tender love that men can deliver.
Therefore, I would say to all the men of this world:
“Give yourself permission to be the Godliness or Son of God! Be who you truly are.”
Healing the relationship I had with my father, I can feel how equal men and women truly are. We are both equal in our divinity. When both sexes stop blaming the other gender and then come together, unite together, commit together, and truly hold each other, there is no war and there is no perfection, there is only a forever expansion and deepening of love, paving a new way for how men and women relate to each other.
The love I now feel and express for my father has provided the space to give myself permission to reflect to all; this is who I am – I am this sexy, beautiful, gorgeous, powerful, wise woman. This is me, of course it is, I always was this. I can now shine and show all of me in the knowing that it is my true reflection that truly supports/allows another to be who they truly are.
We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.
In deep gratitude to Serge Benhayon for his amazing reflection of how to live in this world, being your true self.
By Jacqueline McFadden, Teacher, Esoteric Practitioner, The Netherlands
Further Reading:
Appreciation in Relationships
My Dad and Me – A Reconnection
Re-Connecting With Mum and Dad
Seeing others and ourselves for who we truly are is to connect to the natural inner essence of love within us all.
Our parents are a product of their own childhood and upbringing as were their parents before them. And it seems to me we perpetuate the cycle of not supporting a child to grow up knowing who they are and what they are here to bring. I feel if we could just support children of one generation to know who they are in truth then we could break this dark pattern or cycle that we are seemingly trapped in so that no one gets to feel the truth, that we are not from this plane of life that we are here to evolve back to the universe that we come from. This may for now seem a bit farfetched but in the future we will accept this as the truth.
Amazing Blog Jacqueline, how we hold others is a great reflection on how we hold our-selves, so open up to our parents and siblings to allow and understand the relationship we can now build as one of Truth, thus a deepening of the Love we all can be brings us such a blessing. Our early years can hold so much and when we consider what you have shared Jacqueline, it becomes empowering, as everything is part of our evolution and when seen in this light it takes all our relationships to a new deepening level. Evolution because we are all constellated to learn from each other and seeing we are all Love then life can be about our work, family and relationships deepening so we deepen our levels of Love from every angle. So no out moments or distraction as every aspect of life is uplifting to a deeper level of Loving Truth.
By holding back the love that we are, we do not allow others to see us in our true light. When we really shine, some will be magnetically pulled towards us and others may back away, but there is no true support for anyone if we only live a dimmer version of our true selves.
It is never a good idea to hold back our love for many reasons, ‘as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously, for example, taking on other people’s stuff – thus I was no longer able to discern what was true and what was not true.’
Beautiful blog Jacqueline, you are reminding us that in every relationship, what we crave the most is true connection. How we respond and handle a lack of connection will affect how we are in all our relationships. Bring honesty, understanding, clarity and love, and it can offer us deep healing and expansion.
We all have the opportunity to be loving reflections for each other and as you say this is how we can truly support each other.
“In deep gratitude to Serge Benhayon for his amazing reflection of how to live in this world, being your true self.” And the inspiration that we too can offer this reflection to each other.
It’s easy to go into the out of sight out of mind mentality when a close relative passes over and we no longer have to deal with the tension and energy exchange with them, that inevitably pushes our buttons. But what a shame it is that when we have that direct reflection that we do not recognise or appreciate it for what it is – an opportunity to heal ourselves and others. Thank you for your wise words, Jacqueline.
we all have a choice to not hold back love – the more we express the more we receive and in the end – what have we got to lose. Love is so natural to us all – so whilst we are still alive – we still have the option to love more and learn more about ourselves and each other.
Life is a continual growing of awareness and understanding, and we can choose to grow and expand our love as you share hm.
Thank you Jacqueline, for a beautiful and inspiring sharing, while reading your experience with your father a lot came up for me in my own relationship with my father who I saw some years ago fo only two hours in my whole life, I now feel how much I have missed his presence in my life, so much has come up for me, thank you for the healing your story has offered to me.
I can see how hurts build and get masked and then go on to be masked some more till the original hurt is nowhere to be seen. Unpacking the reactions and the masks then become far more complicated than they needed to be.
It is never too late to complete with another so when they pass nothing has been left unsaid. But as you have share Jacqueline, it is never to late to complete with a loved one.
A huge learning that I understood from this really loving and understanding account of Jacqueline’s honouring of her father and thus herself is that we are always in relationship with everyone, no matter if they are alive or have passed away, and that all our experiences with them live on and can be felt within our bodies.
One of the most important aspects of this article is the final reflection that, we are all reflections for one another… When we understand this and live this, it is like many doorways and windows opening for us to walk and see through in our lives
And it reminds us to check-in, what are we reflecting to others, is it love and responsibility or disregard and irresponsibility?
A very healing read Jacqueline McFadden was the comment about why my parents constellated me; was the possibility I had the reflection to be the ‘perfect’ son in being naturally me. And know the love I had for them no matter how angry, sad and then abusive they were, my love I held them in was the love I was within and kept shining on no matter what they did. Amazing, Beautiful, Transforming LOVE ❤️
I was not met by mother and father too and so easy can you blame them for that. As Jacqueline explains how the blame passes on to others and soon enough everybody can and does hurts you – your responsibility reduces to nothing. The truth is revealing so very healing. My father was not met for the dear, innocent, play-full child-like character boy he was, and my mother was not cherished, adored and delicately touched for the amazing powerful little girl she was. Thus it makes absolute sense why I was not too. They are both dead and I love them now like I always did to the end of the universe and back. .
I agree with you Rik we have to at some point stop the cycle of abuse that we have all perpetrated for eons with each other. This can start with us now as we accept children for the glorious children they are and support them to grow up knowing this and not to crush them with our family jealousies and to know that by deepening their essence it will support them to cope more easily with the current education system, which is also not supporting children to grow.
Underneath the armour and the skin we clothe ourselves in as men and as women, pulses the one and same love – the truth of who we are.
It is so common that our parents, who do not know the love they are, are unable to fully love the child. It is easy for reactions to occur to deal with this, such as blaming yourself for not being enough or blaming men etc. I wonder how many of us have learnt to bury this early hurt and have this affecting our relationship with ourself and other people. This blog shows just how much we miss out on when we do.
And the different choices we can make, as Jacqueline has now made, showing all of us it is how we are in each and every situation that makes a big difference.
Jacqueline, I find this article very healing, my father has also passed away and I had not considered that I still have a relationship with him, reflecting on how he was and his essence I can feel that he was like a little boy, he was very silly and playful and innocent, this is beautiful to remember and to appreciate; ‘in each and every man on this planet – when they discard their self-made coats of armour, masks, and walls of protection – there is a gorgeous, tender, playful, cheeky, deeply sensitive, precious, and very vulnerable, innocent, divine little boy bursting with so much love’.
With this memory Rebecca of his playful innocence feels like to me you are holding him deeply.
Holding back the love that we are prevents others and ourselves from knowing the Divine love of God.
I can appreciate this sentence now
“That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.”
When we cannot see or feel how divine and beautiful we are there is scant possibility to see it in another. We have all been tricked into believing ourselves to be Human, when in fact we are human – beings. We are beings in a human body and until we come to this understanding we will always consider each other to be less than what or who we truly are. This is a very sad situation we currently live with.
Think you nailed it there Mary, that until we gain the awareness that we are more than this physical body, and that we do not come from here, we will remain in the rat race life has become treating ourselves and all others as less.
Thank you Jacqueline, it’s always deeply healing to read your blog. There is much to understand about our parents and people in general, the big picture of how and why we all are like we are. It definitely hurts very much to not be met in our essence and cherished for who we are, and over time with the support of Universal Medicine Therapies to deal with these hurts I have been able to also see the wider picture of what was going on for the other person, that they too hadn’t been met and were encased in hurts and protections. The bigger picture of understanding another’s childhood and life can support the healing process of letting go of hurts. This is such a powerful line also “We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.”
It is powerful Melinda, I agree. Only yesterday I got a powerful reflection from 2 others in how much I drain my kidney energy (life force) .I was ill having a whole head cold/whole body aching going on and stayed at home for 2 days, still not recovered. Anyway, here was me ill and I found myself supporting 2 others in two conversations, the first lasting around 45/50 mins and then a little later the second conversation lasting almost 90 minutes… No wonder I felt drained and irritated afterwards at myself for not on that moment saying, this will have to wait until I am feeling better. Yes it is a big ouch, and still feels very raw with me in just how much I invest in others getting it.
Time to cut this old pattern that drains my kidneys! All that said, I am thankful for the reflection for the awareness it has given me as now I can re-imprint. Reflections bring awareness.
This is so touching Jacqueline. My relationship with my father was very similar to yours. And I have realised that over the years I have tarnished every man as being the same as him. i have been re-imprinting the way that I relate to men, and have been holding myself in a way that does not expect the same behaviour from men as my dad. As a result I have been observing and experiencing beautiful qualities in the men around me, and finding this really touching. My unresolved hurts were in the way of me having a different experience from the one I was used to. It is beautiful to open to and allow the beauty, tenderness and kindness of men, and appreciate this to the core.
We must never forget that our parents are not perfect – for they too are human beings and just like us are both learning and growing.
As do we choose them to reflect to us the imperfections so that we too can come to a deeper acceptance within ourselves as to the way things are. Often what we react to most in another is something that needs great healing in us.
“That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen”
Unfortunately at this present time this sentences relates to much of the population, we really do not claim the love we really all are and thus everyone suffers.
Jaqueline, this is very wise and makes sense to me; ‘We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.’
It is a seminal moment when a child can realise that the parents they have are simply dealing with their own issues and so what perceived lack of connection there may between you is merely an extension of the hurt and tension that they are feeling about themselves and perhaps their own experiences of childhood. To be able to see this bigger picture gives a child the freedom to love unconditionally, because with this view we are all equal.
I am learning each and every day how we can be distracted by arguments and conflict within families rather than see what is actually going on, what the hurts are, why they are there and how they were triggered. Seeing people around us for who they are rather than what they do or say is step one to bringing understanding and healing.
A powerful testimony to the truth that we are not ever our hurts, or our behaviours, that underneath we are all love, want to feel love and long to share love. It is our natural way of being, without question, and the more we embrace this for ourselves, heal and let go of our pain, the more we will embrace this love in all others and see beyond the hurt and loveless behaviours. In living this truth, we live evolution.
This is a great example of how we can measure who we are off another’s reaction to us, instead of connecting to our essence and expressing from there. When we don’t read a situation and come to a truthful understanding of the situation we can twist it and make it personal, taking ourselves further away from the love we are.
It sure is Kim. The greatest measure of who we are is always revealed through our connection to the love we all are in essence.
Yes indeed, if we stop blaming the opposite sex for everything, what magic there would be on offer for us all. An acceptance of ourselves and then of those around us. Is it possible it’s simpler than we think? Is it possible if we let go of the reigns, that we may not fall?
The essence of everyone is love, no matter how thick the mask and how deep the protection
“That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.” Yes very true, this is how it works. If we do not see our own divinity and beauty, we are never really able to meet and see other people in that same quality.
I love reading about the innocence of a child’s view towards their parents, how we can see straight through to that beautiful soul that is inside every person. Being able to maintain this view throughout life and to not get blown about by the sadness and the misery that exists and lives instead of this beauty and wonder is a fine art.
It is lovely to read how such old hurts can truly be healed, paving the way for true and decent relationships
“… in each and every man on this planet – when they discard their self-made coats of armour, masks, and walls of protection – there is a gorgeous, tender, playful, cheeky, deeply sensitive, precious, and very vulnerable, innocent, divine little boy bursting with so much love. ” So true Jacqueline. I find it helpful to remember they were all gorgeous sensitive little boys once. You can then feel this tenderness even in the toughest guy, but hidden away deep inside them.
“That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.” You sum it up perfectly Jacqueline and I am sure that this relates to so many of us.
Our society does not encourage us to be seen for who we are, it is up to each of us to break that mould and to instead truly claim ourselves.
And no-one can do this for us, we each have to walk our own path of return back to Soul. When we make this our way, there is so much support available because sometimes it can be challenging when the old unloving choices surface to be cleared and healed from the body.
I loved reading this blog Jacqueline. My father is still around though he is in his late 80’s. Every now and then I get a glimpse of his tenderness but he covers it up very quickly with this hardness he grew up around, its an unfamiliar territory for him.
It’s never too late to re-build that lost connection whether it is with you or whether it is with another.
“This world desperately needs the caring, exquisitely warm tender love that men can deliver.” so true for when they do it is very beautiful to experience. And as a women I am finding it is my responsibility to accept that tenderness and love being expressed towards me and claim that I am worthy of such. Expressions of love and tenderness only grow when they are nurtured and appreciated.
It’s very true Jacqueline that our parents (or other people) may not be able to meet us for who we truly are unless there is that willingness or ability to feel who they themselves are. It was also a great line about us all being equally divine regardless of our choices.
Thank you Jacqueline for a deeply beautifully sharing of being able to revisit your connection with your Father and see and hold him in the love and gorgeousness of the tender man you have felt him to be, and the power of that reflection in your life with men. ” We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.”
It is very understandable as a gorgeous, divine little girl that we get hurt when our fathers do not treat us with the preciousness we feel inside. But as I have grown up and reflected on this, I also see the huge expectations we place on our parents and other ‘close’ people to behave in a certain way. Your father is a great example of a man who was unable to cherish himself, so just didn’t have the capacity to cherish anyone else. It is the developing of this self-cherishing so we don’t look to or impose on others to treat us as precious that feels important to me now.
‘as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously’, We don’t realise we are holding back love at the time because it is what we are accustomed to doing, it has been a gradual withdrawing as we have felt less and less comfortable being ourselves as we have “grown up” We also don’t realise we are absorbing energy from other people and we can blame ourselves for having been so reactive. I love the simplicity of this blog and the truth it brings.
Jacqueline, I’m sure you story is that same reflection for many women and men. We carry much in the way of hurt, and these hurts start at a very young age. It demonstrates the importance of meeting our children for all the love and divineness they are.
Wow I just love this and how we don’t have to hold back our love for anyone because it provides a healing for them and us. Wow how powerful and gorgeous is this!
It’s great to be reminded that we can heal our relationships even if the other person is not around to interact with any more. It’s also great to realise that support does not have to mean doing anything to help or go to the aid of another but that by just being who we are, naturally so, gives a reflection that offers a healing.
Beautifull in that even when people are no longer with us we can still heal our relationship with them ????
By living all that we are, not holding ourselves back from the world, we are offering a reflection to others to know that this is how they can live to, if they choose to. Just as it is a choice for us to live like this it is also a choice for every other person. We cannot save anyone but we can offer them a reflection of another way of life.
“We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.” So true Jacqueline – and this is how we develop and evolve.
Having the willingness to understand another creates space for healing that allows us to reflect to the world the love that we truly are.
It does seem that we are robbed of so much when our ideals and beliefs get in the way of us having a truly loving relationship with our family and friends – in fact everyone. To break down those barriers of hurts and let others in is a game changer for the outcome of every relationship, and indeed how our lives play out.
“We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.” Profound wisdom – thankyou Jacqueline.
Sue, I wrote this blog over a year ago and the line of course that you have highlighted and I am just beginning to really feel and know how much we communicate by the Law of Reflection and how truly supportive this is. All we have to do is express who we innately are; A Son of God, which has nothing to do with ‘doing’, but rather just ‘being’.
I love this part about seeing your father for the gentle and tender man that he was, regardless of what he could or could not see. This, I have found, is a very integral part of our relationships with our parents – to remain seeing them for the true people that they are, and not just the struggling adults/parents that they often have become.
Unfortunately this line “That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.” sums up most parents. We are born absolutely pure, innocent and beautiful, and we know it and then over time to some degree or another we lose it and forget that we are made of love. The games then begins as this is when we will become and use and anything to fill the gapping whole of not being true to ourselves.
What I appreciate about this blog is feeling that the imprints of relationships stay with us until we heal them. Though your father was no longer here, the imprint of how you both were in that relationship was still there for you and still impacted on how you related to other men- amazing to feel that you can shift this in yourself without needing the other person to do anything.
Yes MW, healing is super simple when we are ready to let go of hurts and issues and yes it is amazing that we can do this for ourselves without the other person needing to do anything, which feels to me a blessing as the other person provided the reflection of what was still to be healed in oneself.
This is a truly inspiring reminder to us all to open our hearts to others and to ourselves.
What a beautiful and loving blog Jacqueline. My mother passed over two days ago. She chose not to love herself maybe because of how her parents were with her and how this lack of love is passed on from generation to generation. The ending years of her life were unpleasant to say the least. It is time we bring love and understanding as you have expressed back to our lives.
‘We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.’ This is awesome for me to re-read this morning because as a support worker I can go into fix it mode but actually how I am with myself is crucial and I can just be with my clients and allow them the dignity of coming to their own decisions and support them in their choices.
I am also a support worker Helen for the last 3 months, and my awareness is I just have to be present, bringing all of me, and the rest is taken care of. It is so lovely being able to support people in their own homes especially now that I am in my elder energy.
Jacqueline thankyou for this heartfelt blog. What’s touched me deeply is the understanding of where men and fathers themselves are at, and although I may have been hurt by not being met, I am still able through my own understanding to let go of this hurt and re-ignite the love I so naturally am.
You know it’s sad how many people do not see how absolutely divinely beautiful they are, it’s such a vital part of life, knowing your own beauty and sharing it with other people.
Meg I feel this is part of the true joy of healing our own hurts and living connected to our soul – our ability to show others who they truly are by reflection.
I am closer now to my mother, at the age of 60 (that’s me, my mother is 89) than I have ever been, and it is true Jaqueline the more we allow this love to flow the more love we find for ourselves. My mother and I are now building a relationship based on love and a deep understanding and it has transformed the way we are with each other.
Lovely to re read your sharing Jacqueline. I didn’t feel close to my Dad for many years (he passed on 10 years ago) until my mother had passed. Dad became more vulnerable and sensitive. I have always been grateful that I was able to connect once more with him in those last years
The best part for me about having parents, is the opportunity to show them the love that I feel. It is a unique situation because only they have known you for as long as your whole life, have seen you through every age, and even though there have been tough times with hurt and fear, the fact that love remains is pure gold, and that is something that I return to everyday.
Thank you Jacqueline your blog offers beautiful support and reminds us that it is never too late to express our love to another and to truly heal a relationship. The relationship with my father is not very close and I have worked through my hurts around this, but I can feel that I am in protection around him and holding back and not be my shiny gorgeous self therefore missing an opportunity for a deeper connection with him.
I love reading this as it supports me to feel the deep love I have for my father but often don’t express because we have developed a certain way of interacting with each other that never involves sharing how you really feel. It has inspired me to bring more love to him.
This is so true of many of our relationships. It’s like we make an arrangement that is comfortable for us never to deepen, until one party says that’s enough, I know we can offer more.
Similarly I have been walking around hurt that my father is remote to me, that I can’t establish a deeper relationship with him. But I love the way that you have expressed this Jacqueline. All I have to do is just be my awesome gorgeousness when I am with him (and everyone else!), and that presents the opportunity to connect each and every time fulfilling my part absolutely.
It is always sad when we see someone so divine and amazing not acknowledging it for themselves and acting in a way that is not that. When we see through the amour and all the many forms of protection we see that each and everyone of us is tender, amazing and made of love.
It can bring up a lot of sadness when we allow ourselves to feel how cold or how distant or disconnected a ‘close’ family member is or has been. This sadness comes also from knowing deep within that this is not their natural way of being, We know them to be more ‘full of themselves’ and so it hurts to see them differently.
Thank you Jacqueline. Your blog touched deeply my heart. Don’t holding back the love that we are is the best reminder to our parents, for them to feel the love that they also already are.
My father passed over many years ago leaving me with many wonderful memories and so much appreciation for what he brought to my life, but looking back now I realise that we never sat and discussed life on a deeper level. Yes he shared with me the magic of nature, this world and the universe, but never about us as people, what makes us tick, what we truly feel and what it is we would like in our lives. Now I can feel that he was carrying much pain around relationships and was simply unable to share it, as I in turn lived my life for so long. Reflecting on this I can feel the healing that is possible for me and this feels like a belated, but so very welcome and precious gift from him to me.
Beautiful sharing Ingrid, just showing when we are ready and bring understanding, there is so much healing energy available to us all. What a very precious gift indeed from him to you.
Such a wonderful and wise experience you share Jacqueline. It is very timely for me to read as my father is experiencing very ill health. What you share is absolutely my experience, there comes a time when the defenses are down and we can simply be together as two divine beings, the hurts and pain disappear. What has struck me is that it has taken this to truly give myself permission to open my heart. I love what you share about this reflecting with all male relationships, thank you.
As women, not holding back the love we have for men comes first from a connection and an honouring of ourselves, whether it is with our fathers, husbands, boyfriends, friends, colleagues, brothers etc, a connection built with ourselves allows an expression to men in equality without the hierarchical prison we give to genders and/or social/familial levels. We speak from our hearts no more and no less.
