Fatherhood for me began 22 years ago at the age of 33. Our first child, a beauty-full daughter, was born at home on a Wednesday around 8:30pm. At the time I could feel that this was a divine moment, one that I would never have experienced without choosing to have children.
I clearly remember how completely hopeless I felt when the midwives and nurses left our house – I had never taken care of a baby before in my life. That night I had to change her nappy and I felt how fragile and helpless she was; and I felt my own uncertainty about what to do.
From that night on I also began to identify myself with my new role of ‘father’, but failed to feel what the true meaning of this was for me. Instead, I just did what I felt was expected of me to qualify as a ‘good father’. As our child grew up I tried to form and guide her to suit my ideals of what I felt I needed to make of her.
When I write it like that now I feel how arrogant it was of me, wanting to mould a child to my ideals and beliefs and not let them grow up in their true nature. Is this what we are actually doing when we parent, in contrast to providing a loving connection where a child will be met and seen for who they truly are?
An interesting set of questions now arises:
Where did these ideals and beliefs about being ‘a good father’ come from?
Is it possible they are provided by society (family and friends, school, TV, magazines, books, health professionals, etc), and that I chose to adopt them to be a ‘good father’? I was not consciously aware of the fact that I was using ideals and beliefs at all, let alone considering that they could have been ‘delivered’ to me.
What did I choose from the package of fatherhood ‘pictures’ which were presented to me?
Did I look for a certain type of fatherhood picture I was familiar with or did I select some on purpose, because they suited me the best, in order to not be confronted with the responsibility that comes with feeling and making my own choices?
Why was I looking for a fatherhood picture in the first place?
Could it be that I was looking for recognition and acceptance for being a good father, instead of trusting the love and wisdom within me to be my guide?
Given all of this, was it then possible that:
Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside?
Although I was not aware of it at the time, in my uncertainty of how to be a father I followed a fatherhood picture, taking on ideals and beliefs like…
- As the parent I have to mould my child to make them ‘valuable for society’. If I do not, the child will be lost to society.
- I will be the provider and carer for everything my children need; I will be always there for them.
- I am the parent, therefore superior to the child, the subordinate.
- I have to support them in all that they do, even if it is something I don’t agree with.
- My children are perfect; my children do not behave badly.
- They must have the same ambitions in life as I have.
- I will be the perfect father for my children, they will not want for anything and I will show that to the world.
- I have to be proud of them.
- My children have to listen to me because I am their father.
- I will have an “I know what is good for you” attitude, and so on.
But this makes me wonder:
If all these fatherhood ideals and beliefs are not me, because I have taken them on from outside of me, what then is the real me and the real father in me?
The answer for me has been to slowly unravel all my fatherhood pictures, to become aware of them and discard them, one by one. Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!
This now reflects in my deepening connection with my children – a connection that is based on a true equalness, and a deep trust in myself and in what I feel.
I would like to thank Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, whose presentations have inspired me to become a truer father.
By Nico van Haastrecht, father of three, Warnsveld, the Netherlands
403 Comments
A gorgeous blog, Nico and at the same time very confronting for me to read as I reflect back to how I was a mother with my perceived ‘ideals and beliefs’. I feel I was so caught up in what I felt was the ideal way to be a mother that I didn’t stop to look and see the effect that the imposition was having on my children. I felt that they were vulnerable and required protection and the way in which I did this was claustrophobic and stunted any expression from them of who they truly were.
Now that my children are grown up and I have greatly changed, it is an honour to re-imprint these relationships with more love and dignity, and to appreciate how much I have changed as a mother.
Lovely to read that you can re-imprint your relationship with your grown up children to the way you are now living now. That is the beauty of living a life with love as its foundation, where we know that everything is energy, and in which we are able to change the configurations we have in our relationships that we have build in a different energy, on old ideals and beliefs.
Lovely to read Susan Lee, that you can re-imprint your relationship with your grown up children to the way you are living now. That is the beauty of living a life with love as its foundation, where we know that everything is energy, and in which we are able to change the configurations we have in our relationships that we have built in a different energy, on old ideals and beliefs.
I too, like Susan am choosing to re-imprint my relationship with my children, now adults and husband.
It is so much more beautiful when we choose love as our foundation. It is forever deepening and expanding. Instead, ideals and beliefs separates us and only causes disharmony in relationships.
What a lovely appreciation of yourself and of truth, Susan.