Jacqueline your blog has supported me to go deeper with my connection with my Dad. He was a silent man and yet I could feel his utter beauty, complete integrity in the way he lived his life. The sad fact was he was unable to express it verbally, so I realized I related to him from an unconscious level, not the best way for a child to have a relationship with one’s dad. Thanks to Universal Medicine, I realize this is slowly changing as my acceptance of self and my Dad heals at a deeper level.
Super to hear Mary! Sounds like a lot of self-healing taking place.
It is amazing how much love we can feel for our parents, even as we watch them live through their own struggles, the love we have can remain solid and unwavering. This is perhaps one of life’s greatest aspects, for as long as we have people who we can say we have love for, then there will always be love. And this is a great place to start with any journey.
Thank you for sharing Willem, it was lovely to read how you saw what your part was in the relationship with your mother, which brought the understanding you needed in order to forgive her. Feels like both of you received a warm gorgeous blessing and nothing was left incomplete. Beautiful!
This is very profound Willem, it is so clearly and simply true it leaves us to be more honest about our relationships, expose what needs to be cleared.
Jacqueline thank you for your article, it is so important to feel the equalness of love between ourselves and our parents, even if our parents find it hard to express this, we are able to feel it within their essence. From that feeling of equalness we are then open to all relationships later in life.
Jacqueline I read your blog again this morning and what struck me was how harming it is to hold back and not express all of myself in full in every moment. I love your advice – ‘“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” Also I would say to my son, and all the sons of this world, “Do not hold back the love you have for your mother for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.” Its a win win situation, and it does not necessarily mean everyone is going to be as equally loving back to you, but I can see the benefit of not keeping things in, because everyone then gets to feel me in full, and gets the whole picture, not a truncated version.
Exactly Debra, I too can feel more and more just how harming it is for everyone when we hold back and not express all of ourselves in full – everyone misses out on the magic that is always present when we share our truth, and our love.
Yes Katie I absolutely agree, how can we appreciate another when we do not appreciate ourself? This has been a big one for me and as I reflect there is indeed much appreciating of myself to do. The consciousness that it is ‘bragging or I am up myself’ to appreciate myself is indeed an illusion, a belief which I have created on purpose to try and stop me claim and live in full my beautiful qualities which I am here to naturally express. It is incredible the ideals and beliefs that we take on that are so not true.
“… as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously, …” This line stopped me to ponder more deeply on the power of expressing love and that every time I hold back my love, I am in fact abusing myself.
‘Every time I hold back my love, I am in fact abusing myself’, a powerful reminder Caroline to take into my day.
I can very much relate to “I am less because I am a woman, I am less equal to men,” and then to – “the inequality between the sexes is because of men, which explains my lack of commitment in relationships.” There is no battle between men and women, we are equal but I have not always seen it in this way. I have blamed men for not treating me as an equal but I have found that whenever an issue arose between a man and myself that it had nothing to do with me being a woman but had all to do with me not accepting my light and who I truly am. My relationships with men are changing because of my committment to the responsibility I have to myself.
And that responsibility includes expressing love; the more I express love in my relationships with men the more warmth and gentleness there is in the connection. This began as I made a choice to look at and feel my hurts, opening up and allowing them in…. it is work-in-progress….
Love your honesty Caroline, and same for me too, I would blame the men in my life, but the truth was that I was still in ‘hiding’, not feeling safe to express myself or fully share myself with men as I had no self-trust or self-acceptance or self-love.
We create games on purpose to hide our light and not shine and making ourselves less is certainly one of those games I can still play. I can go into blaming and react, leaving me feeling drained from taking on another’s stuff which I have found can be very harming. Recently I have become much more aware of this as when I realised I had taken on another’s energy I was able to read the situation and let it go. I was amazed as for so long I had thought it was my issue to deal with; it is always my responsibility to discern the quality of energy and where it is coming from.
My relationship with my father was a lot like the one you describe with your father Jacqueline. We loved each other but had no idea how to really express it to ourselves, let alone to others. Yet I could always sense the tenderness and gentleness in him and now realise that it is also there inside of me. I can’t go back and relive my life with him but I can certainly take what I have now learnt about love into all my current and future relationships.
It was great to read your blog again. It has made me feel the pockets of not expressing love or holding back the love that I feel yet don’t express. We often only reveal our true feelings to another when there is a crisis, leaving for a long while or at a time when we realise that there may be a permanent change in the relationship. The in-between time becomes vacant of expression, that’s what I’m feeling.
A great observation Matthew and one I can relate to. That’s why there can be so much regret, because of all the things that were not said when we had the chance.
I agree Debra, it is a super observation Matthew has made about only revealing our true feelings when there is a crisis or a change in the relationship that prompts us then to express….which usually can come loaded or emotional depending on how long we have held back expressing what needed to be expressed. How very loving is it for everyone to simply share ourselves and to see every day as another opportunity to share more of our beautiful divine essence.
‘And let’s be honest, this world desperately needs the caring, exquisitely warm tender love that men can deliver.’ Very true Jacqueline and it is a privilege to know the men within the Students of the Way of the Livingness who are living these qualities for all to see and to be inspired by.
Like you Jacqueline, I hadn’t given much thought to my father since he passed over 8 years ago. If I had been asked what was my relationship with my father, my answer would be : What relationship? we were more like strangers nursing old wounds and past hurts than members of a supposed loving family. I could recite all the harsh words that described his persona, yet, I also knew that he was a loving and playful man. I saw snippets of these latter qualities over the years but I ignored them while I was too busy nursing my own hurt at not ‘being seen’. I know my father loved me deeply as I loved him and it is your blog that has given me permission to acknowledge that love. Thank you.
I love this purpose of relationship that Jacqueline has brought to parents and their children. This is unique in that it is possible to tend not to think about our parents in that way, that they may need us for guidance and support just as much as we need them. This brings a beautiful equality to the human race for me, showing me that we are all on a path naturally and with the support of each other, whatever the circumstance.
Yes Shami, as parents we often feel we have to appear strong and not show our vulnerability to our children. As they have become older I am allowing myself to be inspired and supported by my children when needed. When they were younger they would regularly catch me off guard with their words of wisdom, and snap me out of my misery with their natural playfulness and enthusiasm about everything.
“That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen” Wow Jacqueline I realize this statement refers to most of us, when we do not know who we are we can not inspire another to know themselves hence the empty feelings that can be seen as being normal between parents and children.
When we do not accept ourselves we can not accept another, it is sad then when we can see that most of society is suffering from lack of self acceptance to who they truly are.
This is so true as you say Samantha, ‘When we do not accept ourselves we can not accept another, it is sad then when we can see that most of society is suffering from lack of self acceptance to who they truly are.’ Acceptance is so important, whether it be of self, other people, or humanity as a whole.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” This is so very beautiful.
I have a tender, and gentle Dad who has failing sight and can only see me and others if he looks to the side of us rather than directly at us. I was able to express to him recently how I rarely had the opportunity to look deeply into his eyes any more because of this, which saddened me. He then looked directly at me though he could only see me as a black dot and it felt enormously lovely to see more or the all of him.
As the daughter of a beautiful, tender and gentle man, thank you Jacqueline for this heartfelt blog. It is beautiful. Your comment – ‘What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?” – will always remain.
Thank you Christine for every time I read that line; ‘What if it was possible….’, I get to feel it deeper in my body and to accept the truth of what is being presented….
“…as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, …… thus I was no longer able to discern what was true and what was not true.” This is such a powerful observation that when we hold back our love we are no longer in truth. Consequently we are primed for judgment, comparison and all other debilitating approaches to life. As you share, Jacqueline, when we open up and express love healing occurs.
Definitely Jonathan, this is a powerful statement …”…as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, …… thus I was no longer able to discern what was true and what was not true….” This is totally what happens when we hold back expression of and our connection to love.
Hi Monica I love what you wrote in your comment: “. . . the truth is, our feelings never go away they are always there but unexpressed and we often live in a way that numbs how we actually feel.” That is so true and this is how most of us are living – not knowing that our hurts hold us back from loving ourselves and others deeply. Therefore I love it that some people like you and Jacqueline start to share that there is an other way to life.
This is so beautiful and powerful “… then I would say to my daughter and all the daughters of this world, “Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” Also I would say to my son, and all the sons of this world, “Do not hold back the love you have for your mother for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.” it turns what we may perceive our hurts to be, could it be that if we are hurt we some times ‘act’ as if it is okay to carry it with us and keep ourselves separate and detached from others. This is withholding, and I know I have have withheld love. And I am still learning to express all that I feel and not hold back. It is deeply healing for ourselves and those around us when we express the love we have within.
Yes, I too, found this passage deeply moving and leads me to express to say to all parents, “Do not hold back the love you have for your children, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.”
Beautiful Jonathan…..
I absolutely agree jacqmcfadden04, Jonathan’s words here are so beautiful and deeply felt.
Ah yes, of course. Thank you Jonathan.
I got a sense of this sentence while reading Jacqueline’s blog but when expressed so beautifully here, I found it deeply moving and healing – thank you Jonathan.
Ahh yes Jonathan. It works both ways, and we can extend that out to others beyond family.
I can imagine that many people can relate to this blog. As kids we know how lovely our fathers are on the inside, but often that loveliness is hidden away from us and the world. I would agree that daughters have to shine all their love, so that their dad’s can feel brave enough to let their love out. I often notice just walking around shopping the special relationship fathers can have with their young girls. I see them more at ease, more gentle and sweet. This is definitely something to be fostered.
Yes Fiona it is so beautiful to see fathers connecting with their daughters. This has got me thinking as to when I was a young girl and I remember it was after going to bed where I would wake up with earache, come downstairs have some drops put into my ear and then I got to sit on my fathers lap for a little while. It is moments like these we don’t forget and treasure.
Amazing things happen when friends ask questions that, in this case caused a stop moment for you to really feel deeply with your response. If he had not asked that question/s we would not of been the recipients of such an amazing sharing. Thank you Jacqueline.
Very True Marion, but if also feels my friend asked the questions because I was ready to go there and feel the pain I had buried…. just shows how we are truly cared for and when we are ready the support is already in place, and the more this sinks in it becomes clear that we are never truly alone as is the commonly held belief; that we are alone.
Great sharing Jacqueline and as I read your wonderful blog I had to feel into my relationship with my father. I was able to feel this deep love for him one day before he died and I was able to share my love with him – he was not aware because he was comatose but something happened when I said the words I love you. As you so beautiful describe it opened up my heart which was closed for so long and it also opened up the heart of my father – this is how I felt it – and we both had a moment of deep connection – even the people in the room could feel it because everyone stopped talking and were looking at us. True love is something you can not ignore it is simply infectious.
Wow, Ester the power of sharing your love could be felt in your beautiful sharing. What a beautiful moment of grace flowing between you and your father (which of course never ends, once we do not hold back) – no wonder others in the room could feel it.
Jacqueline , thank you for sharing your journey. We are freed from so much pain and sadness when we realize that we can let go and appreciate the fact that we as adults have the choice to love or to continue with holding on to the pain of relationships such as with our Parents or others.
Jacqueline what a beautiful sharing. The power of our reflections and the fact that no matter what we, as men, put on the deep tenderness, love and care we hold for the world yet rarely truly let shine. It is a joy to feel that you see this is men, in your father and in everyone. Be who we are in full, don’t hold back for it is only us who ends up suffering. A lesson for us all on our path of true healing.
A great sharing Jacqueline full of love and wisdom, you have given me much to consider about our ongoing relationships even when someone has passed over, it makes so much sense and lessens any grief for that connection is never truly lost.
”What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?”
Through this question I can see the immense responsibility I have to not hold back what is not mine to hold back. We do not own Love, it is for everyone whether they accept it or not.
Yes Rachael, this question brings about an enormous responsibility in bringing love not only to our fathers but to every one and every thing in the world today so when we see it in this way, the bigger picture, how can we take things personally? This is a great reminder to always think of the whole and that it is not just about me, my hurts and my little world.
This is so true Katie, until we love ourselves, appreciate, or see our own beauty, we are unable to see this in another, it is as if we are blind as you say, ‘‘That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.’ Responsibility starts with self.
” and the kick-back was, as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously”
How often we try to protect ourselves by holding back our love when all this truly does is cause us to directly absorb the hurts of others. There is so much wisdom and insight in this article Jacqueline, thank you.
I used to think it was all about being detached. My counselling training told me empathy was one of the most important prerequisites for my job. Now I realise that detachment is just the other side of attachment, and belongs to the same dynamic and that empathy aligns me to the energy of my client, not a healthy place to go. Being True and being Love is what has aided and supported me in my work and as I allow a deeper honesty, and thus awareness, with myself these levels of Truth and Love also expand and I am able to be of greater service to humanity.
One thing I have noticed since attending universal medicine courses is that I am more drawn to my family. I feel more love for them as I see them as the beautiful people that they are. I am now able to see past their anxieties, issues and hardness, which was very difficult to do when I was always coming from a place of reaction. Now I can hold them in love and equalness, and not hide away from them, which I tended to do before. I also rejoice in the fact that deepening my relationship with my family, I am also deepening it with myself and all of humanity.
Beautifully said Eleanor, I have had the same experience. Holding all of us equally in love for who we are in our essence and not holding any of us to ransom for past behaviors really supports being part of the family from a entirely different space. This is an space that I am finding is expanding with more understanding, acceptance, appreciation and love between us.
Beautiful Eleanor. My relationship with members of my family has changed too since attending Universal Medicine courses. I have a lot more understanding and acceptance for them and I express more lovingly towards them. I am also beginning to commit more deeply to my extended family which feels so lovely as this has been something I have felt to do for sometime but avoided. “I also rejoice in the fact that deepening my relationship with my family, I am also deepening it with myself and all of humanity” – Awesome… I’m with you!
We certainly are instant reflections for each other, which means we can’t deny the responsibility that is required to be all the Love that we are. I so relate to the hurts of not being seen by my father for who I am as a child but just before he passed over I could see he was starting to let down his guard and was allowing himself to see it in me. That is because I had started to develop and appreciate my own loving relationship. For me it is very clear that Love is the only way forward and we have to let go of all our hurts and simply let our love be.
This is a beautiful blog Jacqueline, I can relate with some of what you have shared, I used to absorb likewise, ‘as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously, for example, taking on other people’s stuff – thus I was no longer able to discern what was true and what was not true.’ This is so poisonous for our bodies and can affect us for years later, also causing other problems as you describe.
When I was growing up It felt like I had to work hard to keep myself involved in people lives and getting caught up their dramas and problems it was a great big distraction so I didn’t need to deal with any of my own feelings and I just transferred it into mothering.
So true Shirley, relationships live on and as Lucy beautifully expressed below; ‘relationships are bigger than the human body’, leaves lots to ponder on.
Thank you so much for sharing this blog Jaqueline. My father is still alive and he is unaware to how absolutely divinely beautiful he is. Your blog as touched my heart and has definitely given me a good prod to show my love even more.
Jacqueline this is absolutely beautiful to read again and appreciate all you are offering at another level that “in each and every man on this planet – when they discard their self-made coats of armour, masks, and walls of protection – there is a gorgeous, tender, playful, cheeky, deeply sensitive, precious, and very vulnerable, innocent, divine little boy bursting with so much love. And let’s be honest, this world desperately needs the caring, exquisitely warm tender love that men can deliver.”And we as women are also this and we all deserve to know and be treated as who we are in our purity and love and to share this with each other with appreciation and joy ever expanding as we live this.
This is a very thought-provoking blog Jacqueline. I particularly like the reflection that we can still have a relationship with our parents after their passing over. I would include friends and children as well, it is such a support when grief can take us to a place where we forget that relationships are bigger than the human body.
I would include friends and children as well Lucy. I am only beginning to feel how much our relationships with others (living or dead) affects all we do, affecting all areas of our life – thus it is well worth the effort to bring harmony to all our relationships.
‘…relationships are bigger than the human body.’
Well said Lucy – a great awareness that shows no end to the love we can have and hold people in, living or passed.
Yes, this brings an enormous awareness as so often we think that the relationship is over once somebody passes over, but this is not true. The body might not be there, but the relationship remains. Regardless of death, distance, break up etc. That’s why there is in fact no such thing as breaking up. Relationships are forever there.
I agree Mariette. Nothing begins or ends. It is always changing and evolving.
It is amazing to consider what is possible in our relationships when we heal our childhood hurts and let go of our protection. And not only in our relationships with others, but in our relationship with ourselves. Thank you for your honest sharing Jacqueline.
Living a way that creates opposition through one another seems to fuel the lovelessness within the world. If we did appreciate that everyone and indeed everything was a reflection in some way as to who we all truly were there would be such a grand connection and you couldn’t help but love it all…for you would realise you are simply a part of the all. Holding on to these hurts, the bitterness, the issues is nothing but games to stop us appreciating the massive-ness of this.
This is a wonderful sharing, Jaqueline. I especially like the part where you talk about both sexes coming together and there being no war and no perfection, only a forever expanding and deepening love, paving a new way for men and women to relate to each other. I totally grasp what is being presented here and as much as I love my father, I know I could show it more. So now inspired to go visit him and let him see all of me and all the love I can bring. Thank you.
That is very beautiful and very true Katie, I am finding out how much I do not know and appreciate my own qualities and it is a tremendous help when people remind me of my qualities or I espouse theirs.
This is a great reminder to never stop building relationships and that they never go away either. I also makes us remember that it is the being we develop a relationship with not necessarily the physical body.
Wise words Matts, this resonates….
Jacqueline this is a tremendous blog that appeals to everyone on the planet. Just because someone was hurtful to you does not mean you have to stay hurt and withdrawn or reduced forever. It is great to see the love in yourself and in others, it is even better to nurture and encourage it which you do very well. thank you for this enormous blessing.
I agree Jaqueline, the relationship between fathers and daughters can be loaded by hurts. I also had a difficult relationship with my father. Even if he is not anymore living this hurts went on but now with healing those the relationship inside of me seems to unfold in a deep understanding of him as a person and of the qualities he brought into life and which have been a reflection to me. As I start to appreciate myself, I appreciate my father.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.”
Jacqueline, I am finding these words to be of absolute truth for me now as I am allowing myself to truly see more and more of my father in his beauty and likewise in myself. And even my garden is reflecting this to me as I have a rose bush that has just grown so big over the last few months and just happens to be called, father’s love. A beautiful reflection/confirmation.
Gorgeous sharing Julie, and yes what a beautiful confirmation indeed!
‘We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support,’ Such a great line Jacqueline and one that I would agree with.
‘That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen’. What a powerful line for all to take heed of, If we don’t live our true glory how are others to receive their glorious reflection.
I always find it so incredible to hear about what one has discovered in themselves. This is huge Jacqueline, most would leave relationship hurts in the past if one has passed over and almost be relieved that they don’t have to heal them or revisit the pain. Your story shows how deep the pain may be and how incredibly healing it can be for many areas of your life. A great reminder to never leave a door unopened no matter how old it may seem, because you never know where it may lead.
Today I had an experience that showed me I was playing out the contraction that is no longer me. It was an opportunity to accept the consequences gracefully and walk forth in the appreciation and fullness of who I now am. This is what I feel you mean when you say that we can shine and offer a true reflection to support another.
The depth of healing offered by the esoteric never ceases to amaze me. Sometimes it can sound casual when we express the realizations we have come to, but when experienced and felt, the journey is deep, profound and incredibly liberating, to not be carrying the pain around anymore, like a bomb waiting to go off at life’s next trigger.
Jacqueline, your 5th paragraph struck me in the revelation it offers. I can see that I did not feel met by either parent or anyone around me and so yes, I felt less, hid my love in trying to protect myself and then found myself completely disconnected from me, taking on the attitudes of those around me and hence not knowing me; I was certainly unable to discern what was true for me and what wasn’t. As a child I became a pleaser and as an adolescent I tried both rebellion and academic achievement, in my twenties I tried to escape in ideals and a search for bliss. This is a very painful and contracted way to live. I took on the victim mentality well and truly and blamed others for ‘not providing me the space to fully express all of me’. And yet, I was not providing this space for myself. It is amazing now to offer myself this space and start the work of expanding my consciousness to the magnitude it was always intended to be, no longer contracting but choosing to walk all of glorious me.
Yes Emma Danchin, it is our choice now to no longer contract (now that we know truth, now that we know who we are) to no longer hide or hold back our love for others, and our love for humanity….
When I allowed myself to see through the mask of protection and connect to the real person my Dad is, our relationship was healed. I no longer blamed him. I was only able to do this once I had met myself in my own presence, begun to let go of hurts I was carrying and to nourish and honour myself. Since then our relationship has blossomed into a deeply loving and honest relationship that I truly cherish. I see more and more of who Dad really is, the more I allow myself to be me with him.
Understanding can always be deepened, with ourselves and in relationships, to see more clearly and read the situation for what it is, a reflection and lesson. What a relief that we are already what we are looking for the most and all we need to do is accept it and live it.
I must admit, after reading your sharing Jacqueline, I have to look at my relationship to my father. I more or less grew up without a father, but this man is still my father, even when we lived only 4 years together. I loved to read, how much you could deepen your relationship to your father, although your father died a few years ago. We can always deepen our relationship, no matter, if the person is physically there or not. I feel very inspired, thank you.
Yes Alexander the man is still your father and there are never any co-incidences who our parents are and what has played out. But we do have the power to meet, understand and love our parents which comes with a double blessing as both parties clear and heal and in doing so much space is created for love to flow….
As long as we keep on blaming our parents for whatever we have experienced in our childhood we hold on to the issues and healing is not possible. To develop and understanding and “to not hold back the love” for our parents is important to allow the healing. We think if we ignore the issue then it is not there but this doesn’t work.
Absolutely Janina. Ignoring our issues is like not tending to a broken leg. Just because it is not physical, we think we can hide them, which we can to some degree, but all the while our body is compensating 24/7 and silently and most definitely being affected.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.”
Thank you Jacqueline for sharing your wisdom with us.
I totally relate to your article which I’m sure many can., I too tried at first to be good unconsicously hoping I could somehow heal his pain but when this did not work I chose to shut down and find any numbing device I could whiich never works! What I have found is that love can be reclaimed through deep understanding of them but also ourselves and our own reactions to a situation, it is then we can gently return to the love that we are and be the reflection that supports everyone.
I agree Richard, and one of the biggest errors is in thinking that we don’t make any difference, in our individual self mode, and play down our effect, when in fact as we are an equal part of the whole, every single engagement or lack of engagement, commitment, or withdrawal, loving or unloving act has inevitable consequences on the whole picture. But learning to live as part of the all, brings the grandness and the responsibility and also the joy.
Beautiful Jacqueline, and deeply healing, sometimes I feel we also choose our fathers for the reflection they bring on for us and what we too need to understand – how we love or don’t love, how we are with ourselves and with all others. from this perspective there is so much to learn and grow from :).
Good point Anne, yes, the reflection is offered both ways, we chose our fathers for the reflection they bring to us…..indeed we chose our parents for the reflections and the lessons that they can provide us in order that we can heal and evolve from.
Yes Anne I agree, we choose our parents for the reflection they bring to us in helping us to evolve. I have found like many of us that at times this truth can be challenging to accept when there is something presented to me to heal and I don’t want to go there. Blaming my mother or my father never heals a situation but coming back to me and my body and feeling my hurts and having acceptance for myself and another in our choices brings love and then expressing this love is what truly heals.
I appreciate the simple message here Jacqueline that we often hold old hurts within us and it takes a moment of opening up and letting others in who truly care for us, such as your friend, to begin to explore those hurts and let them go. All that came from this is amazing and obviously deeply healing, about a woman’s love for her father and when freed from the confines of the hurts, it freed an expansion of love for yourself.
Pretty much sums up what happened Simon… was painful to feel the old hurt but well worth the healing and the expansion of love I now feel.
This is a lovely sharing Jacqueline. As a small child I felt my fathers love but as I grew older I felt a quite large rift, no connection, but after my Mother died Dad became more open and in need of help. More vulnerable and our relationship totally turned around for the next 10years until he died, so in a way Mum gave us a beautiful gift for which I thank her.
My grandmother died in 1994 and for at least ten years afterwards I felt a lot of emotions and grief at her passing,, as we were very close. However now, I don’t hold any grief around her passing at all and I know that the self-love and care and healing of my relationship with myself and in current relationships has contributed to this as I am living without regrets. How we live today, really can make a difference, no matter what has gone before.
One of the biggest and highest expectation i place is on my family to be loving with me, this feels horrendous in itself, and at times I treat them in a way that I would not speak or treat a person on the street. I feel this comes from all our hurts playing out from right throughout our lives, rather that being our true loving selves. I often don’t take time to stop and just appreciate them. And the truth, when I let go of my need and demand for love to be a certain way the fact is is they love me and show me this every day.
One of the biggest things I am learning from is that I chose to come to my family and with that what I am being reflected is what i have previously lived, so I have no right to blame my family if love is not truly expressed. In those moments I do, I stop and feel ouch you did or are doing this to someone else. It a big lesson in self responsibility.
It’s all to easy to blame another for not loving us, but in truth are they not reflecting our own lack of self love?
Imposing on them our need to be loved, and with that adding a pressure and tension to the hurt that they already feel. By stepping back, creating space, not necessarily of a physical sense and having understanding of a persons hurts allows true love and care to be expressed for both the person and yourself.
‘It’s all to easy to blame another for not loving us, but in truth are they not reflecting our own lack of self love?’
Absolutely Gyl and well exposed! It is indeed easy to blame another for not living or expressing love to our need or want because then we don’t need to look at or take responsibility for how we are choosing to love ourselves. A big ouch yes, but a grand opportunity to learn and grow.
The biggest learning for me is to see that any abuse that comes through another person be it a member of my intimate family or someone else, is not them them. It is an energy passing through them giving them the range of thoughts, words and actions they can choose to then express, That is not to say i accept it, but by calling and seeing the energy for what it is, rather than saying it is them changes everything. , I am able to step back, and see the truth, that they are deeply hurt – this does not change the fact they are a Son of God.
This is also one of the biggest learnings for me Gyl. When I see the energy for what it is and not attach it to being them, I stop reacting and instead hold them in love. In that moment I offer another energy for them to choose. The more I do this the more I see how much this supports another to feel what is and what is not love.
This is something I still need to consciously remind myself of, but it has a powerful effect when I do. In our/my habit of living in a way that avoids anything that will hurt, we can attach the abusive action/words to a person, in order to avoid them or that abuse happening again. But when I step back and realise it is a momentary thing they are choosing, it brings understanding of the energy and does not tar the person with that brush. This leaves me more open for the next time we meet.
“That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.” Wow, Jacqueline, how many girls carry this forward into adulthood as a fundamental rejection of their being, and how healing instead is it to see our fathers in this way?
“That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.” This is the seed of the cycle isn’t it? When each generation is not confirmed in their absolute inner beauty it gets lost and can’t bring the next generation up to feel their beauty. It is amazing to see children grow who are seen for who they truly are by their parents and to see them blossom and shine. To witness the cycle being cut for these is a joy and in the knowing that this will lead the way for all.
Yes Rachel I agree that that sentence says it all. To understand this is to set ourselves free from the imprisoning cycle that wants to hold us from who we are.
Yes Rachel that is the seed where it all begins with each generation passing on the seed of not being met and truly seen…. and round and round we go on the wheel of life/death/reincarnation, until someone in the family group breaks this pattern, and a new seed is planted and sprouts so that we all may come back and be met with the love we come from.
This is the gorgeousness of ‘never too late’ and also the responsibility we all have to take care of our relationships and never fall pray to the ‘victim of my parents’ game.
So many relationships are held in the stranglehold of non-expression. I remember getting a letter from my dad when I was overseas for a year. It was heartfelt, open and very loving. At that point I understood something – that with distance it is often easier to express fully and share our tenderness, while face to face the reality of the intimacy can be overwhelming. This incident changed my relationship with my dad completely. From there on in I knew his sweetness and understood the veil behind which we often relate to each other.
This is beautiful Jaqueline, it reminds us that any relationship we build is forever a relationship, it does not end simply because the other, either of the two has passed over. That connection is always and forever there and so can be healed at any time, and in any life.
Such truth in your words here “We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.” True support does not mean to make one feel better but to offer a reflection that they can evolve from.
Wow Jacqueline, this is a powerful blog on so many levels. It bought up a lot for me in relation to my own relationship with my father. Thank you for sharing, this is very inspirational.
I used to try and change my parents always determined to get them to see my way of perceiving life. It has been a turbulent path of seeking recognition and for a short time lead to a divide in our relationship especially with my father.
As my love and appreciation for myself grows I am more able to accept the way my father and mother choose to live their life. I take it less personally then I use to, as I can now see its not about me, but my parents choices.
I love my parents and am learning to accept their choices without so much pain and judgment, because beyond the surface they are not just my parents but tender loving beings.
In this we are all equally amazing, and in their own time I know they will come to feel and appreciate the love they are too.
“…that in each and every man on this planet – when they discard their self-made coats of armour, masks, and walls of protection – there is a gorgeous, tender, playful, cheeky, deeply sensitive, precious, and very vulnerable, innocent, divine little boy bursting with so much love.” – and so the tougher they are on the outside, the more sensitive they are on the inside. I’ve seen big tough men melt when they are truly met and it is so beautiful.
Jacqueline your photo says it all – you are more radiant and utterly gorgeous every time I see you at Serge Benhayon’s presentation. A living testimony to the true healing of past hurts and coming back within to the truth of who you are – Love.
What an inspiration you are. Thank you!
“When both sexes stop blaming the other gender and then come together, unite together, commit together, and truly hold each other, there is no war and there is no perfection, there is only a forever expansion and deepening of love, paving a new way for how men and women relate to each other.”
It is so healing to feel than men and women can have true relationships with each other based on equality, respect, love and understanding. These relationships can be familial, intimate or platonic and but they are always powerful when the relationship is true.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father ….. for your mother for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.” This is priceless Jacqueline, offering huge insights that would unlock many behaviour patterns and understanding about ourselves.
How true. The face that we are so hurt is because we DO deeply love and to reject this is to reject ourselves.
This is such a powerful sharing, I can connect to a lot of what you have described with my own relationship with my father and therefore all men, something to deeply ponder on here, so thank you.
Thank you Jacqueline for sharing this wisdom with the world. There are so many aspects of patterns we choose to take on when it comes to relationships. “We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.” This highlights the responsibility we have in not holding back all of the ways we naturally express.
Absolutely Diana, it highlights how evolution works and as you say our responsibility in being part of it.
Jacqueline, your blog is a great demonstration how one pain left unaddressed can be a foundation for layers and layers of pain and when the basic root cause is addressed the rest have no foundation to rest on and easily dissolve. It is lovely to feel your love for your father and the recognition of his tenderness and divinity. It is true that this lies within all of us once we discard our ‘self-made coats of armour, masks, and walls of protection’.
Thank you Jacqueline, I can also feel a lot of sadness around not being seen and met by my father in my essence, and not celebrated and adored in that. I do feel that overall we all need to drop these walls and protection and get expressing our love. It’s beautiful in your case that addressing the childhood hurts enabled you to reconnect to the love you felt underneath the hurt, and it was this reconnection to your love that supported you, not waiting for the outside world or others to change. What we really do need is ourselves and the love we naturally are.
Beautifully said Melinda,
It is the love we feel for ourselves that is the support for loving others.
Much healing comes when we nurture and return to feeling the amazing love and preciousness we are.
This love then expands out to touch others enabling us to see beyond the hardness to the essence within.
Very beautiful and healing blog to read Jacqueline, it is very important and a blessing what you have shared for all the readers. It is true, so true, how you have spoken to all the daughters, and all the sons in the world, you gave them true advice. I can relate to much you have shared. Knowing from my own experience I start to realise how big the influence of my relationships with my parents influences the rest of my relationships. There seems to be no escape from that (in a good way). Maybe at times I have underestimated the importance of every single person that I have a relationship with in life, but now that I become more honest I know how big every single relationship is. This brought and brings me back to my responsibility. Therefore I had to see where my relationships were at and how much of responsibility (love) I had put in them. I straightaway could feel that I made relationships mostly about what suited me, what I needed, but not because of LOVE. This was a direct opportunity to choose different. Knowing what love is, I understand that I had/have to work a little harder on being there, with myself, in relationship with people – because of love, not needs. This is a big YES to loving myself and people! I continue to learn and open myself up to everyone I meet, the more I allow myself to open up in life to everyone the more I actually feel that I simply love people, all the way.
A gorgeous sharing Danna Elmalah, I can feel the love you have for yourself which radiates out to all you meet!
As a young woman I was given this message: ‘Never trust a man. ‘ Re-reading this blog this morning brought my father who died 19 years ago, to mind. We never ever lived in the same house and for most of my life lived on different continents. He wrote me loving letters and expressed himself beautifully in each one. I remember meeting him after ten years apart. He was a true gentle-man, loving, in a quiet way, and a little reserved. I was moved by his interest in me: went to my school, met my head teacher and teachers, read all my school reports, talked to me, met my friends as he built a picture of me and my life. He was very concerned about exam results, but that was the way he expressed his love. Over the years we rebuilt our relationship with each other. I got to know him more, I saw his gentle, fragile, vulnerable self. He held executive positions but lived a simple life connected to people and communities within which he lived. He became a man I trusted and adored.
What a refreshing story kehinde2012. So many times we hear of the fathers that hold back their love but not of the one’s who openly share who they are as your father did, you are very blessed to have been loved and met in that way.
I agree Susan. We accumulate layer upon layer of hurt to not feel the original hurt until we begin to identify with it as to who we are. If we are so committed to not feeling the original hurt as to keep adding more to it, it must mean that we can actually feel that original hurt that sticks out like a thumb that’s just been bashed by a hammer. It’s un-ignorable and I am sure it is possible to face if we hold ourselves in our absolute love and connection to who we are.
This is a beautiful article on relationships Jacqueline. What felt really important was that you were able to heal a hurt between you and your father even though he had passed on – the realisation you had, shifted what was being held between you, keeping you at a distance from one another. How many children and parents feel regret and sadness about their relationships when a loved one passes over? Yet your experience shows that relationships are literally forever – and can be healed at any time by either party.
True Rosanna, thank you for bringing this to the light.
I love this Jacqueline – ‘We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.” This feels so true as when we support from this level, we hold each other as equals and the reflections are then so awesome to behold and move on from, if that is required.
Toni this is so important – children are so disempowered by not knowing they too have an equal responsibility in responsibility firstly with their parents which then naturally extends out to others.
“It is not seeing the child as your equal and realising they have just as much to contribute to the relationship as the parent does”.
Jacqueline this is another powerful and beautiful blog about relationships and constant reflections that are there for us to learn from. It is so lovely to read about opening up to events in childhood and understand it is never too late to heal past hurts with parents, even though they are no longer here in their physical body.
Thank you for the deep honesty you present with.
Thank you Stephanie. And indeed, it is never too late to heal past hurts with parents (alive or passed over) which actually is the most loving, supportive and transforming thing we can do for ourselves.
This is so true Stephanie & Jacqueline that it is so loving and transformative. With the death of both my parents many years ago now I have found it hugely liberating to resolve my relationship with them in recent years.
This is really beautiful Jacqueline. The healing of relationships between fathers and daughters is a huge one. In the generation that I grew up in there was little to no affection shown from fathers to their daughters and it was tough love and discipline in my household with my two sisters and one brother. But as I have grown into the woman I am today I have a deep understanding for where my father was at and for the man he is today. I always make sure I hold him close and lovingly and feel no offence when he struggles a little with my affection, but it is all building in my eyes and I always smile so warmly at him after a hug, just to let him know my love and understanding.
This is beautiful Jo, thanks for sharing. Its given me a lot to ponder with my relationship with my father. I get a sense that by understanding where our parents are coming from, it would be impossible to judge them for things we perceive as ‘hurt’. Because I have found that when I understand someone this way, I can love myself and them deeper, which is what my natural impulse is.
Jacqueline, I love how your friend pressed for you to say more about the relationship you had with your father even though he had passed over because the relationship and not gone with his death and therefore the hurts are still deeply felt and what a beautiful revelation you came to in the process.
Indeed Fiona, seeing death as the end of the relationship and the hurts will not work, as the only thing that will truly work is taking our responsibility to heal our hurts. No one and nothing can do this for us.
Thank you for this blog, Jacqueline. It is deeply touching and healing for these very important relationships that we all have with our parents. Important, yet so often fraught with misunderstanding and held back feelings.
To heal this relationship and to be able to see our parents as people with their own struggles and ways of coping with the world, is an enormous step in being able to not only accept them for who they are, but ourselves as well.
I remember the transition from thinking all grown ups had it all sorted to realising that they were floundering and trying to work things out just as much, if not more, than I was. There was a huge acceptance in this as well as the beginnings of understanding that there is no perfection just always learning.
It is great your friend had the insight and helped you come to this deeply healing understanding for yourself. Reading your blog I could really feel the importance of relationships and how if we are cherished, adored and loved when we are little this completely supports us to bloom and be all that we are as we grow up. Putting education aside if every family did just this I feel the change in the world would be great and it doesn’t cost money this can be done whether rich or poor.
My Father passed over about eleven years ago from a massive heart attack. The best conversation we ever had, was on the phone the night before he died, I guess on some level he knew that it was going to happen. I feel that he spent his whole life holding back the love he was and that was all down to how he was raised. We sure do need to learn that no one wins by holding back our love. Love is the only thing that can change the state of this messed up world.
Exactly Kevin. But why do we hold our love back? What do we gain from holding back a love that we all are and feel?
This is gorgeous Michael. Why do we hold back love, the love we all feel and crave? and that we are in every cell.
True Kevin ‘no-one wins by holding back our love’ – in our own protection and reaction and shut down to not being loved by others we confirm lovelessness to the whole world. and yet the original hurt is actually our own, refusing to Love ourselves and allow our own Love to flow, then react to the world not supplying the very thing we have denied. crazy, and deeply destructive.
I agree Kevin ‘no-one wins by holding back our love’ – in our own protection and reaction and shut down to not being loved by others we confirm lovelessness to the whole world. and yet the original hurt is actually our own, refusing to Love ourselves and allow our own Love to flow, then react to the world not supplying the very thing we have denied. crazy, and deeply destructive.
Absolutely Toni, as i started to deal with my hurts as child who deeply missed her father, it started to change my relationships with men in my life…..as i realised that these hurts i had, i carried in my relationships.
This is a wonderful article, perhaps every daughter has a story with her father…and on some level, there is, has been, some yearning to be fully seen and loved by our fathers….our relationship with our fathers does affect us. I know for me, i loved my father so dearly, i could talk to him about everything and anything, from religion to my personal issues, but there was always a sadness there lingering between us. One day i understood this sadness, it was his sadness, the sadness of his unlived life from who he is, and the ‘guilt’ of not been the father he wanted to be to me…..he lived in so much protection. Some months before he died, he was in a nursing home, he was lying on the bed and i put my hand on his wrist. He gently put his hand on my hand with such tenderness and love, and looked me in the eyes, straight to my Soul. it was a moment of true intimacy with my father., a moment..i knew in that moment it was a meeting of 2 divine souls and it was such a deep healing for both of us. Now when i feel my father, our connection is the same…he could be alive somewhere in a another country…there is no sense of loss, it feels full, because of our love. It is true for me, love never dies, only the body.
This is so beautiful Karoline, very inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
Such a beautiful sharing Karoline, thank you. I agree, our relationship or non relationship with our fathers does affect us on so many levels….one level is how it affects all our relationships with men, for me shown in my deep lack of trust in men and my lack of commitment in relationships. In healing the relationship with my father does indeed show how – ‘love never dies, only the body’.
It is so important Jacqueline how you acknowledge that your father did not honour and love himself and that is why he was unable to honour and love you. This is a great understanding and truly the way to hold all in equalness and so important to not holding back our selves and others in our evolution together.
This stood out for me too Simon. I love the understanding that Jacqueline has come to which allows her to love her father even more by accepting him as he was, with all his imperfections.
Yes Simon Voysey, it is a great observation and understanding and it also stops us from choosing to step into a victim role.
Yes Simon, this was powerful for me also and takes away all the personalisation that one tends to get into.
I agree Simon and we can bring this level of understanding to all of our relationships, which makes it so much more easier to see past the hurts that someone may be presenting to us, and actually see them first.
If we hold back love, others are always missing our on an opportunity for healing. Knowing this has been a great help for me, because often I thought I couldn’t love people that were hurting me because they had given up on love and given up on loving me. But the true loving thing to do would be to not stop being a light, because that teaches so much. It teaches that love is always available, we can always choose to heal and that God is forever available.
Such wise words Harrison. I have been sharing this exact thing with my little girl this week in regards to the bullies at school. She totally got what I was sharing. Great to talk about this when everything out there is telling them that the bullies are bad people.
Thank you Jacqueline, I learned so much from your blog. With you words I have been inspired to not hold back love, because another may have chosen to have that in their life. The wise words your friend said to you are so profound, maybe we all deliver the healing we need to each other and all we need to do is express our divinity. I feel refreshed and ready to go again with a new understanding, people aren’t that bad after all, even the ones who have hurt us.
I love the possibility that was brought forward as it really asks us to let go and see beyond any and all of the hurts that may be there, which we can surrender to if we allow ourselves
Jacqueline, thanks for a super blog. There are many golden bits for me to reflect on but your last bit about us all being a reflection to each other has really hit home with me today. It’s something that I will take with me during my day and use as a checking point for myself to pause and consider the reflection I am providing to others. Is it light and love or am I holding back?