This seems to me to be such an important topic, about being a father. The list that Nico has made about the conditioned roles we take on, would appeal to the vast majority of fathers as being normal – we do not normally understand that these roles create pressures that make us different people to who we truly are. We are loving, tender, caring, gentle and above all, are capable of such a capacity to understand what it is like to come into the world and grow up with people around us who are doing their best, trying to deal with the pressure of their own conditioning. Yet the truth is when they take these roles on, believing them to be ‘the right way to parent’, they can never be there for you and truly meet you as a young child. I know my parents lived for 60 years together like this and it was horrible, even though they were considered to be ‘good parents’ and ‘very loving’. To free ourselves from this ‘normal’ is not easy. Yet it is possible and Universal Medicine has been a great support to me.
As a daughter, it is beautiful to read about your experiences and how you have become aware and brought love into life and let go of the ‘roles of fatherhood’. Letting go of prescribed roles and ideals about what makes us a great person, father, mother etc allows our true nature to develop and through this true connection.
As you say Samantha Davidson, we do not need to be great in anything in life but we can live a great live based on the truth that lives equally within als of us.
A very beautiful, touching sharing. I love the simplicity that backs this sentence – “Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!” Thank you, Nico.
Life is in fact so simple if we can withhold ourselves form making things complex, and what you say Fumiyo Egashira, that indeed I am much much more than a ‘good father’ since this is how love acts out in our lives. Love cannot be contained in to a specific area or field of our lives, but will work on our live as a whole and on all the relationships we have.
What a beautiful awakening to the natural father within you. It is such a blessing for a child to be allowed to be who they naturally are – you making this possible is a gift to us all. Thank you.
Although it is still work in progress, it is really a blessing, both for my children as for myself, that we are walking this path. It is so liberating to allow ourselves to be us in full and we do not always realise that we are presenting such a great gift to not only ourselves, but to humanity as a whole. thank you Gemma Rubinna for reminding us on that point.
“Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!”
So true Nico, by being the true you, you naturally are a good father, but more than that, you are a great and inspiring father.
We are all naturally good fathers and good mothers when we allow our inner knowing to guide us in the roles we have to fulfil in life. We are equipped to fulfil any role we encounter in our lives as long as we connect to our inner knowing and not look outside for ‘advice’ on how we must look like in the roles we have to play.
Beautiful Nico.
So true Patricia Darwish, it is a matter of letting love and light in. Where love and light is there is not room for striving to conform to any ideal or belief or to have struggle in life. Instead joy and harmony will rule our lives and will show us our way how to fulfil the roles in life that we have to play.
Your blog resonates with me Nico. As a mother with a young child and alone for 5 years I tried very hard to be both parents, to provide all the necessities of life. To be a good mother meant striving to live up to an ideal and beliefs I held dear. I had to prove to myself and the world that I was a capable and worthy human being. The struggle continued when I reunited with my partner adding the role of super wife. None of these roles ever fulfilled me. I neglected not only myself but those I loved by not caring for myself. Slowly but surely I am shedding the many layers of ideals and beliefs and letting love and light in.
I loved reading this Nico. There is such a strong fashion right now for blaming dad and blaming mum for our woes. Do we ever stop to consider the pressures parents face, both in terms of their own lack of trust in themselves and the fact that from every direction and every person they are being told what to do and how to be?
And what an enormous sense of anxiousness and trepidation must there be in that moment when you hold that tiny living bundle in your arms and you know are responsible for protecting and nurturing that fragile little being. Having not been a parent I can but imagine what that would feel like. This of course would be a very different experience if we had deep trust in our own awareness and innate knowing.
I did not take my parents into consideration until quite recently and your blog has brought home to me that my parents did the very best they could. My father and I have wonderful conversations now he no longer needs to be a good parent, and I do not need him to be either.
Thank you Rachel Mascord for reminding me to the anxiousness and trepidation I felt when I had my tiny little daughter in my arms who reflected an enormous love to me I was not confident with.
Great point Rachel. We often don’t consider how overwhelming it must be for parents as they try and navigate the world of raising children. Nico, you just simplified parenting for me.
A great comment Rachel. I can relate to everything you say here. It is huge for a person having a newborn baby to parent when there is no understanding of ‘deep trust in our own awareness and innate knowing’.
It has taken many moons for me to bring a stop to blaming my parents for various things.
Since attending Universal Medicine presentations with Serge Benhayon I have been inspired to make different choices and be responsible for dealing with my deep hurts to come back to love. It is beautiful for both of us, with me no longer requiring my mother to be what I thought my ideal parent ‘should’ be!
Awesome article Nico! I think I had some of those father ideals and I don’t even have children! I was just planning ahead too much!