Thankyou Jaqueline. This was truly healing to read for a man. As men, we grow up with so many expectations – some real, many perceived – as do women. It is no wonder we struggle at times to really know who we are outside of the confines of our gender.
One of your many very touching sentences was “he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.”… this feels so core to me. It shows how important it is to love and honour ourselves for if we do not connect to the love that we are, how can we connect to another? This shows why it is selfish to NOT self-love rather than how our society often makes out that it is selfish to love yourself.
I agree Nicola and in “how our society often makes out that it is selfish to love yourself” another “trick” is exposed in humanity not taking responsibility in living and expressing all of who we are so that we can be a true reflection for each other and truly evolve together.
Hi Nicola, I love this!!! You totally nailed selfishness.
‘It shows how important it is to love and honour ourselves for if we do not connect to the love that we are, how can we connect to another? This shows why it is selfish to NOT self-love rather than how our society often makes out that it is selfish to love yourself’.
I agree Kathleen, the moment we engage in self-love we are acting more responsibly. We feel better, we become a role model, we look better and we don’t have excuses to hide or to be emotional any more, hence self-love is far more loving towards others than self-neglect or self-abuse.
Thank you Jacqueline, are many profound and deep sharings in this blog that I relate to. However there is one thing I notice a lot when women talk about men and that is that whilst they correctly acknowledge the sensitive and tender side of men and in this case also the “little boy” – they rarely express joy at the glorious true strength and power that men bring. I feel a lot of women are still conditional in how a man should be instead of enjoying all of him in his full range of expression.
I have had many such experiences where women welcomed my fragile side but were very reticent when it came to my vastness as that vastness calls them to be equally vast.
If healing your childhood hurts led to you allowing yourself to shine your full glorious you, I think we should all rush out and seek to do the same – heal our childhood hurts, let them go through acceptance and compassionate understanding. They are after all things that happened long ago and our adult selves are usually well equipped to make the choice to do this, or not. I love this blog Jacqueline and I confirm that your words reflect a beautiful and powerful support for others.
I love how you ask all of us to love our parents, to know that our love can melt their layers of protection or hurt, that love will melt our own layers of protection and hurt.
Jaqueline, you wise and beautiful woman, I love, what you have shared here, and it has brought me a precious moment and opening up of feeling my father deeply, after more than nearly 30 years of not having him seen or spoken to him (he passed over 8 years ago). I could feel the tender, creative and loving boy he has been, before he chose to go into protection, as I did, when I was a little girl. So true, that we can spend lifetimes of choosing protection and blaming others of being not loving, as we truly miss the love we don’t give ourselves. And then truly miss loving relationships in our lifes. I will now take your advice and explore the love I have for my father deeper. Thank you very much for bringing it up to me today – that’s no coincidence.
This blog is such a beautiful expression of love for your dad, Jacqueline. My dad died recently and I have had some similar feelings in the past. I was able to see and feel in the last 2-3 years just how much hurt he was carrying and although we never talked about this I could feel a special connection in the hugs he gave me. He wasn’t a demonstrative man in his affections but I could truly feel him there when we hugged. The relationship with our fathers can be complex and full of hurts but once we make the choice to let these go, what is underneath is truly beautiful and so special.
Yes Anne, and it is so worth, to look underneath and to find the love we all are. It is so important, not to judge other people only by their behaviour. To know, that we are all divine on the inside, is enough and this gives us the possibility to connect to everybody on a deeper level.
This is beautiful Jacqueline. ‘We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.’ All my life I believed I was supported by friends when they confirmed my misery and joined me in my suffering. Now I believe the truth couldn’t be further from that. Last night something woke me and my first thought was that disfunctional relationships with family members should be healed as they keep us in the illusion of separation. Good to know that it is also not too late to heal relationships with family members that have past over.
A great realisation iljakleintjes. That old consciousness of thinking we were being supported by others when confirming our misery and suffering is so far from the truth. It is beautiful that you have a deeper awareness and appreciation of the importance of healing dysfunctional relationships.
“Last night something woke me and my first thought was that disfunctional relationships with family members should be healed as they keep us in the illusion of separation”.
This is such a powerful realisation and breaks down the walls of separation.
Very beautiful Jaqueline – one of the things that truly stood out for me was this – ‘That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.’ It is amazing when we can allow ourselves to see truth, and that in fact, the thing about not being able to appreciate how precious we are, is a pattern that is being passed on from generation to generation. When we acknowledge this, we have the power to change it. It is our choice.
What a beautiful sharing Jacqueline and such a great place to get to of understanding and unconditional love with your father.The importance and honesty needed in our relationships is something we all feel but mainly do not express in full and as a result we all mis out on love and the appreciation of who we are.
What was interesting in this blog for me to read is that we are still having a relationship with your father even though he has passed away. Wow, this has go me feeling deeply the hurts my father held, the love he never received, and how he just did his best with what he knew. A very healing blog indeed, Jacqueline. thank you.
Parents can pass over or we can make the choice to not see them any longer but the relationship always remains. It is an illusion to think that once somebody is out of our life so to speak, we have dealt with the relationship. This is not true. The relationship is always there as we are all connected. So if we have an issue with someone wherever in the world, it is up to us to deal with this and remember that in the end, we are all love and the same.
I am blessed to have a beautiful father – our relationship is founded on a commitment to truth, love and expression of that love. This I know is special. We have been through extraordinarily difficult times, with a break in our relationship that lasted for a year. At that time we hit a point with each other, of barriers we refused to cross, hurts we would not put aside and defences that we clung to as though for dear life. It seems to be easier to cut each other off -what a lie that was.
Well we passed that point, through sheer will, and the knowing before all else we love each other. It was hellish at first, awkward and clunky, but through it we passed as though through the eye of a needle.
Now we make it about nothing but honesty, preferably truth and always love. This means not just saying all that needs to be said but, being tender, respectful and understanding.
We have our intense moments – a tussle over the semantics of the word “control” nearly degenerated into a fight until we got what we were doing pulled our heads in and came back to love.
The point of this? firstly to celebrate this great relationship in my life. Secondly to celebrate fathers, what they mean to their daughters and visa versa.
Thank you for the inspiration Jacqueline.
Rachel I am in awe of the amazing relationship you have with your father, one that is not this way simply by the grace of God but also through the immense love you have for each other, a love strong enough and deep enough to overcome the hurts, defences and pain to find a way back to each other, how inspirational! I was pondering my own father this morning and realised all I really wanted from him was for him to talk with me, to open up and be real, this was never possible as I held him to ransom, waiting, hurt and dejected unwilling to do so myself. Unfortunately he has since passed away before I could get a chance to do this. So beautiful that you have experienced the healing of your relationship now and not next lifetime…
There is always this present moment to heal the relationship with our father Kate…which is a blessing for him as well as yourself.
This is beautiful to hear about your unfolding loving relationship with your father Rachel.
I spoke to my father last night after having read this blog where i did not hold back on expressing my love for him and the beautiful man that he is. I could feel the box i can often place my parents in rather than seeing all the beautiful qualities they bring. My father is a community man who is well liked with a gentle manner and i gained a deeper appreciation of his expression and what he brings to the world.
Holding back our love just doesn’t seem worth it! There are so many ‘kick backs’ that come in place of this void we feel when we are not expressing all we are to all there is.
Whenever we make things about gender, religion, nationality or race, we enable divide. Divide only allows us to process the differences, it does not allow us to see the similarities, the reflections, the learning’s. True Brotherhood is the antidote for divide.
Such a beautiful article Jacqueline. I can fully relate to not having been met as a child and how this deeply hurt, and because of this I withheld my love from him and all other males, not trusting them.
But I now see how my father also had much inner turmoil and this accounted to why he drank to find relief and stop himself from feeling his pain. He also died 5 yrs ago.
When he was dying in his surrendered state I finally saw the true man he was- a sensitive, gentle, tender man with a heart of gold. Thank you for your sharing as this has brought much healing for me, as I write this.
“What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?” We could ask this question in all of our relationships. It highlights our responsibility with bringing our all to each other.
Yes Annie, good call! Many of us carry hurts with our father’s for not being met. If we bring understanding to our fathers, to why they had the inability to truly meet us, we would understand that it was not about us…it was their story…and very likely for many of our fathers, they loved their daughters, deeply and sad in not being able to express or show it as deeply as it was felt….so yes responsibility is such a beautiful action, responsibility to ourselves to be the love no matter what, as that is what hurts us most, not living the love we are…its like putting a cork down a volcano to stop it from erupting with all that power fiery love, that brings nourishing, nurturing love for us and our fathers and all.
“We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.” I feel that there is so much truth and wisdom in what you offer here Jacqueline. True support is having someone show the way when we are a little or lot lost. It is not a pandering and hearing what we want to hear, it is a light that illuminates our time to take responsibility while reflecting how to take the next step if we choose. There isn’t an ounce of fixing or telling in true support.
I love your comment Sandra and true support never sees another as less or incapable, just someone in need of a little loving guidance.
And true support is often not to do anything but just be ourselves. Just by being we reflect to people a new way of being and different choices they can make. To offer help is at times quite imposing if they are not open to it. It’s not easy to stand by and watch another make mistakes or suffer but they have to feel the consequences of the choices they make in order to be open to change.
Oh, how I have liked to ‘fix’ people and their problems in the past, (because I was so empty inside), but actually the truth is , ‘There isn’t an ounce of fixing or telling in true support’. Thankyou Sandra.
This is beautifully expressed Sandra Williamson – being fixed is definitely not true support and is very disempowering to another..
“True support is having someone show the way when we are a little or lot lost. It is not a pandering and hearing what we want to hear, it is a light that illuminates our time to take responsibility while reflecting how to take the next step if we choose. There isn’t an ounce of fixing or telling in true support”.
This breaks the consciousness that we are linear beings, proceeding forth in time – which is a lie. Good on your friend, Jacqueline, to insist that the relationship to your father is ongoing – and that it is possible to heal, each cycle anew, each moment, each day, each year, each lifetime!
I agree Felix, Jacquelines friend, through their gentle persistence, opened up a whole new level of healing and the very clear truth that relationships are ongoing within us.
Exactly what true friendship is about – to reflect to us what we haven’t been able to see ourselves.
Being willing to let go of our hurts allows us to bring more understanding and acceptance in our relationships, a great opportunity for healing to take place.
This is so true Francisco, the more we let go of our hurts the more love we invite into our relationships.
This was my experience with my own father. Letting go of the hurts and blame I was holding onto allowed our relationship to develop and for me to see the beautiful playful and tender side of my dad and in turn for me to offer this reflection back to him. I love the continual deepening of this – it feels like returning to the loving relationship from many years ago.
Jacqueline,your blog is so true and so important, I really feel and know this to be true and also choose to heal this relationship with my father as I already could heal a huge part with my mum and this is so amazing now…and still just the start. I know healing these two relationships is huge and brings us back as you write it, to shine in all our glory. Thank you for this, it’s so well written and expressed, and so clear.
Yes Nadine, healing the primal relationship with both our mother and father is huge and is our responsibility also….but the healing we receive has a huge impact as this ripples into all areas of our lives, improving all our other relationships, as we discover a deeper love our ourselves….
I love the tenderness and deep appreciation with which this blog looks at people, our true essence and the predicaments we create in our lives when we abandon living that essence. What great wisdom: “Give yourself permission to be the Godliness or Son of God! Be who you truly are.” And “Do not hold back the love you have for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.” I am moved by the power of these words, it does not matter whether they are applied within our immediate family or further afield, they hold the foundation for relationships that are truly supportive, loving and honouring of each other.
What a beautiful and powerful blog so clearly sharing the opportunities we have to heal in all our relationships
“But what was the relationship you had with him, for the relationship is still there?” is a great question, there are friendships I have chosen to walk away from at different points in my life but there are parts of that which stay with me, and life will offer a reflection and an opportunity to heal that if I surrender and say yes.
The true meaning of support is in reflecting to each other who we truly are. Beautiful Jacqueline, thank you.
Thank you Jacqueline for such a beautiful sharing. I love how you wrote that even though your father is no longer here you still carried hurts that were impacting on your relationship with him and others. Beautiful to know we can always heal hurts no matter the circumstances and open ourselves up for even more love.
“What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?” This whole blog is divinely beautiful and this line communicates deep love, understanding and grace. Thank you for sharing this with us all Jacqueline.
Jacqueline your description of how you healed your relationship with your father even though he had passed away is very powerful indeed. So many people feel that once a person had died that their relationship is frozen forever in the state that it was when they died. Your story adds so much potential for movement and therefore healing.
Thank you Jacqueline, I really needed to read this to deepen my appreciation of the relationship I have with my father. Your story is very similar to mine and I am truly inspired at what you have worked through.
Agree with you Marica I am deeply inspired and appreciative to hear how others have opened up and deepen their relationships no matter what barriers we think are in the way
Thank you Jacqueline for your deeply healing blog. Like you when my father was alive our relationship was not a living relationship of ongoing expression. There were moments when I would attempt to penetrate what felt like a brick wall. Since he passed away I have come to appreciate that underneath there was a tender loving man who was innately sensitive. With the inspiration of your words I feel I will now work on deepening my understanding of the relationship with my father and that will be a true blessing. It will give me an opportunity to understand my relationship with men and to explore all that they offer.
As children we look up to our parents and when they are for whatever reason not able to meet us in the magnificence that we are that hurts. But as adults we can, and have the responsibility to, meet everyone else in their magnificence. I have healed the relationship with my father to a great extend by simply allowing myself to see through is reactions and meet him for the caring sensitive man that he is.
As children we look up to our parents and when they are for whatever reason not able to meet us in the magnificence that we are that hurts. But as adults we can , and have the responsibility to, meet everyone else in their magnificence. I have healed the relationship with my father to a great extend by simply allowing myself to see through is reactions and meet him for the caring sensitive man that he is.
Carolien, this is awesome what you say here; that you are healing your relationship with your father ‘by simply allowing myself to see through his reactions and meet him for the caring sensitive man that he is.’ This shows great understanding and love and a willingness to bring love to the relationship. It’s so easy to react from our pain so you must have come to a point where you have faced your pain and dealt with it to a large degree. As you say it is a responsibility we have to ‘meet everyone else in their magnificence’ but it can only be done if we appreciate our own magnificence.
Beautiful Jacqueline. Your words remind me very much of my own father who I know loved me but found it difficult to express apart from being a constant provider and as a result I too held back from expressing love. If we continue in this way we then pass it on to our own children to feel the hurt of not being openly loved and met. “Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” Profound words.
Mary, you have touched something very important – if we hold back love that is what we are showing and bringing to our children and all children…we already live in a loveless world, where so much is going on violence, war, etc…bringing love to our relationships is the antidote to hurt and lovelessness….the remedy for our hurts is to bring love and understanding…and for many ‘forgiveness’…or letting go of what we hold against another…letting go of what we hold against ourselves…
Thank you for sharing the precious relationship that is possible between a father and daughter. I fought my father for a very long time but through developing a deeper connection to the love that I am as a woman I have been able to see my father has always supported me more than 100% to be the powerful glorious woman that I am. He has in fact never stood in my way, it was me all along. Such a an amazing revelation which I could extend to all men. They really do love it when we stand fully claimed in all our glory!
There are so many of us who are blind to the beauty that we are. We can not see it for ourselves and often it takes another to reflect to us this divine beauty we all are. If we can not see this in ourselves, we can not see it in another. Therefore this shows to us the responsibility we have to be love, so others too have this reflection and too can choose this for themselves.
“As a child I could feel my father’s deep buried sadness, covered with layers and layers of protection. This sadness ran so deep it felt to me it consumed him, but I could see past his hurts and see his divinity to see how deeply tender and gentle a soul he was and this is what hurt me the most:
That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.”
Is this not the story and core hurt for so many of us?
Also is it possible that this is also the core hurt that lies at the foundation for both parties in domestic violence. The huge sadness a perpetrator holds in protection of never being met for who he/she is, the preciousness and beauty of who they are, and their reaction to this. Then to end up in relationship with someone who equally has not been met. Looking for some form of acknowledgement in themselves and each other through the dynamics in their relationship. Most relationships have at least at some level a form of abuse in them. How can we truly appreciate and truly love who we have in front of us when we have not healed the hurt that is stopping us from loving ourselves and knowing how beautiful we are.
‘ Most relationships have at least at some level a form of abuse in them’, so true Elizabeth. How can we love another in full if we do not love ourselves and as long as we have not healed the core hurt and come back to love, the opening is there for abuse in all our relationships…..
I agree Elizabeth, this is the core hurt for many of us humans and from this first hurt of not being truly met or seen, we lose ourselves and our grandness and so become owned and trapped by the illusion, until some-one comes along and reflects that grandness again – and reflects a way to return. For me, that man was Serge Benhayon.
Yes Elizabeth, everything you have written her i know too and yes ‘Is this not the story and core hurt for so many of us?
is a question and answer all in one. thank you!
‘We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support’ – Gorgeous Jacqueline, and very true. This could be an amazing way to achieve true equality too – for both genders to be absolute reflections for one another; no judgement, no criticism and no dimming down of the reflection because you are talking to a woman or a man.
Yes Susie, no dimming down of the reflection no matter who we are talking with. Simply holding ourselves with love with nothing else around or in between, then you get to feel their reflection and know yourself back in same. That is love, absolute, being it’s all.
When we are not able to see the divinity in us personally (hence in others) we miss the best of life. It does make a tremendous difference to be able to see and connect with it or not. It is not that when we do not, we cannot do life without major problems. It is more that the amazing feeling in the body of accepting we are truly divine and experimenting magic moments is absolutely invaluable. A person that surrenders to the fact of God and his/her own divinity, cannot but see this on others. Imagine how many traumas could be avoided.
Jacqueline this blog is beautiful. My father passed over just recently and in the end I really felt the essence of him and his divine beauty … not so much all the hurt and sadness.
It was like the more we truly accepted each other the more we were able to be ourselves.
Those last few weeks were a blessing and I really appreciate the fact that we had them together. It has deepened my relationship with others.
I also now know that the relationship remains regardless of the person being alive or not and it remains within us. It is so important to heal ourselves.
Sounds gorgeous Kathryn, what a blessing and a healing for you and your father and now the after effect or ripple effect of that healing is the deepening connection and acceptance of others.
Kathryn, your comment is beautiful, “Those last few weeks were a blessing and I really appreciate the fact that we had them together. It has deepened my relationship with others.” You show how individual relationships are not isolated, but affect the all and how we are with everyone.
“Give yourself permission to be the Godliness or Son of God! Be who you truly are.”’
When my daughter was born I pondered on the fact that if we all saw our children and in fact ourselves as the ‘Son of God’ how would we treat each other? How would we parent? How would we live?
Kathryn, this is such a gorgeous question to ask. “If we all saw our children and in fact ourselves as the ‘Son of God’ how would we treat each other? How would we parent? How would we live?” I can not express the joy in my heart from knowing that this is actually our true essence, every single one of us, and that the future of mankind is to return to this foundation of grace and live as Sons of God in union once more.
P o w e r f u l Golnaz; ‘the future of mankind is to return to this foundation of grace and live as Sons of God in union once more’.
“We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.”
Wow this is a stupendous statement Jacqueline; I must say this has been my experience through meeting Serge Benhayon and the practitioners of Universal Medicine.
The way that they live, walk and talk, the deeply loving way that they treat themselves and their body’s and then all others they come in contact with, has been, and is, an absolutely massive support in my life, and what’s truly awesome is that I choose this love and support for myself.
I agree Thomas. There are some truly inspiring people who have transformed themselves through the work they have done with the support of Universal Medicine. Just feeling their presence inspires me.
“The love I now feel and express for my father has provided the space to give myself permission to reflect to all; this is who I am – I am this sexy, beautiful, gorgeous, powerful, wise woman. This is I, of course it is, I always was this. I can now shine and show all of me in the knowing that it is my true reflection that truly supports/allows another to be who they truly are.”
This is beauty-full Jacqueline, and when we hold back any part of the gorgeous, tender, deeply caring exquisite beings we all are, we are giving the message to other people that its alright to be less, or live in a way that is not truly who we are.
So true Thomas, when we hold back love we do indeed give out the message that it is okay to be ‘less’…. um, yes the word responsibility pops up, in how responsible are we with our reflections, and what we reflect is how we live and how we love or not and also that absolutely everything counts….
and when we hold back any part of the gorgeous, tender, deeply caring exquisite beings we all are, we are giving the message to other people that its alright to be less, or live in a way that is not truly who we are. Very Powerful comment.
“Healing the relationship I had with my father, I can feel how equal men and women truly are. We are both equal in our divinity. When both sexes stop blaming the other gender and then come together, unite together, commit together, and truly hold each other, there is no war and there is no perfection, there is only a forever expansion and deepening of love, paving a new way for how men and women relate to each other.”
This is clearly the way forward Jacqueline, there is such a depth of understanding men and women can hold each other in, that absolute and tender holding and heal the hurts of many life times, melting away the layers of protection we thought we had to drag around with us, to stay safe, where in truth the only way to not get hurt is to stay open vulnerable and un-protected.
Thomas, it has taken me a long time to get to this simple yet powerful and liberating truth; ‘ in truth the only way to not get hurt is to stay open vulnerable and un-protected’. Wise words….
“What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?” The possibility that our parents choose us for the healing and reflection we bring, changes the whole way that we view are childhood and parents, it brings the response-ability to respond to them with our love, light and tenderness and not react from our own un-dealt with hurts.
Well said Thomas. It stops the blame and leaves the response for us to choose.
When we loose one of our parents the pain and grief we feel is not that they are no longer here, of course we miss them at times, but the source of our pain is how we held back the deep love we felt for them, and didn’t express that and communicate it to them and ourselves.
Therefore after they die we are left with this un-expressed love, which was not expressed because of our own childhood hurts and judgments towards ones parents, which after they are no longer here our hurts seem so insignificant and selfish to hold onto, compared to the immense love we felt for and from them.
Gosh i really needed to read this too Thomas. A profound truth that i can action by simply embracing and expressing the love i have for my parents.
Very true Thomas, also a big ouch is that our childhood hurts never stem back to our parents, our hurts come from the fact that we held back and didn’t express whatever was there to be expressed. Through that lack of expression we create stories that blame another when the greatest hurt is our own contraction.
I love your true meaning of support .. to be ourselves in full and never hold back the love and absolute divinity we are is to hold another in this same love until such point that they too choose to discard their own layers and equally return.
Cherish, this melts me and any angst I feel towards people (my dad in particular) for not seeing the beauty and love they are. Well, it’s actually an angst I feel for myself not living that beauty in all that I do. Support has just taken on a deeper meaning and what a gorgeous thing to offer ourselves and those we meet.
I agree Cherise – the true meaning of support is life changing, if we choose to let it in.
A wonderful blog Jacqueline. You have shared so beautifully how choosing healing our hurts re-claims the space for more of our Love to be lived in our lives. As we let go of the walls of protection and instead choose to appreciate and honour the Love that is already there within us all, each and every one of us, we begin to feel and claim the Oneness between us. My relationship with my father has fortunately been very loving, not perfect but generally shared in deep appreciation and honesty. However I still can feel through what you have shared there is more Love and truth to be claimed and expressed. And I realise the limitations that I felt were present are only due to the limitations I place on myself, by holding back expressing All of the Love I am in honor of All the Love we all equally are.
A beautiful sharing Carola as you echo the same sentiments in knowing that there is more love and truth to be claimed and expressed with my father too.
This is a great revelation Jacqueline, how the fact that we felt hurt by one man can have such a hugely detrimental effect on our outlook to life and our relationship with self and others. It shows how important healing really is and how amazing it is what Universal Medicine is offering to us.
Jacqueline, yes a truly beautiful blog which got me feeling into my relationship with my father and how it is changing as I am letting my own love out, I am also letting my father in and seeing him in his true beauty also.
That’s beautiful Julie. We have a responsibility to appreciate our beauty and the beauty in others.
I love the questions your friend asked you, inspiring you to surrender to what you were denying and once having moved through your own sadness, were able to see and feel the man underneath his own. It is truly beautiful that even after he has passed you have been able to not only heal the relationship but feel the unexpressed love you felt for each other, something too many of us sadly deny each other from experiencing due to our created protections. You are living proof it is never too late.
‘I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously,’ this makes so much sense Jacqueline, why some people behave the way they do because they absorb everything, react and get hurt. From being hurt and holding onto it we then are able to hurt others too. Without love we cannot discern truth. Everything becomes distorted, truth gets distorted when we are not being love. When we are in our absolute love we cannot get hurt and gives us clarity to discern truth.
So simple and relatable Chan ” Truth gets distorted when we are not being love”. I find if things are becoming complicated then the connection to love is wobbly, making everything wobble -especially truth. Clarity comes with a very clear connection to ourselves – our bodies.
Thank you for your inspiring blog Jacqueline. Your messages to our children are absolutely divine. If every child in this world got your messages and started to live them, we would see magic before our eyes. Holding back expressing our love hurts us and everybody more than anything else.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” Also I would say to my son, and all the sons of this world, “Do not hold back the love you have for your mother for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.” This is truly beautiful. Your blog has allowed me to stop and feel how much healing can take place through nurturing my relationship with my parents.
Jacqueline what a beautiful place you have come to in regards to your father. I can especially feel your tenderness as you have deepened your understanding and love and truly see him for who he was. This blog will support so many others to let go and let love in. Our hurts will stunt us if we don’t deal with them so hats off to all who dare to go there!
What I get a sense of is there is no apology for being who you are and shining that for all to see. How amazing to arrive at that place within yourself. Beautiful.
It is a pretty profound contemplation that we are our relationship with our parents, supersedes any time we actually spend with them. It is so true that the gifts and hurts from those years stay with us until we either confirm or heal in a way that shows a love that is held equally for us and them.
Jacqueline, a beautiful blog. I can relate to your feelings about your relationship with your father. My father passed over 13 years ago. This felt finite in terms of our relationship, but as you say the relationship is actually still there. I can feel that there is still healing to do around this as I open more to love.
Michelle, that’s a true testimony to your parenting skills and your commitment to evolve that you are open to your 7 year old son pulling you up over something. There is true equality in the relationship. Most of us were not brought up this way, or were shown love this way. To look beyond our own hurts and see that our parents have equal hurts because of the way they were parented explains a lot and much understanding and holding can come as a result. The beauty of our mothers and fathers is always there underneath the patterns of protected behaviour.
Isn’t it amazing that in allowing ourselves to heal out hurts we become more open and loving and this love heals our relationships even with people who are not with us anymore?
I went through similar healing process with my father, Jacqueline, and even now can feel this warmth around my heard when I accepted him fully with all his imperfections as well as enormous sensitivity and beauty.
You are right “Healing the relationship I had with my father, I can feel how equal men and women truly are. We are both equal in our divinity. When both sexes stop blaming the other gender and then come together, unite together, commit together, and truly hold each other, there is no war and there is no perfection, there is only a forever expansion and deepening of love, paving a new way for how men and women relate to each other.”
Wow Jacqueline, this blog offers a deeply healing insight for many relationships all over the world. I am sure many many people can relate to what you have said here. The world as it has been so far has not nurtured these divine qualities in our fathers, instead they are encouraged by societal pressure to be tough and hard yet as daughters it is easy to see through this, seeing the tender divinity that is always there beneath whatever exterior they are putting out.
Reading your blog again this morning Jacqueline has made me reflect on the impact my relationship with my dad has had on me as a woman and how I have related to the men in my life. What you have written has opened me up to looking more deeply at this.
This feels like a simple but yet very powerful revelation – ‘That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was…’ For so long we have existed without the knowing and appreciation of how divinely beautiful we all are and so do offer this reflection to others or see it in them. Imagine what a different picture it would be if this were the realisation for the majority rather than minority of people.
‘We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support.’ Thank you Jacqueline there is so much in your blog but this part stood out for me this morning as I am appreciating the reflection from my father and how this has continued to support me since his passing earlier this year.
Reading your article, Jacqueline, I could feel that I still hold some resistance towards my parents to love them unconditionally, i.e. still holding on to some hurts and therefore layers of protection that measure how much love to express and let in. But it is not about my parents or that the hurt would need to be healed as such, it is like not wanting to take off a winter coat although it is a hot summer day. It is a choice and as your ‘hypothetical question’ asks: to be love, now, as an offer for anyone to receive the reflection of love and for oneself to just be who we have always been.
Dear Jacqueline, I was very intrigued to read the title, and I realise there is still more for me to explore about my relationship with my father. I hold him very dear, and think of him often, even though he passed away over 10 years ago. One thing I’m sure at least, is that he knew that I really loved him. And I also know he loved me too, even though he never really said so, but I could see it in his eyes. Indeed, what men bring to us, when they allow themselves to drop the big man act, is just amazing. And it is up to us to support them to know it’s safe to do so now.
Thank you Jacqueline, this blog gives a real stop moment to reflect on my relationship with my father more deeply even though I think my relationship feels caring with him what I witnessed as a child and now between him and my mother was not loving. I can feel there is the residue of what I took on about myself as a woman and can see how this influences now how I can sometimes feel in the presence of men and there is still the opportunity to deepen the relationship we have.
I feel that my relationship with my father truly began to change when I stopped trying to change him i.e. blame him – which can only result in a relationship based on hurt, which is not really a relationship but control. Allowing another to be where they are at is something I’m gradually learning as I accept my own foibles and stuff-ups. And slowly the understanding of love is unfolding from it being an emotional attachment to being the holding of another in absolute equalness.
Great comment Jinya, understanding and accepting our self allows us to understand and accept another. This brings in the equality and allows the love to grow.
‘Healing the relationship I had with my father, I can feel how equal men and women truly are. We are both equal in our divinity.’ It’s true what you say Knowing we are all divine changes everything. I have found that re-connecting with men in my life, ex-partners, family members, acknowledging who their true beauty and tenderness and the love they gave me has been very healing for all of us. With love in our hearts, it is never too late to initiate a move towards people we feel may have hurt us or we’ve quarrelled with in the past.
Very true kehinde2012 – it is never too late, we only need to make an honest look at the part we ourselves played in the realtionship and from there make a true and loving choice to let go of whatever we might have been holding on to.
It is a great point that even when someone has passed over, that the relationship still remains.
Yes Nikki, I agree – this part spooked me a bit but now I can feel such beauty in the fact that our Soul is ALWAYS offering us space and opportunity to heal, even with those who are no longer physically present! For the feeling still remains, how we feel about that person, the memories that surface and how we react or get emotionally attached to them. There is always work to be done and we can’t get out of it just because someone has passed. I’m quite blown away by this realisation Jacqueline presented.
Thank you Jaqueline for the depth you share in this blog. My father went just one year ago and fortunately I could express my love to him before he leaved his body. I understood that most of my life I used my parents as an excuse to not live and express to others the inmense love we belong to. And I learned that this is a lack of responsibility. The relationship with my father do not stoped at his death, on the contrary it is more alive than ever helping me on taking responsibility in reflecting true love to the rest of my family and the whole.
It makes such an incredible difference if we see people for who they really are and not for what they do. This allows us to see the beauty and love that we all are and support ourselves in bringing that to light again.
This is a great reminder Michael – we need to see people for who they really are.
How beautiful to have such a friend to persist in asking the one question (the key) that was holding back the love you have for your father. Your sharing again confirms the power of relationships and in our choice to not hold back our love, those layers of illusion then peel away to reveal the truth.
Gosh Jacqueline, your blog was astoundingly lovely and healing to read. It is interesting how much we measure to whom and how much we will share our love when it is actually there for everybody equally. I shed some tears reading your words so they obviously touched a chord which I now have an opportunity to explore and heal within myself.
I agree Jeanette – the moment we start to measure it can no longer be true love. It is a huge illusion that we can love in ’portions’ and only to those we deem worthy of it. True love is for all equally.
This is so beautiful to read Jacqueline: “I can now shine and show all of me in the knowing that it is my true reflection that truly supports/allows another to be who they truly are.” This is our true responsibility here on earth to reflect how amazing we all are.
Since we carry all our relationships within us there is no end to them, even when the other person has passed over. My relationship with my father has evolved hugely since he died. Not through any attachment or investment in keeping his memory alive but in my evolution and in my understanding of men, how my relationship with my father played out and in really seeing some of the challenges that men face in the world today.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” Thank you for these words which resonate deeply. Like you, I decided to withdraw when things between my father and me did not go swimmingly any longer and I totally agree that this behaviour serves no one, least of all myself. Protection and building walls just do not work and never will.
I can relate to the withdrawal Gabriele – it is such a false fortress that we choose to take on. An imprisonment we do not need.
This is fabulous Jacqueline. The reflection you give us by this blog is that it is never to late to heal the hurts we cary in our relationships. That even when people, like your father, are past over we can heal this hurts. The relation does not stop but continues and we can change this relation by healing our hurts by our choice.
I found this deeply inspiring and something I am now prepared to commit to with a new level of understanding and appreciation, thanks to you Jacqueline “I love my father deeply… and I love that his reflection of who he truly was has supported me to see the same reflection in all men: that in each and every man on this planet – when they discard their self-made coats of armour, masks, and walls of protection – there is a gorgeous, tender, playful, cheeky, deeply sensitive, precious, and very vulnerable, innocent, divine little boy bursting with so much love. And let’s be honest, this world desperately needs the caring, exquisitely warm tender love that men can deliver.”
And this is exactly how I felt “Not being truly seen nor met by my father somehow I felt less, and by feeling less I chose to hide my love and lost my-self in the process. This resulted in my blaming men for not providing me the space to fully express all of me… and the kick-back was, as soon as I held back my love I could no longer just observe people and life, but absorbed everything unconsciously, for example, taking on other people’s stuff – thus I was no longer able to discern what was true and what was not true.”
Absolutely exquisite and heavenly Jacqueline. Your article touches the SOUL. Super powerful beyond words. I am deeply touched by all of it but one of the stand out lines for me is “That he was blind to how absolutely divinely beautifully he was and in his blindness he could not see how divinely beautiful I was, thus I was not seen.”
This is beautiful what you have shared, how relationships are so important and that even when the person is no longer with us we can still heal hurts and replace this with valuing who they truly are instead.
You are right, Vicky. It is beautiful to be able to heal relationships even with those who have passed away and very helpful.
Thank you Jaqueline, this article comes very familiar to me, my father died about that time too and knowing what it means to miss out on the opportunities to share my love with him.
But I know that I could help him letting go and the dying itself was a great healing for him. In holding him during this process and inviting him to letting go of this body was a blessing and it felt not sad at all, but natural and released because he was first fighting against dying. My way of being with death is totally easy and light.
“Not being truly seen nor met by my father somehow I felt less, and by feeling less I chose to hide my love and lost my-self in the process”
I can so relate to what you have written here Jaqueline; my childhood hurts ran deep and can still pop up from time to time. I have much to ponder on what you have written and much to learn; thank you.
I can so relate to that comment as well.This could have been my story for the most part. What hurts is that I chose to be less to keep the peace and what I know now is that that did not serve me or him or anyone else for that matter.
This is gorgeous Jacqueline, thank you. Knowing our innate glory, everywhere we are, everyone we are with, with every pillar of life being presented, every reaction the world comes back at us will not change the irrefutable fact felt solidly in our bodies that we are here to reflect all that we are. We are born awesome, and nothing can stop us from being that any longer.
When I read this blog it connected me to the deep love I have for my father and it inspires me to want to connect with him more and really get to know him and let him know how much I love him.
I felt this too Kristy – this blog is a call to surrender to the love we are and in that we feel the immense love we have for those in our lives.
My Mum is seriously ill and will pass over in the not so distant future. We have been given a precious opportunity to connect, for me to honour her, and likewise for her to appreciate me. Its been absolutely beautiful, and does so much to support me in so many more relationships than just this one. Every week we meet up, and I am reminded of the tenderness in me as I look to remind her of the love that is all around her. There is so much we have both healed from this gorgeous time together, and I can really feel what you are saying in your Blog Jacqueline – the importance of healing that primal relationship.
There are 2 moments that I experienced with my father that I hold dearly because of the deeply felt connection and love. One was when I put my hand on his heart and expressed the words ‘I love you’, something I had never said to him. And the second experience when I tenderly put my hand on his hand and smiled to him with my eyes. Such joy felt as his heart lifted in this connection. I did not have to wait for him to bring this to me, for I could choose it with him.
How beautiful Marika.. you didn’t wait for your dad to show you love but chose to connect to the love with you and within him and express from this love.
This has offered a beautiful reminder to me Jacqueline, that the relationship we have with our parents are not exclusive to them but reflective to every other relationship we have thereafter. We may arrogantly think we can walk away from our parents when they don’t measure up to our expectations, but it is with this view we are walking away and carrying with us into every relationship to come.
Thank you for sharing… very sweet blog and inspiring.
We are all reflections for one another, which is perhaps the true meaning of support. – I really like this sentence…as it means we don’t actually have to anything, we just have to be our true selves for those around us to get the reflection that they too can just be.
I can relate to your story Jacqueline as my father could not express his love for me as he too was hurt by life and covered his sadness with anger and protection. With illness and age my father started to drop these layers and I got to see snippets of his sweetness, playfulness and tenderness – so beautiful to witness and feel his true essence. I too wish he had seen his amazingness.
This is beautiful Jacqueline. To understand that we can heal so much even after a person has passed on, is amazing to read. I love to read that when we bring it back to true love, anything can be healed.
Jacqueline the dynamics you describe between parent and child and in particular father and daughter offer much insight. When understood from the perspective of spirit, soul and reincarnation it is quite a loaded expectation we (as children) place upon our parents to need to be seen and recognised for who we are in truth because we have not developed a deep trust in this for ourselves in other lives. There are certainly some extreme and abusive situations that would be quite shocking but most people are loved by their parents, just not met or shown this in the way we want, NEED and expect to be loved. It is part of the grand set up of the spirit to ensure irresponsibility can be justified and perpetual. Serge Benhayon proffered this understanding and to me it is one of the greatest clues for evolution.
I love your final conclusion, Jacqueline: ” I can feel how equal men and women truly are. We are both equal in our divinity. When both sexes stop blaming the other gender and then come together, unite together, commit together, and truly hold each other, there is no war and there is no perfection, there is only a forever expansion and deepening of love, paving a new way for how men and women relate to each other.”
I experience this too, the more I allow myself to be the tender woman I am, the more I see and meet tender men and experience there is no difference at all, we all come from the same place, the same divinity.
Wow Jacqueline there is so much in this powerful blog. When I took your advice and gave myself permission to be a son of god I felt my presence expand like my soul filled up my body and I was blessed directly by god.
Hi Jacqueline – thank you for sharing your beautiful healing of your relationship with your father. There is much that you share that I feel I am reading my own relationship experience with my father, who is quite now quite elderly. Recently he gave me the opportunity (by being very un-well) to open up and let him in rather than me waiting any more time for him to change. This was such a gift because I let go of everything from earlier and was just with him as he was in his complete vulnerability. Feeling the love and tenderness that was with us has truly supported me in the weeks that have followed, when the ingrained protection has re-emerged from his fear and uncertainty in life. But i know who we both are at our essence and this is what is true. I love your quote “What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?” I agree, this is what came to me and this is how I understand now my relationship with my father to be.
Jaqueline, this is a beautiful article, which brings up things for me too. How wonderful that you now have such a beautiful relationship, with such love for your father now. My father died 12 years ago now and I had not realised just how much I loved him, and he loved me. I especially love this line “What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?”, it so resonated with me. I did not really know how much my father loved me until a couple of years before my mother died, when she gave me a photograph of myself about 12 months old, and shared with me my father’s reaction when I was born. I had no idea before this. She said my father found me so beautiful as a newborn baby, he went straight up to the local shops and bought a special bassinet for me to sleep in, when they had planned to use a special cane washing basket. But the photo said it all. The love that I am shone amazingly from that photograph. Over the years my dad was busy with all that he felt he had to be as a man and as a father, in supporting his family, and also looking back, I realise the great hurts that he was holding in his body. Although he could not show it directly to me, I now know that he truly loved me very much, and I now feel just how strongly I love him. Thank you for the reminder that our relationship still goes on after the death of one party, a really important point to realise. I can see that one line I quoted from your article epitomises what my father saw and recognised when I was born. As I have been discovering myself as the loving, gorgeous woman that I am, I can now feel the truth in that suggestion in my case too.
Beautiful Share Beverley and how lovely to receive the photograph confirming how much love you shone and are, and to hear from your mother how much your father loved you,…..It feels to me too, your father truly saw and recognised you when you were born.
Such an honest and heart felt blog here Jacqueline, your willingness to be honest and feel the sadness remaining from your childhood has allowed you to come to a beautiful understanding and healing of the hurt. This healing allows the “beautiful, gorgeous, powerful, wise woman” who was always there to shine through. Many of us are crippled by these hurts; the pay off by dealing with them honestly and the liberation that follows is immense.
My father passed over about sixteen years ago, and I can still feel the love we held for each other, but looking back I can feel I didn’t hold my parents in equalness. I got along with my father so well that I’m sure, although unsaid, my mother felt left out and true love would not do that. I always said I’m a bit ‘out ‘ with my mother as we were different personalities, and now I can feel the sadness of not holding both my parents equally. After my father passed I had 10 years in close relationship with my mother and the appreciation is still growing although she passed seven years ago, the more I appreciate myself the more I realise I am appreciating and loving the essence of my mother also.
This is so beautiful Jacqueline to read the appreciation and love you have been able to feel and the healing that has occurred for the relationship between you and your deceased father which has lead to being able to see these qualities “in each and every man on this planet…there is a gorgeous, tender, playful, cheeky, deeply sensitive, precious and very vulnerable, innocent, divine little boy bursting with so much love”. This blog has given me a lot to ponder on, for up until now I have never considered my father who passed over many years ago in this way.
Thank you Jacqueline for a very beautiful and thought provoking post, It raises questions for me, not so much about my mother who has passed over so instead of looking at her lack of love for me, though I have come to feel her deep love for me since, though she was not able to show it because of her hurts. I feel in turn to look at my love for her and the closing down I did in return. So beautiful to be able to bring this healing love to our relationships even though they have long passed over.
Such a healing to really read and let all of what you share here sink into my body. It resonated with me the true power of healing our childhood hurts as they are so often buried, left undelt with and while we can think it only affects our relationship with that one person the issue may relate to, it holds us back big time in every expression be it to ourselves, our partner, our friends and everyone. This is our responsibility then to not hold onto our hurts and truly heal them
This really is a healing on so many levels this blog. I can relate on so many levels.
By not holding back Love and what feels true for us to express we SEE MORE. We see the hurts, the pains, the struggles but are less affected as we are living in a more truthful way and thus are not caught up in the web of emotions. There’s a natural detachment that occurs and then we are able to truly Love as there are less hurts in the way. Thank you for sharing your story Jacqueline.
There is no doubt that the deeper healing that has taken place for you Jacqueline will allow for an even greater capacity to meet the 3-4 year old children you work with and teach. Just your presence would be naturally healing and may lighten their load of childhood hurts so there are less hurts to heal or be imprisoned by in adulthood.
This question “What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?” clearly exposes there are no coincidences in life, only a Divine Plan.
It is beautiful to feel your love for your father Jacqueline, and for all others, male and female too…and it is never too late to heal the past, whether people are still with us or have moved on.
What a great friend for persisting and asking the question enabling you Jacqueline to feel the sadness you were holding in your body and to feel the healing that came from your willingness to go deeper. This makes me realise that we don’t need anyone to provide us with “closure” if we’re prepared to bring understanding to anything seemingly unresolved in a relationship. How freeing.
We cannot accept another’s divinity unless we first accept our own. Yet sometimes we can’t even see our own true light until we see it reflected in another. No matter how many layers may be on top, this light forever burns bright. It is the immortal burning of the fiery spark of God, held deep within the every one of us, in life and in ‘death’, in body or not. It is true that love never dies.
Thankyou Jacqueline for this deeply beautiful and honest sharing.
On a more personal note, this blog has inspired me to reflect on my relationship with my own father. There were many similarities for me, and after much support and working through things, I was able to see very clearly the incredibly gentle, tender and loving man that my father is, not perfect, but this only serves to make him just like me. I love my dad very dearly and your blog has been a reminder of this so thank you Jacqueline.
Wow, talk about dropping a love bomb Jacqueline. …’this world desperately needs the caring, exquisitely warm tender love that men can deliver’. I second that and all you expressed about men and women relating in whole new way, redefining true relationship. To see and feel men and women expressing truly with one another is exquisite.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your mother for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.” I can feel the truth of this for both sons and daughters and, as a daughter, I will be taking this advice and expressing my love for my mother far more that I have done up till now …
Jacqueline, your blog has brought tears to my eyes as I sit and reflect on my relationship with my own father, and feel there is still very much to explore there. Thank you so much for sharing your story. It’s a true blessing.
Beautiful Sandra. I agree it is indeed a blessing to be offered an opportunity to reflect, heal and deepen our connection to our Love within and so with All.
I love the possibility presented that each relationship we have with our family and parents (extended to all) is one of divine constellation, almost that we are magnetically pulled to be together for whatever learning we are here to have; the beauty is that when we don’t hold back and stop playing emotional or victim games and take the responsible approach we will blossom for all to see, feel and be inspired by.
Jacqueline this is a powerful blog that touched me deeply and brought tears to my eyes. I can relate to feeling I’ve dealt with things, but actually when the surface is scratched, its just that they are buried. It’s wonderful you have had the opportunity to heal some old hurts and see your dad for the beautiful man he was, even if he didn’t.
When I read this last part of your comment Debra, I got a sense of that although my father did not see his own beautiful light, the fact that I did truly ‘see’ him somehow creates a space or rather plants a seed for him to return to that when he so choses…. thus that I was able to meet him shows how equal we all are and the labels of mother and father, and son and daughter can somehow confuse us, (as in the parents should know better because they are older!) But fact is we are all equal in wisdom and the love we hold regardless of age….as long as we do not hold it back.
Beautifully said jacmcfadden04, we are all equal in wisdom and the more we embrace this fact the more we will be able to have relationships that allow us to be with each other in an non imposing way. When we know someone knows in essence what we know it is just a matter then of knowing that they are not able in that moment to express what they know and we can help each other with that.
I love this Elisabeth,
Its very true I have felt this many times, “When we know someone knows in essence what we know it is just a matter then of knowing that they are not able in that moment to express what they know and we can help each other with that.”
Allowing others the space and time to accept what we may already feel is important. By being ourselves and reflecting from a place of love within we naturally give others the opportunity to connect and live that too. Its ultimately there choice and not for us to change others.
I so love this Elizabeth Dolan! I can feel an arrogance in myself sometimes that stops this very process in its tracks. It’s all a defence and does not help grow equality and the emerging of the wisdom you express here. Thank you.
Beautiful – “But fact is we are all equal in wisdom and the love we hold regardless of age….as long as we do not hold it back.” It just goes to show -expression is everything, no matter what age or experiences one has had.
Beautifully said Jacqueline, the roles we hold in families become like tidy labels, and these do not allow for the individual expression of wisdom and love at any age or stage of life. Labels and roles are very defined and in that, quite capping.
I love how you have expressed this Melinda. I can just picture tidy labels on boxes being shelved away until they are needed. Our ideals and beliefs about certain roles boxed up until we pull them out to play. As you say it leaves no room for freedom to express naturally and lovingly.
Melinda, labels and roles… this is so true – which is why this blog is terrific, it reflects that it is never to late to change the label – and that it can be easily done even after someone is dead.
Yes, I agree Debra and to have the absolute support throughout such discoveries is immeasurable and beautiful.
This is a lovely blog Jacqueline. Everyone is included somewhere in this. We are sons, daughters and possibly mothers or fathers at some time, and the relationships that we have are alive and living even if they have passed on, this is great. The fact is we can’t hide even in death and the connection and relationship is alive within and never leaves us.
Very true Matthrew, our relationships live on, even in death. It is best then to deal with them while everyone is alive!
Yes it does Mathew it includes everyone for we are all in relationship all of the time and it is our relationships, our deep connections with others that truly nurture our soul.
True matthew brown, and it shows that this love we can get to – when we allow ourselves to let go of the hurts and take responsibility for our part in it, as nothing happens to us for no reason; every hurt happens because there is something for us to learn out of it – this love is more than anything of this world, because that’s the only thing we will take with us; no house, no car, no status or fame will follow us beyond the grave, only love and deep connections.
Great point Matthew. Even in death we cannot escape the imprints of our relationships. As the energy of what is lived continues to be deeply felt by all those touched by it. This beautifully highlights the responsibility we have in choosing connect to Love, or not, and being aware of what it is we are actually sharing in the world, with all that we meet.
Very true Mathew, this blog exposes so well that there is no hiding.
Jaqueline this is such a lovely blog. I never had a great relationship with my father as I was always in reaction to him but in recent years have let go of all of that and now it’s a real joy to see him and we always say how much we love each other. What you’ve written is how I can deepen my appreciation with my parents and this I know deepens my appreciation of myself. Any intolerance I have of either of them allows me to reflect about this within myself and go deeper with my awareness so I can bring a healing understanding and acceptance to this.
I love what you point out Karen that when you deepen your appreciation for your parents how this deepens the appreciation for yourself, so very true and is what I have also discovered. Thus it is in our own best interests to heal our issues with our parents, which is also a huge step forward.
I can feel how accepting and appreciation of who each of us is is very foundational to opening up more and more to the love that we are. All anybody wants is to be seen and loved for who they are. So someone has to accept the responsibility of this and start somewhere, with gentleness, tenderness and understanding for all the years of protection.
Doesn’t this blog show that we can resolve our inner issues with relationships by ourselves.
For an issue to clear we don’t need a sorry or a sign a reconciliation.
It is our choice to hold the issue, which can be healed at any time.
Exactly Luke, letting go of the issue leaves it clear for the other person, and they are left to feel the amazing love of the person they previously had an issue with.
Yes Luke the power of choice is in our hands and our hearts; ‘ It is our choice to hold the issue, which can be healed at any time’.
Awesome Luke. “We can resolve our inner issues with relationships by ourselves”. Our issues are all inner yet so often we blame others instead of taking the responsibility that the issue lie within ourselves.
As real as the cause for the pain we feel in a moment of hurt it is up to us if we make it an issue that we carry unresolved until we choose to not make it an issue anymore.
Absolutely Luke and for me it has been so freeing to accept that it is my choice when I heal my issues.
Great observation Luke and one I will remember. I know I have often felt I needed to speak with the person or have a big heart to heart before a relationship issued could be solved. Jacqueline’s blog shows we can let go and chose to heal at any moment.
That’s exactly it Luke – we don’t need a ‘sorry’ or any explanations about the why’s and wherefore’s. If we truly heal our hurts, all of that falls by the wayside, and the door is open for true connection and love for all equally so.
Wise words Luke, we are the ones holding onto whatever it is that we choose to and can take the steps at any point in time to drop what is heavy and isn’t true to accept the glory and joy that we have always been within.
So very beautiful and deeply loving, thank you Jacqueline, you have brought tears to my eyes. No matter how thick the wall around us to hold each other in love and to see the person for who they truly are.
Beautifully said Esther, it does take a bit at times to detect the love under all these hard layers of hurt and protection but it is there in every single one of us we just need to open our hearts to see it.
Agreed Judith, love is underneath every layer of protection there is. Some are better at hiding their love than others but ultimately we all love the exact same.
Thank you Jacqueline. My father passed away more than 7 years ago and I feel my relationship with him has approved since he passed over as my understanding of who he was and where he was coming from has grown. I love feeling him with him, allowing his love for me now, accepting he was less able to show it when he was living.
We, daughters of our Fathers, have a choice here as your blog has shown, to step out of the issues we have with our dads and come to understanding of who they truly are.
One of our deepest pains is that we see how much those around us hold back their love, when we are full to the brim from a young age. Oh so quickly how we leave that behind to join in the misery that we see around us – a world problem for sure.
Adam, your comment brought tears to my eyes and choked me up a bit… that is so true. I know my father was very loving, but I adjusted myself and abandoned the love I was and held, to fit in, when I could have been a reminder for him to come back to the love he obviously was, and was aching for as well.
Absolutely Adam. Along with this, another deep pain we experience is not only realising that what we left our Love for was not worth it, but also not knowing how to return or what to return to. We are blessed to have walking amongst us Serge Benhayon who is leading the way of returning to Love for us all. Through how he chooses to live the Love we all are he inspires many to also return to our Love within which is what we left in the first place, which was in truth always there, and only ever a breath away.
Agreed Adam, the greatest world problem there is, is holding back our love. I remember reading that one of the top 5 regrets during death is not expressing love. It takes courage for someone to break this pattern but it is very much worth it.
Childhood hurts are something that can affect our entire lives and almost everyone has one (or more) we say that having a crippling, lifelong illness is possibly one of the worse things that could happen to a person – but these hurts can possibly remain underneath, poisoning so much of our adult life and we may not even be aware of it! or worse still not question how it has shaped our lives and defend that way as the truth. The changes that occurs not only in the bodies health but our minds perceptions and views of life and relationships is HUGE when these hurts are addressed as you have shared here Jacqueline.
Correct Leigh, until we deal with our hurts they bubble away underneath the surface and actually affect every area of our live and all our relationships. I have come to understand how harming it is to have even one relationship that has not been healed and when it is healed how deeply nurturing this is for all concerned.
Couldn’t agree more Leigh, childhood hurts can cripple people. I know myself that holding onto the hurt of not being seen as a child by my father gave me a great excuse to not shine and express my love in full. In this hurt I hold everyone to ransom and everyone misses out on love – such a crazy set up.
A powerful blog jacqueline, one that confirms that we are constantly presented with opportunities to heal. It is reassuring to know it is never too late to heal past hurts or resolve broken relationships even when the person has passed over. Gorgeous that you have re-connected to the truth of your father’s love.
What a divine opportunity we all have, to take the responsibility to align to the love we are inside of us and to look from this angle onto our relationships with others, there we see only love in the other person, because underneath we are all love. This way of living would be the end of all wars and fights. For me it comes back to responsibility to make the step to align with this connection of love and this is what I am reflecting to everyone because I am taking this responsibility to hold love to be felt from another so they can align as well, it is that simple.
It can often feel like a bit of a game we play when we divide ourselves by gender and use our hurts to blame the opposite sex. There is much in the media that supports this message, men are from mars, women are from venus etc. Yet, we are all divine beings and we are all beautiful in our essence, any move away from that i now understand is just our way of dealing with the hurt we feel from the world, from things not supporting us as a child and making our behaviours as a result less loving than they should be. It is great to read Jacqueline that you are now able to separate the behaviour of your father from the man he became and deeply love him, and ultimately love yourself to allow this to be.
Wow, Jaqueline, what a long way you have made to heal the hurts with your father. It is so needed to appreciate our parents and understand that beneath all teir layers of hurt and protection is buried the true love they are. Now you have healed this, what a blessing for the world.
I was impressed by the the way your relationship with your friend allowed you to come to these realisations and it confirmed to me how important it is to nurture our relationships with our true brothers and sisters who can take us to deeper levels of awareness through their caring love and support and how we all evolve in the process.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” – this is relevant for all relationships.
If we were to not hold back our love, is it possible that we do 2 things; 1. to not have hurts come up down the line because we were unable to express how we truly felt. 2. to offer that person a chance to equally express their love without holding back.
What an absolute gift that is for us to share. We all know love. And to hold it back is poison to the body.
Absolute Hannah, the holding back of our expression is the poison in our bodies. This is profound and I want to repeat here: “Coming back to the original truth and truly ‘see’ my father again – all of him – along with the acceptance and understanding of his choices. With this acceptance I had a real sense of “we saw each other” and with that our relationship felt healed, and somehow expanded.” This is the simple recipe to heal our childhood issues.
To hold back love is like poison to our body, I agree Hannah, and we see it all around us as the poison can be the causes of our rising rates of illness and disease.
Jacqueline, wow, this blog is hugely healing and profound. The truth you have brought here provides an opportunity for people to see that they do not need to have issues with their fathers or parents. When we allow ourselves to connect to the love that they truly are, and that they have always been, and remove our expectations of how we may have wanted them to be, we allow a deepening in ourselves of the love that can be felt for them, and thus a freedom for them to just be them as the beings they are. This freedom allows much healing and support in return.
This is beautifully said Amelia. “When we allow ourselves to connect to the love that they truly are…” there are then no hurts or reactions. And most importantly, we break the cycle of holding back the love which only serves to perpetuate this viscous cycle for all others in our future interactions. To live in a way with people where the interaction is with the love that they truly are and not the behaviours which are displayed shows another way, connects people to the divine essence they are and slowly the world will return back to harmony.
Yes Amelia, I feel what is key is as you say to ‘remove our expectations of how we may have wanted them to be’. Then we can allow and enjoy each other as we are. This alone drops many barriers that may have been up.
You make a very important point – getting rid of the expectations that we have for our parents to be a certain way. Once we do and don’t clobber them with our demands, whether inwardly as silent opposition or outwardly in rebellion, we can stop piling one hurt on top of another and truly set them and ourselves free of this yoke.
Yes Amelia, our relationships with our parents are not there to make our lives difficult, and there is no time pressure to resolve whatever we may be holding against them. They did the best they could with wherever they were at in our childhoods. When we start to take full responsibility for our part in it, even as children, and bringing understanding to them, we can then heal so much and move on, grow and share more love with everyone, without putting conditions on what they have to do for us.
“Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” I feel this is so true Jaqueline. My father passed away many many years ago but your friend is right is when she said we still have a relationship with them even they are no longer here. While he was alive it was a stop go relationship where we would be close when he had time for me and angry when he was tired and exhausted or had been drinking which meant I was never sure where I was with him. I have only just realised this as I write it but I can feel how this has affected how far I am willing to go in offering my love, holding it back until I know it is ok to do so. Thank you Jaqueline your blog has given an insight into my holding back and measuring the love that I am and the love I am willing to give.
Thank you for your sharing Alison, makes so much sense.. and I remember as I write how I did not feel safe to be or show my love and so love became less and measured and actually not love at all. I remember making a decision that this world did not deserve my love and so right there and then I held it back at a huge cost to myself of course.
It is interesting how we get these reflections from others, family members being a great example. And whilst reading this blog Jacqueline what came up for me was how I could sit with my father and feel all of his disappointments of his life (he has since passed away) but one thing that he never lost or became tainted, was the fact that he knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was a god or a divine power. During many of our discussions about life, the good and the bad, we always reflected this point back to each other and it was felt by me deeply. Thank you Jacqueline for this beautiful reminder.
My father passed away recently and for the last 3 years of his life he was unable to communicate, and like you, I resisted to really feel into the relationship we had, somehow thinking there’s not much I could do about it. I can feel now how I avoided feeling and accepting how tender this man truly was because I didn’t want to feel the extent to which I had gone into hardness myself. This really makes me realise how much I had fought my life from the word go, and what a pointless, futile struggle that was.
I can relate to this a lot. My father passed away 11 years ago and for the last year or two of his life could not communicate with words. I was so mad at him that he did not communicate when he could and I went into a lot of hardness around it. I love Jacqueline’s blog and the deeper reading of her father. It’s also an awesome example of healing a relationship after someone has passed.
I realize by reading all the comments, that I haven’t really let my father in, I haven’t really accepted him in full. My current impulse is to connect to him again and to really meet him on a deeper level we all are – on the level of love. Thanks for all your reminder, that we can always deepen our relationship to our parents and obviously to all other people.
I could highlight many words and sentences in your blog Jacqueline This one was really standing out ‘What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?” I can apply this on any relationship I have and ask myself what is the benefit of holding back anything from me and the only answer I have is keeping myself in a comfortable place (which is not comfortable at all ) and with that keeping life as it is today, living out of connection with each other and adding to the misery we are in. It is my responsibility to shine and reflect the absolute wisdom that is in all of us.
Looking at this from a different angle, I can see it from the daughters I have chosen, they bring an enormous healing into my life – beauty, grace and a power pack full of love that reminds me, and allows me to be tender… not just with them, but with so many others.
Beautifully pointed out Annelies. This brings a deeper meaning to every relationship we are part of and our responsibility to express the Truth of Love. That if we are open to receive Love, learn and grow every relationship potentially offers the opportunity to expand our Love together.
That is really a positive and for me new way to look at a relationship. It feels very empowering and there is no way to feel like a victim at all – beautiful.
What a beautiful and loving article. Thank you for expressing with such tenderness the true expression of men, I feel deeply touched and honoured.
Your blog shows how painful it is to hold onto hurts that were caused by any of the parent. We often forget that parents were young one day too and how their upbringing was influencing them and their behaviour too. It is lovely to read, that you could understand your father and let go of the hurt, that caused no true connection with especially men. What an insidious game of the mind to keep us separate.
Great point Steffi, we do often forget what it was that might have led to our parents behaving in the way they did… too absorbed in the hurt and/or injustice of whatever was done to us. Over the years of listening to people’s stories I have learnt that no matter how awful their behaviour may have been toward another, it can always be understood once you hear what led them to that point. I don’t always apply this understanding when it’s something affecting me… and even as I write realise that exposes the want or need to hold onto hurts at times, when all that’s required is a willingness to understand the other!
Yes and here is the key again – ‘ keeping us separate’ – which serves no one. Well expressed Steffi Henn. Only through true connection with ourselves first, can we then embrace others, see past their hurts and be the love that we all inherently are.
Very well said Steffi. This blog is a great example of how important understanding is when it comes to our relationships… A lot of young people blame their parents for a lot of things – being too overprotective, not really meeting them and connecting/building a relationship, being ‘uncaring’ etc. but we do often forget they had an upbringing which may have been very much the same, or a lot worse. It is vital to not blame them, but offer them the choice to do it differently.
Such a beautiful blog Jacqueline. “Healing the relationship I had with my father, I can feel how equal men and women truly are. We are both equal in our divinity. ” This is so powerful. I too can relate to much of your blog. We ‘didn’t wear our hearts on our sleeve’ in my family. Controlling feelings was to be admired and showed strength…….Yet hidden beneath were all the layers of hurt that were never addressed, so passed on down through the generations. Well, all that stops here now, with me, knowing how important it is to deal with our childhood issues.
Well said, Sue. Once we understand the layers of hurts that are behind the behaviours coming down through the generations, we have a choice to break the mould and stop the continuation.
A truly beautiful sharing Jacqueline and a reminder to reflect on our relationships. My mother passed 8 years ago and I was able to have a loving relationship with her as an adult that I felt was missing as a child. With my father it has been beautiful to explore the little hurts as they arrive and heal them as they appear, thus leaving a more open and loving relationship for us to share. I have let go of holding him to ransom for not showing the love I craved as a child and understand he expresses from where he is and from any hurts he may hold but this does not mean I have to hold back on sharing and expressing my love for him. In being openly loving with him it allows his guard to melt and the relationship between us is more flowing.
Great blog Jacqueline. I too have recently come to enjoy my relationship with my father. For most of my life his absence created a big hole and I couldn’t relate to having a father. I really can’t blame him for my hurts because it is always my choice to react in that way. Since taking responsibility I have felt to have regular contact with him and to initiate the building of a loving relationship. Thank you for your sharing. Even though your father has passed on, your relationship with him is still alive. This is a great reminder for me to heal my relationship with my mother.
Beautiful Jacqueline, “If there is any truth in this possibility, then I would say to my daughter and all the daughters of this world, “Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” I have been opening up more and more to expressing the love I have for my father. I know for me it has been amazing to express my love with absoluteness to him and for him to receive it. It has offered him the opportunity to find his own heartfelt words of expression back. We both have expanded and become tenderer because of it and in so doing I have a greater appreciation of myself.
Thank you, Jacqueline. It is really beautiful to connect to the constellations of family rather than look at our relationships from the narrow perspective of our hurts. Your humble appreciation of what you and your father were here to teach each other is inspiring, and provides much to reflect upon.
Yes well said Janet, it’s very freeing to let go the angst we so often carry towards our parents for this or that, even in just small ways, and allow the beauty of who they truly are and what they have offered by way of reflection. I find it’s something I tend to do far more easily when I do it for myself first however… stop condemning myself for my choices and imperfections to embrace and appreciate what I do bring. And the world feels a decidedly more loving place when I do that too.
This is beautifully put Janet, our relationships are constellations and we do have a lot to learn from each other. How amazing to look at life like this? It makes all the difference.
You pose a very interesting point, that just because you father passed away, does not mean the relationship is over and can’t be healed. So many children experience what you have shared – not being met and feeling the pain of that. And yet for you to be able to see past the hurts of the child, and the hurts and behaviours of the adult to truly see and accept your father as the man he was and love him is truly amazing. I love to express to my mother and father how much I love them.
Superficially Dad struggled when I told him I loved him. He would squirm in the unfamiliarity of such open expressions, but I observed his body melt underneath the facade and he ‘knew’ absolutely what I meant because he loved me deeply so.
Thats beautiful Matilda, I can very much relate… this just shows us whatever front we put on or however we push it away at the end of the day we all want the same thing – LOVE.
Wow Jaqueline, this is such a gorgeous article, I love how you have claimed how amazing you are ‘this is who I am – I am this sexy, beautiful, gorgeous, powerful, wise woman. This is me, of course it is, I always was this’, reading this i can feel that I am this too and I can also feel how I always was this despite the self doubt and self bashing, the truth was that I was always beautiful and wise I just did not appreciate myself and instead allowed myself to go into my head and disconnect from all of my loveliness.
Sometimes we have to make that first step with our parents, when I was in my teens my father was unable to express his love as we were all growing up from young girls to teenagers. One day I went home and gave him a hug and just said I love you, I knew he felt that hug and connection and something shifted in him. Since then this has allowed him to be more open and expressive with us all.
This is gorgeous Amita, I love to express my love to my dad. Growing up I didn’t always appreciate him and express this love because my own hurts got in the way. As I let go of expectation of how I thought he ‘should be’ it was easier for me to see him as the tender loving divine spark he truly is, as result our relationship has deepened and blossomed…. As a bonus he also gives great hugs.
To see how the relationships we have with our parents affects our perspective on the world is massive. But what is really great is how Jacqueline has taken responsibility for what she chooses to see, and for what she has chosen to see in the past, and so, Jacqueline is paving the way for her own awakening to the beautiful person that she is to be seen and appreciated.
We might think that we no longer have a relationship with our parents once they have passed away but like you share, this is not true. The relationship lives forth, and when we don’t deal with the hurts and/or issues that come from the relationship with our parents, they will have an impact on all of our relationships for the rest of our life.
That is a truth for me too Mariette, that our relationship with our parents continues, even if they have past over. And the beautiful thing is that we can still heal the hurts we cary in this relationship and turn the relationship into one of love and understanding. For me the understanding that my parents where also deeply hurt and not met for who the truly where helped me to heal the resentment I had towards them and in the relation I had with them. I can now feel that I deeply love both of them and that is what I now cary with me instead. A beautiful transformation, from resentment and bitterness to understanding and love.
Yes exactly Mariette, the illusion that we leave things behind is just that. We carry forward everything, whatever is healed and whatever is not… and so we go around and around with whatever ‘mother and father baggage’ we still have, until we heal it too. The thing is, it is our healing, not theirs, and so doesn’t matter how many years or decades ago they may have passed away. If there’s an ounce of blame however, we cannot heal, and around it will go again, until we do.
Yes we can carry our hurts right until the day we pass over. I know that was what I was going to do until I met Serge Benhayon. In fact at the time I wasn’t even aware that I had any and it is only now that I have ‘unpacked’ them that I can really see the huge burden of what I was carrying around with me; literally a heavy weight that was completely debilitating and effecting all my reactions and choices. So it was my relationship with me that was touched first by my willingness to look at and let go of all my hurts and then of course every other relationship in my life. The moment I stopped blaming my parents for anything was one of the most liberating ones of my life, introducing me to the joy of responsibility and putting me back into my own driving seat.
So true Mariette, I know in the past when I had held onto blame for various reason’s this also affected all other relationships I had, it wasn’t until I was willing to take responsibility for my life that I saw it for what it truly was – me creating an issue to avoid dealing with my own stuff! Thank God I jumped of out of this repetative cycle as without Universal Medicine I could quite easily still be on the hamster wheel of blame.
Wow, what a beautiful read your blog is Jaqueline… a wise and thoughtful message.. to “not hold back the love you have for your (…mother/father… ) for you too may find a deeper acceptance and love for yourself.”
Yes I love that too Johanne – it is such a deeply wise statement, one I also have experienced in my life too.
Agree Johanne, this turns the whole culture of blaming and demanding of our parents around and puts us into responsibility.
I like this Jacqueline – that the reflections we are constantly showing to each other energetically (and we all know we can feel them) can either confirm the lies we live and tell ourselves, or can truly support each other by inspiring and confirming us to explore being more true to ourselves.
Thanks to Universal Medicine I have come to understand both my parents and the choices they made and the way they lived. I was sent to boarding school in the 1950s and only saw my parents in the Summer Holidays until I was 13 and they moved back to England. We were never close as a family and anger, resentment, all sorts of negative emotions abounded. I never thought about how it was for our parents not having their children around. Now I am able to see life less from a victim perspective and am taking more responsibility for developing self love and appreciation.
So often we hold the world to ransom and want to blame something or someone outside of us as the reason we are not fully claimed as being who we really are. But the reality, as this blog shows, is that it is us that choose to react to the choices of another person and it is us that make that choice to be less. Of course if everyone is doing this then where is the reflection or inspiration of something different?
Well said Andrew – I’ve carried around accusations about my parents all my life, but they are my creation and I will carry them as long as I choose to… of course I could also choose to put those reactions down and in that movement I would be able to connect to so much more of what they have to offer.
Thank you Jacqueline, reading your blog was so poignant for me. I could so relate to what you are saying, you could have been talking about me and my relationship with my father who passed away three years ago, and I didn’t have a close relationship with either. I so appreciate your words and the opportunity to ponder further on the reflection my father has presented to me.
There is a heavenly meaning in your words Jaqueline! The fact that there are moment when we say: “Dad wasn’t loving or Mom” we as children being on the depending end to be nurtured and cared for where maybe not able to keep the purpose we had coming into this family – but looking back we can do it every time by choice to turn the wheel and move another way.
Great reflections Jacqueline, you bring new light to love in family and familial relationships, and that ultimately if we hold on to family hurts, and and take on other’s hurts too to not feel the original hurt, then we just bring those into all other relationships and end up in muddy waters not able to see what’s true or not. Your post is therefore about responsibility – to heal by accepting and letting go to create space for there to be love.
Beautiful Zofia. Healing our hurts creates space for love.
Appreciating the reflections others offer in relationships has not always been easy for me. It has been way too easy to blame them for my misery and not take responsibility for my choices and accept my own responsibility in the relationship dynamic itself, and those who are closest have been the ones I put least energy into developing this. We may not agree on our choices, but allowing each other to be who they are and where they need to be in their life and not waver in my own choices is what I am learning to do.
I agree Fumiyo about other people’s choices – through understanding our parents/or any person, we experience humbleness which allows accessibility and an invitation or pulling of them/people towards us… through conditions we only repel. It’s ultimately about acceptance – of ourselves, ourselves with others and also the world itself, to then be able to appreciate …and where the other person feels left alone as opposed to being ‘picked on’ based on what we need them to be/our projections. The beauty of acceptance – is LOVE and LOVING.
Absolutely, Zofia. In learning to see and appreciate my parents as individuals instead of ‘mother’ ‘father’ really exposed how much expectation, ideals and beliefs I was actually holding for the roles they were playing. And it was interesting to notice my hesitance to not want to see them for who they were as if to say I would be diminishing them if I took out what they did out of what I knew who they were to be.
That was an awesome blog Jaqueline and I find it quite inspiring how you were able to see through your fathers defences and see him for the love that he was, I very much enjoyed your offering.
Me too Joe and Jacqueline – as I was given late in life the opportunity to see my father (whom I had not seen or had contact with for over 50 years by his ‘choice’), as the true caring tender being that he is within, even though he is not able to live that in the circumstances he finds himself in.
Jacqueline,
This is an incredibly powerful sharing, thank you. To allow myself to be fully the woman in the company of men is a continuing process for me. I can feel the beauty and playfulness, the sexiness and tenderness that is there inside of me. Of late I can also feel a sense how healing it is for everyone when I live from this presence.
Jacqueline I found your blog deeply moving and beautiful, it got me reflecting on my own relationships. The line “I can now shine and show all of me in the knowing that it is my true reflection that truly supports/allows another to be who they truly are.” particularly resonated with me as I can feel that it is our relationship with self that sets the foundation for all other relationships. If we love and live ourselves in full we offer this same reflection for others to feel and know that this is who they are too. Just beautiful.
Yes Jade, I have come to understand the power in reflection and the responsibility that comes with, for how we live is what we reflect…..with our reflections all having a ripple effect.
The blindness you describe Jaqueline, goes on from relationship to relationship until we stop and understand the universal picture. Then we can see we are actually lovingly supported in every situation relationship and arrangement to learn ourselves and help others too see the loving eternal truth.
Agree Joseph it starts with ourselves and our closest family members, building true relationships and then extending it to whole humanity. Any relationship can hold the same love and tenderness and the honoring of the other in their absoluteness.
This is really beautiful, the relationship is and will always be there, and that what hurt can always be healed. It is beautiful to see and feel what men truly are beneath all their layers of protection.
I have to say Jacqueline that your blog brought me to tears. I suddenly was remembering all the lost moments I had in my relationship with my Dad where I failed to see the tenderness and love that he was actually trying to show me, simply because it came in a way that did not match the image I had in my head of how he should be with me. It simply proves that we have to deal with our hurts in order to be able to embrace love.
So true Elizabeth, I can relate to what you say here in terms of how we want parents to be with us or love us, those pictures are just conditions, and so getting rid of those pictures is removing any condition to be able to love freely. This is what we all want after all.
HI Elizabeth, the only way forward and to evolve is to heal our hurts to be able to allow, embrace and nurture the love that we are, this is true.
Beautifully said Elizabeth. My father has now passed and I lost many moments where I could have embraced love, or imply offered my unconditional love instead of holding to an accumulation of hurts.
And as you know Nikki – through Jacqueline’s beautiful sharing, it still is all possible as soon as we choose to be that love and therefor see that in the other, even though they may have passed on.
Jacqueline, what you have shared feels very healing for me and I am sure for many who will read this. Our relationships continue after death and it feels so affirming to be able to revisit our previous relationship behaviours as we deepen our connection to ourselves and allow healing to occur.
Reading this Jacqueline, I was thinking of the ripple effect you healing your childhood hurts and bringing loving understanding to your relationship with your Dad, would have on all your relationships. I also love my Dad dearly, but after reading this – “Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” I can feel how much I hold back love in many different ways. Thank you for sharing this and the opportunity to reflect on our own relationships with our Fathers.
So true, whatever we do is a constant reflection to everybody else, So if we choose to be honest about our lives and look at them with love and understanding, we not only offer ourselves the chance to heal our personal hurts, but through reflection also invite others to do the same.
This is so beautiful Jacqueline and so healing and expansive to read and a real inspiration for the world for all of us. It explains and brings light to the holding back of love we all do and hence the less we feel of love for ourselves and in our expression with others. I also love how you share the possibility that your father choose you for your beauty and love you would bring to him and for true Healing.
This is a revelation Jaqueline. Bringing understanding, compassion and love into all our relationships instead of blame is the way forward. What would be the point of blaming someone, who is devastated by their hurts, for not showing us how amazing we are? We are all equal and we are all capable of leading the way. We can adore and honour our parents no matter what the circumstance because we have felt the love that we are and know they are that love too.
This is beautiful Amanda, knowing it never has to be about blame, but knowing as you share we are all equal. It gives us the opportunity to let go of hurts and live ourselves in full.
I have received so much healing when I have accepted, adored and honoured my parents for the absolute divine beings they are – of course it took me to clear and heal my own hurts first before I could accept and ‘see’ them fully.
And I think this is important, for how can we truly accept another, no matter who they are if we haven’t first accepted and learnt to appreciate ourselves first.
Agree Elodie, that’s like putting your right shoe on your left foot, and your left shoe on your right foot.. and trying to walk. Very odd, awkward and not feeling right at all : ) Slipping on the right shoes on the right feet and walking then with ease is the acceptance of our steps.
Exactly – that’s the key Elodie, we learn to accept love and appreciate ourselves first and then it is so easy to emanate that out – and what awesome reflections are possible then.
Me too jacqmcfadden04 – and that is the key – when the hurt is truly healed we wonder what all the fuss was about holding others responsible. Sure there are things and
occurences that do happen in life, yet the healing allows for the love to flourish within and it can’t but emanate out to others too.
This blog jacqueline and your response Amanda are inspiring and true. How much healing is possible when we stop blaming anyone, particularly our parents and take responsibility for being the love that we are. My own father is very elderly now and has become more boy-like and innocent as the years go by, it is very easy to connect to my deep love of him and let go of all the things he did or didn’t do for me as I was growing up and simply embrace him as he is now. In this my relationships with men are changing too, and I see the boy in all of them.
That would be a great blog also Josephine to hear more about your father ageing and what that is like for you and how you are able to let go of past hurts and just appreciate him more now. People could learn a lot from this.
For me too Josephine, in healing the relationship with my father, I feel so much more open and trusting with men.
Beautifully said Josephine, it is about taking responsibility for the love that we are and by doing this there is no space for blaming as it comes all back to ourselves. Living with the knowing of our own creations does not give any space to blame others but let us live the beauty of responsibility.
Gorgeous Josephine. How easy it is to love, when we let go of our expectations of another.
Being open to feeling the love that people are is important in our relationship with our parents, and can then be translated to all others. When we can learn to see past our and others’ hurts, we can embrace the love that we both equally are.
Seeing the amazingness in people during shopping, at work, or in our families does show the reflection of us and how we live our life. It is very needed to be the reflections to people, the suffer of illness and diseases are growing very dramastic.
So true Amelia, the relationship with our parents are the first and longest that we have that offer us so much.
Beautifully said Amanda, how can we expect others to be loving when they have not been met themselves for who they truly are. We are able to indeed lead the way when we stop blaming others and claim and live that love that we know we are.
Lovely Jenny – and so true: “…how can we expect others to be loving when they have not been met themselves for who they truly are.” Or have met themselves first to feel the love that they are and then in turn get met this way too…
Jacqueline this a priceless sharing. It is great that you have deepened your understanding to the point that you can see beyond expecting someone deeply hurt to deliver a reflection that you now realise you can give yourself. I often think of my father who has passed over, and my appreciation of his love and sensitivity, though not easily expressed in his life, is deeply felt and appreciated.
This is huge for me Amanda “What would be the point of blaming someone, who is devastated by their hurts, for not showing us how amazing we are?” – I can feel how I do this, it keeps me hidden and in some form of comfort. Much more responsible to live the love we are regardless of anything going on outside of us.
This Jacqueline ‘What if it was possible that your father chose you for the healing, grace and love he knew you would bring?”’ Is a revelatory blessing for all parents. I will take it to the relationship with my mum and dad and also to that of my daughter.
It could in fact be taken to every relationship as we are all in situations and places we and others have chosen to be in.
That’s so true Johanna, we all have amazing qualities that are so needed to be brought out in all our relationships… not just the ones we feel more comfortable in. I learn so much from observing others every day.
Yes Johanna08, I love the bigger picture you present here over our relationships. We have all chosen the relationships we find ourselves in, therefore, all our relationships have been divinely constellated to bring us the reflection and the healing (if we so chose) that has already been agreed. And those relationships we find difficult or challenging, is a call for us to be more love.
Thank you Jacqueline for a very thought provoking article. It caused me to reflect on my own father-daughter relationship. My father died 25 years ago and yet I know the impression he made on my life is with me everyday still. This is not necessarily a good thing! So your article has inspired me to look at him differently, as the joyful, gentle little boy he must have been. Thank you.
That quite beautiful Gayle. In fact I have never consider what my Dad was like as a little boy or my Mum as a little girl. It’s so important to feel how they would have been as children and connect to the sweetness and tenderness that they were born with that is naturally all the same for us all.
I have considered my parents as children or even young children and what I mostly experience is a lot of hurt. They didn’t have it easy, growing up in the war.
That is also very beautiful Christoph as it shows a great deal of understanding that you have for your parents and the life they have lived.
In reading your comment Jennifer, I took a moment to feel how my parents felt as children. I got a real sense of how deeply hurt they were and from this hurt they closed down completely the love they naturally were, in order to protect themselves, but in fact this resulted in that they absorbed everything and got completely lost just as I did.
To be able to look back and hold my father in the equalness that we are in essence is a most liberating feeling. It means I can let go of the blame and hurt and understand why he was not always able to live from that essence.
That’s it – and how liberating is that Jenny, when we truly feel this within and can just be our gorgeous loving selves and feel this in the other even though they may hide it behind their hurts.
This reminds me of how often we misinterpret someone else’s expression (or lack of expression), and can take it personally and feel ‘unloved’. If only we look deeper, we can see that this isn’t the case at all – simply another’s own hurts limiting them from expressing and living their own love.
This is very beautiful Kylie. Dealing with our own hurts takes off the filter that causes us to see others as hurting us. Then we can see them for who they are and what they are going through, which is not at all personal to us. We can have understanding.
That’s so true Mary, we don’t have to take on and become the very thing that we are/have been hurt by. That just leads to a doubling of the offending hurt.
A beautiful sharing Jacqueline. A confirmation that under all the behaviours we outwardly show because of our experiences is a beautiful essence and natural way, which you could feel was also in your dad. How lovely you get to explore this and complete this for yourself.
And to do so without the other person being around shows that we can always heal our end of the relationship and are not dependent on each other as most people conveniently believe so that we can consider ourselves as victims to not take responsibility and simply do it.
That is so true Alex, we can always heal our part of a relationship whether the other person is there or not.
Super point Alex, that we are not dependent on another to heal the relationship, as we each have the power to heal the relationship with ourselves first and as we do, this heals all other relationships in our lives, one by one….
Jacqueline your beauty stripped bare has just blown me away. I am.on my knees.
Jacqueline, I love this “Do not hold back the love you have for your father, for in doing so, you may find a deeper love for yourself.” This is a great message for me to hear having read your blog. I know it is my responsibility to not hold back any love despite what others may choose to do.
This is divine.
The love we have for each other when not held back offers a new way of living, one that does not hide love in the shadows, but brings it out into the light for all to see.
And adding to that explore the love you are and have always been even if no one is willing to catch up with you. I have made the experience: one day they all catch up and surrender to the love when it’s offered unconditionally – in it’s true expression.
I agree Jenny, as I read this I felt inspired to call my Dad and express my love with him.
I agree Jenny, this statement was very powerful for me too. I could feel the expansion, and it grew within me to embracing my daughter, my son, my partner, my friends and strangers. There is no holding back in Love. For parents long dead, as mine are, it is equally important, and as Jacqueline has expressed, brings healing to present relationships, especially our relationship with ourselves.
Yes Jenny. To love unconditionally is the only way. If we are always waiting for another, no one may take that first step, and then everyone misses out. I sometimes feel that when people are crying at funerals, one of the reasons is because of all the missed opportunities they let pass to express their love and appreciation for the deceased, and even for people in their lives that are still alive. What Jacqueline is sharing is that she has managed to heal issues she was holding onto even though her dad passed a long time ago. This shows that love has the power to heal relationships even after death.
Debra ‘to love unconditionally is the only way’ because unconditional love is who we are.
Yes Debra, this is beautiful, ‘What Jacqueline is sharing is that she has managed to heal issues she was holding onto even though her dad passed a long time ago. This shows that love has the power to heal relationships even after death.’ The power of love and responsibility.
Yeah true Jenny, this is a big statement and I needed to sit with it for a moment to really feel what was being said here. When I feel and express that love I came to see and feel how much love I have inside me for others and how that just gets deeper the more I genuinely feel and express it.
Yes me too Jenny this line is gold. I know for sure for myself that the ultimate healing comes from expressing love and loving others, even if there have been hurts as it is my true nature to be loving.
Yes, this is a great line. Is it possible we choose to hold onto those hurts as a way of avoiding love? Loving others unconditionally seems challenging, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps holding the hurts takes more effort.
It is the realization and choice to be love first and foremost and no matter what only to finally realize that there is nothing else but love in the first place. All that is not of love in the end cannot withstand love as it just was a resistance to the love that is already known.
I love this Alex :”All that is not of love in the end cannot withstand love as it just was a resistance to the love that is already known.” How weird is it that some people choose to just do that – resist the love they inherently know anyway, as it is in them. The power of true loving reflection holding all as equal will help a lot to dissolve that resistance.
Yes, I often feel that the true power of men is completely supportive to all women, and vice-versa. The words that come to mind when in the presence of a man expressing his qualities is ‘trust’, ‘home’, and ‘surrender’. Each gender brings different qualities, that unite us back together. It is time we no longer hold back to anyone in order to discover the love we truly are.
True Jenny, when we freely offer love, regardless of what has happened in the past, deepens the love we have for ourselves and all humanity.
Many of our hurts that we currently feel in our lives stem from our original hurts that come from not being met in childhood. This is not to blame our parents because they too were not met and do not know any different. But this is for us to realise that if we do not heal our hurts and we carry them with us well into our adulthood and pass them onto our children the cycle continues. We can heal this hurt of not being met by truly meeting ourselves first and then we are able to meet all others equally.
Donna that is such an important point to understand, if we don’t heal our hurt’s they are presented through own our defences (in the attempt to protect ourselves from more hurts) in how we live in every moment and in all the relationships that we have. In that light it’s so easy to see how these patterns remain unchanged only perhaps cementing themselves even further. But there are continuous opportunities throughout our lives to heal them through the many and varied reflections we see when we meet and deal with other people. Life presents these opportunities and we make the choices or not.
Absolutely Jennifer, the true blessing of all our relationships. We are here to support each other to heal, to let go of our hurts and let each other in in the knowing that we all have so much love within. We are being offered this choice in every moment, in every relationship.
Absolutely Katerina – in EVERY relationship – when we deal with an issue at home/personally with our family, we also deal with it when we deal with anyone else too – a member of the public, our work colleagues, boss, customer or client. Hurt, just like Love knows no separation; that it touches all.
Yes, it’s true. We cannot have an issue with one person that does not have an impact on all of our other relationships. And this includes our relationship with ourself.
So right – unhealed it will just expand to most things we will touch, creating more harm. Much better choice to get on with the healing so that will touch all with the quality of that energy available for all too.
This is a very important point Kylie and one that can be past over by many so I feel is worth repeating “We cannot have an issue with one person that does not have an impact on all of our other relationships.” Many of us think that if we are a certain way with one person it is unique to that person but no this is not the case.
Jennifer yes every time we enter in a relationship with someone we have the potential to heal our hurt and break the pattern. I had no relationship with my dad for many years. We live in different continents. A tragedy gave me the opportunity to reconnect with him and I discovered the gentle and caring man he always was. Rather than cry over the many years lost I choose to enjoy my weekly conversation with him and the time spent with him when I can. The healing, I know, has gone both way and keeps on giving.
Yes it’s incredible how life always presents opportunities for us to heal situations. The players may change but boy does life show us if we haven’t dealt with something as we are guaranteed to face it again. That’s the beautiful thing about time, in that we don’t only get one chance at something.
Oh Shevon I love what you shared in your comment and I only can agree to what you have mentioned. It is me who chose how to be with all these opportunities in my live. My experience is to take this up coming chance to look deeper otherwise the next opportunity is a bit “louder” so to speak. Life never give up on us this is a lesson I learned very well.
I also love the way life keeps presenting us with opportunities to heal and grow – even though I may not want to see it that way at the time! Although Jacqueline’s father has died, she was presented with a friend who prompted her to have another deeper look at her relationship with her dad. I have had many of these situations in my life where I will have a partner, friend or work mate, who just by the way they are, offers me an opportunity to heal an old hurt or find a more genuinely loving way to be.
This is so beautiful what you have both shared Donna and Jennifer. That yes most of us are not met as children, then we don’t feel our hurts, therefore, developing many different ways to ‘do’ life. From places of protection, numbing, distraction, abuse, all ways that do not allow people in or for us to love out with all of who we are. This is a phenomena that is going on across the world. It is all about learning for ourselves what these hurts are, bringing awareness to our protections and behaviour patterns, to then make other choices, loving ones……or not, which is course is free will.
Yes Jennifer this is so true, these patterns remain unchanged until we decide to be responsible and heal them.
My father is still alive and it is interesting when I meet him – I am simply myself and sometimes our conversation goes well and at other times it is a bit more fraught.
I agree Donna, Universal Medicine has shown us how we can indeed heal all of our hurts and so not continue to carry them around with us living a life of protection rather than love. We also then see the responsibility we had in the many situations to bring love and nothing but love and so cannot blame anyone for anything they have done to us. Ultimately, everything happens for a reason and it is up to us whether or not we choose to learn from them.
Most of us have gotten into the habit of ‘blaming’ our parents for everything that does not work in our lives, I know I certainly did….but the truth was in this space I was not wanting to take responsibility for my choices. The moment I took responsibility, the blaming was no longer there, and my life began to change.
Absolutely, for a long while I conveniently employed the excuse of having a ‘lack of discipline’ as reason for why things continually ‘went wrong’ in my life, when really I craftily had this idea in place to avoid taking responsibility. All the while missing out on the love I give to myself through taking responsibility for my own choices.
I did this for many years Jacqueline – playing the blame game with my parents and I certainly wasn’t taking responsibility for my part at that time. Now I see that my parents could not possibly have been any different with me, for they too didn’t have the love they sought from their own parents…and so on, and on. When I stopped blaming my parents, my relationship with them changed significantly and I now take responsiblity for how my life is. It is a freedom for everyone.
Likewise Sandra, I got caught in this trap of blaming parents, when it was not until I looked at my part in this and took responsibility for this that my relationship with them started to change. It is as you say a freedom for everyone.
Absolutely agree Donna. I feel one of the chief responsibilities that all parents have is to not pass on to the next generation any hurts that we might have experienced in our own childhood. This requires attention and healing but is very possible.
Oh Andrew feels very powerful when I read your comment and could be the title of your blog/book: ‘The Chief Responsibilities of All Parents’ to be read by all ‘before’ having children. And how would that change the relationship between sons/daughters and mothers and fathers, it would change this world.
Yes, it’s true. Effectively we need to parent ourselves, and take responsibility for healing our hurts.
I am with you, Andrew. As parents we have the responsibility to hold our children in love and let them unfold into the beautiful beings they are. In doing that we cannot pass on our own hurts. Children try to make up for parents hurts or feel responsible for our joy or relief. Yet we have to deal with our hurts and our stuff ourselves.
Quite Monika and in dealing with our own hurts as you say, as parents we set the example of responsibility for the kids, for them to carry this on into their own families and the lives of others.
Great comment Andrew. Not advice that we see in any current parenting guides, but one that would make the world of difference. An important subject to discuss and one that is very possible.
This feels so true, Donna. My relationship with my father who died when I was 26, reveals hurts that come from feeling not being met as a child. At times, I did feel that joyful, gentle, sensitive, little boy in my father. Yet I have often felt anxious, confused and resentful about his unloving choices that affected me. I understand and do not blame; yet these hurts have only recently been healed . For many years these hurts were buried and were passed onto my children. As Jacqueline so lovingly expressed, it is for me to keep choosing not to hold back my love for my father or anyone, but to feel and express that love as a reflection of who I am. This allows my children and others to be who they truly are. That feels awesome!
Beautifully said Donna. The pain of not being met by another is simply the reflection of the pain we carry for not meeting ourselves. It hurts to not be the love we so naturally are.
Well exposed Liane – we can spend lifetimes blaming others for not giving or being love for us when this is only the reflection thus we do not heal. There is responsibility here for owning the fact that we are love and must live this realised first before we can expect anyone else to meet us on that level – for expecting it or pining for it from others leaves us hopeless and feeds the emptiness of us missing ourselves.
So true Liane, and its only when we start meeting ourselves that we can begin to heal these hurts. The power is in our hands.
It not only hurts not to be the love we so naturally are, it is also very tiring and continually drains our kidney energy, in other words our life force is continually depleted and that’s why we overeat because we need to get energy from somewhere, ie food, this has been my experience.
I agree with you Donna, many of the hurts that we hold in our bodies come from the original fact of not being met when we were very young. But in my case, I do not now blame my parents for this, I can see that they too, were not met when they were young. It has been a continuing situation down through the generations, and it now my time to cut this thread and not let this happen with my next life as a parent. We need to see our children as the beautiful sons of God that they are, and meet them from that position from the day they are born. What a blessing we have had in now knowing this fact.
Yes Beverley I agree someone has to cut the ties or threads from the past hurts we are carrying.
It also not just that we pass them onto our children we also pass these patterns onto anyone we relate with as from our hurts we are guarded and hold back love and then from here this is the reflection the world receives of what it means to be in relationship and everyone misses out.
Love is our true equaliser. When we blame others for hurts we carry we are disconnecting from ourselves, but when we meet ourselves and confirm that we are confirming all equally so. If we continue to blame others the cycle will never end.
And healing our hurts is all this is needed. This can be challenging when so much time has been spent laying bricks to create walls to protect ourselves from any future hurts. I know I have done this. It’s safe the say the protective fronts are not working in any way…the hurt still penetrates even the strongest mortar. Healing the original hurts understanding where they have come from, letting them go and building love into every relationship feels like a much lighter way to live. It’s just a matter of choosing it.
Donna, what you mention is the missing link. Meeting ourselves first is key to a developing a loving relationship, first with ourselves, and through this with others. Patterns that become ingrained in childhood can feel hard to break, and sometime we are not even aware of how they subconsciously play out. With the support of Universal Medicine practitioners I have been able to identify and heal many hurts and get to place where I am taking full responsibility for my choices. I have been able to let go of the blame and it is very empowering.
Beautiful Donna – I so concur, and this is truth: “…if we do not heal our hurts and we carry them with us well into our adulthood and pass them onto our children the cycle continues.” A long time ago, when I realised the pattern in our family, I vowed to myself that this would stop with me, and I would not pass this on. Big vow – the Universe certainly provides many opportunities to then offer the possibilities to be true to ones’ word!
So true Donna. When we feel a longing in us to be met by another, it’s a queue that we need to meet ourselves with the love we are longing for from someone else, something outside of us. When we hold ourselves in our own love, this is then reflected from the outside as well. But it has to come from within first.
It’s great to look at it this way Katerina. Any need or longing is already a sign that we are not loving ourselves as deeply as we could be, and therefore, not truly loving another.
Exactly Donna, beautifully expressed, and yes it is up to us to take responsibility and heal our hurts and so break the cycle, and also this is key, ‘We can heal this hurt of not being met by truly meeting ourselves first and then we are able to meet all others equally.’
That is so true Donna – thank you for you honest comment. I have to admit that for me it was helpful that someone met ME first. This reflection helped me to feel me and since that I can more easily chose to meet myself. Therefore I have a new purpose now and that is to meet people to be a reflection for them as well.
I agree with you Ester, it was very helpful that some-one met me first too which began a whole new path of healing and clearing all I have taken on that was not mine. And I love your new purpose, feels very solid and responsible and leaves no space for ‘holding back’…. ‘that is to meet people to be a reflection for them as well’.
This is a beautiful blog Jacqueline. I feel very moved by your expression of love for your father. Even though he had passed over, healing can still be offered for the relationship. It shows that our connections are endless and always. We are so much more than physical bodies.
I love this point Jennifer that we are “so much more than our physical bodies” – when we consider that we are also very much energetic beings and that everything is energy, and because of energy, it allows for an amazing opportunity for healing which extends far beyond our physical proximity to another…
This is very true Angela, location is no hindrance to hurts, nor healing hurts. Time is also not the healer; either we choose to heal the hurt, or it will still be there, just buried for another time. We can heal things from past lifetimes or from decades ago, with people we haven’t seen in many years. The lightness we feel when this happens is very tangible, and it shows in how much more we’re then able to be who we truly are, being ourselves, without holding back. How amazing and freeing is life when we don’t need to keep protecting any hurts, when we have no more excuses to play lesser.
Yes Esther – so true: ” either we choose to heal the hurt, or it will still be there, just buried for another time.” It’s all about choice and what energies we will align ourselves with – either to heal, or to harm.
I have heard so many times in my life that ‘it is a matter of time’ when in truth as Esther clearly points out ‘time is not the healer.’ We can heal anything in a split second (or less) when we are willing and open to feel and release the hurt. It makes me stop and ponder on where these thoughts come from and to observe more closely other thoughts I have taken on that are not true to me.
This is so lovely Jennifer and Angela, knowing that it is never too late to re-imprint a relationship when someone has ‘passed over’ to another realm of existence. This also takes the fear of death away, because there is no death, only a continuation of life and an opportunity to evolve , which is what karma is, an opportunity to evolve and heal ourselves and our relationships, and hence everyone on the planet, bringing us all back, humans and animals included, inline with our true evolution, to expand further.
Yes Jennifer, if our relationships with family members have not been healed when they pass over, this still affects us in our daily lives as I discovered and yes this does indeed highlight that our connections are endless and always and that we are so much more than our bodies.
It is never too late to bring healing to relationships.
Thank you Jacqueline and thank you Abby, so true and worth repeating ‘It is never too late to bring healing to relationships’
Absolutely Abby. We are responsible for our own healing and as adults have the power to truly love and support ourselves in a way others may not have been able to once. Without judgement and with a deep and loving understanding, we are able to heal all relationships even if we are unable to speak to another anymore. All it requires is the willingness to take responsibility for ourselves and our choices.
A simple and powerful reminder Abby, thank you!
It is very clear that our hurts and protection live on in us, way past our loved ones passing over. But what an opportunity you have grasped Jaqueline to not only heal the hurt but let the love in that you had for your DAD. So going forward now your more deeply held appreciation can allow the love to flow more freely.
Love surely does flow more freely when we stop holding back our own love as love was always meant to flow and embrace and connect and reflect where we all come from and where we are all returning to….
Jenny what you share here is beautiful and completes the healing in a way that leaves the door open to bring more love to relationships. I love how you have expressed here!
Yes great to remind ourselves that our connections are endless and always and therefore its very worth healing any issues we have with others, weather they are alive or passed over.
What a great reminder that healing is not set in time but a continuing cycle of learning that deepens levels of appreciation for all who are with us or have passed over.
Never too late indeed Toni, and not important really if the other person is still here or has passed on, as this blog beautifully shows.
‘It shows that our connections are endless and always.’ Jennifer this is true, I love how you have expressed here.
I agree, Jen, because recently in a Chakra-puncture session I saw how lovely a troubled relative one generation away from me really was, but these troubles had affected subsequent generations in our family … it seemed that seeing this loveliness, the true person, and then sharing this with another relative, cleared that pain and lifted the sadness from the family line, it truly shows our connections are endless and always.
Thank you Marian, that is a a beautiful sharing. Yes we are all much more deeply connected that we care to admit. One of the reasons we choose to be unaware of this is because if we allowed ourselves to see things as they truly are we would know that we are responsible for everything that happens to us, would have to stop blaming others, fate and circumstances and live far more responsibly.
It is not really a huge ouch but a joyful freedom. To feel we are victims and can’t make different choices is the huge ouch!
Yes Marian, this could also be said for people affected in the two world wars in the 1900s, and how these people were deeply affected – deeply hurt, and how that has affected their relationship with their children and future generations.
I agree Jennifer, you wrote so openly and beautifully Jacqueline and it’s so clear that the love you have for your father goes beyond the physical realm of whether your father is alive or not. The healing is there fully for you, your father and for everyone else as well. It’s claiming the wisdom and loving purpose of the constellation of the relationship, and letting go of whatever hurts were keeping you from fully accepting this and letting your father in. Something that will now be felt with everyone, and such a powerful inspiration for anyone who reads this as well. Every relationship brings such a powerful gorgeous reflection. Our hurts are there if we choose to hold on to them — when we let them go the love that pours in is enormous.
On reading these comments about how relationships continue even after death I got to feel how once again the illusion of death and dying plays havoc with the truth of all things. We see death as the ultimate stop when the truth is there is no stop. That perceived stop permeates through our entire society, effecting an incomprehensible amount of aspects of our lives and generating a gigantic amount of unnecessary emotion. How different will the world be when we collectively return to the truth that there is no such thing as death.
You are correct Alexis. There is a physical death, where our body dies, but the truth of who we are never does. I feel to we are so emotional at the times when someone dies (whether sadness, anger etc) because we have not lived the life we would have wanted to share with that person. Interestingly those who really grieve the loss of a person, which results in a problematic bereavement, are from relationships that have often been the most difficult. This is why Jacqueline’s blog is so beautiful as it shows that any issues within a relationship can be healed at any time and it is simply a choice to heal or to hang on to those hurts of the past.
I love what you have added hear Katerina, we think /I thought that we couldn’t do anything about the past but doing this work and reading this blog just blows that away. When we let go of our hurst of the past we open up to so much love. The additional comments to this blog just expand so beautifully on an already wonderful blog.
Jennifer I love this sentence. ‘It shows that our connections are endless and always.’ How often have we regretted how a relationship was, wishing things had been different and yet the truth is the connection is always and forever there.
Jennifer, I love how you have written that “our connections are endless and always”. A beautiful reminder that our relationships all have a purpose and to carry the pain and hurts of those that were not of love, is to continue to harm ourselves, but as Jacqueline has shown so clearly, it is never too late to heal.
And Love is forever beyond all physical bodies.
Well said Jennifer. It was lovely to read the progression in this story from no relationship with her dad, to deep love for him. Really under any hurt in a relationship there is a deep love and desire to express that love with another. Perhaps if we start there rather than at the hurt the world would be very different.
How true your words Jennifer, what you have expressed is exactly how my relationship with my Dad has increased since he has passed over. yes our connection is always there.
Jacqueline, what a beautiful article that says so much about relationships and how they often develop from what we did or didn’t receive as a child. However, you have seen through this, accepted this and moved to a deeper level to see and acknowledge the power of reflection that we all have to family especially. When we ask the question ‘what do I or can I bring to this relationship?’ another level of understanding and love can be reached. For in truth this is what we can allow ourselves to open up to, to be the reflection of God as the Son of God to all we meet and subsequently a relationship develops, even if it is only a smile of recognition of the beauty of another by reflection. Thank you, Jacqueline.
Jacqueline, I loved my dad. He was kind, funny, supportive, and I knew he loved us all. But he was also deeply hurt by his experiences in the 2nd world war, and never talked about it. As a small child I felt this and reading your blog moved me near to tears as I saw how I had taken on his hurt, and become a good little girl to protect him from further pain, but in doing so created a space between us where neither of us went. It has led me to ponder – how many more such spaces have I created in other relationships?
What a powerful reflection and healing opportunity Catherine! The awareness and vulnerability that you share here has me pondering on how much and who do I hold back with in relationships and what is behind that. As Susan says, we can choose to bring ourselves more fully to our relationships rather than observing and judging what has not been brought to us!
I know what you mean Susan…Taking on other peoples hurts is a full time job, distorting life and creating burdens that are not our own. No wonder we feel unclear and closed.
‘Taking on other peoples hurts is a full time job, distorting life and creating burdens that are not our own. ‘ Is also a great distraction from the simplicity of enjoying ourselves.
That is such a beautiful sharing Catherine and offers an opportunity for a beautiful healing now. Not only can you heal the relationship with your father, but as you say, current relationships too.
Wow that is a powerful insight Catherine, that in protecting others we create a no go zone in relationships that only isolates us all more. I too must ponder how I have created more distance in relationships by bring to protect people.
It is sad to feel that many of our adult relationships are re-runs of what is unresolved from our childhood. Many of us are retarded in a time that doesn’t exist anymore. This blog shows the amazing ripple effect into our adult relationships when those hurts are explored and let go of.