Amazing revelation Harrison, you show us that we do not need to have children for ourselves in order to hold fatherhood pictures. As we are natural fathers for all children in our lives it is for us men important to consider if we are parenting from our heart or from any ideal or belief we have taken on in our lives.
Thank you Niko, for sharing your story. I too have been caught up in this fathering game. It was not until I realised first I was Paul a person, and my children were also people, and I was to treat them equally as all people. Then when the need arises and I feel the call to be the father, I take all of me to the role of fathering, which is not a belief or an ideal, but love meeting love.
It is a role of holding a child in love, supporting them to be who they are, allowing them to grow , making it about their being and appreciating who they are first – not applauding what they do at the expense of that beingness – pulling them up when they are lost in behaviour that is holding them back from their essence, offering them a way to be responsible for their body and self, so they can express themselves in full – and this equally so for all their friends and other children.
And when that call is answered, I return to Paul the person, allowing my children to feel their own choices of how they choose to live.
It is beautiful what you share Paul, to distinguish between you as a person and you as a father, both lived based on the foundation of love.
Beautifully expressed Paul, ‘Then when the need arises and I feel the call to be the father, I take all of me to the role of fathering, which is not a belief or an ideal, but love meeting love.’ ‘And when that call is answered, I return to Paul the person, allowing my children to feel their own choices of how they choose to live.’ In this way children feel their own responsibility from a very young age and can grow up to be responsible adults.
Beautiful blog Nico, I love the way you share how the ideals and beliefs of being a ‘good’ father have hurt both you and me, as we are both learning and developing more and more the true us,the relation we have is just amazing to experience, how much support a father and son can give to each other in developing this beautiful relationship.
Thanks Benkt, I am deeply touched by your beautiful words. And it is so true that what we are developing feels that a natural way of living together as son and father, that we both care about each other and our relationship as equal responsible persons.
This way of living is so completely different from where we have come from. A life based on false taken on ideals and beliefs that was hurting us both that much but we did not realise until we found that there is another way of relating to each other in a father – son relationship, the way of the inner-heart where we are all connected to each other equally and that innately lives in us all. Thank you for sharing your beautiful life with me.
Tears of joy were felt as I connected to your beauty-full, heart-felt connection with your son Benkt van Haastrecht, So inspiring to see that we can always make amends and chose a different way of parenting our children, no matter what age they are or we are, and start by connecting to our hearts and from there express our truth.
Wonderful contribution Benkt, reflecting to the world the joy and appreciation that comes with an evolving relationship between father and son.
“Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside?” What an awesome and powerful line Nico. As you outline in your article, there are so many roles we are set to play in life and all of them come with many differing ideals and beliefs, what it is to be a father in one culture is different in another, so many rules that govern and confuse us. Yet as you have discovered connecting to the man within has supported you to let go of all of that and allowed you to follow your own heart and to now trust that and not be influenced by the outside. Simply awesome, thank you.
Great point you bring in Caroline, we human beings live in cultures. To make life even more complex there are the cultures we live in. I can feel now that I have also looked across the different cultures I knew, to select father roles that would ‘fit’ me. For me this gave me a feeling of independence because I could choose from different cultures than my parents could, but it ended up by just doing the same as them only with a different flavour – not living to my inner knowing but to the pictures society showed to me.
Great blog Nico – I do not have children, but what you share is very relevant because we have all fallen for taking on ideals & beliefs of how life should be. So many times I have chosen to override what I have felt in my body to be true and instead chosen from my head and what society was telling me was right. The truth eventually surfaces, and I learn from the experience – and yet again I get reminded to stay true to what is felt from within as my guiding light in life.
It is a great way to live like this Marika, to stay true to what is felt within as our guiding light in life. It brings true joy and purpose in my life and that of others I meet and that simply by following this inner light.
Nico, thankyou for ‘turning on the light’ and illuminating these false pictures of being a ‘father’. In this and all that you share I can feel how I too have often blindly adopted similar falsities in terms of being a ‘mother’. Perhaps the greatest harm here is not what we do but that we don’t know that we are even doing it.
An then we are speaking about the willingness to take the responsibility for this fact and not to turn our backs and show the irresponsibility that have led us to this point. Although I am not always prepared to see my contribution to any harm that I am causing, there is the willingness in me to look for the truth in in life that helps me to arrest my on purpose held ignorance of the fact that I know I am harming.
Awesome point Liane – based on all that we are influenced with basically from the moment of our conception, how much of that runs our lives without even knowing it? So much in life has become ‘normal’ we don’t even stop to question it. Growing up I often heard parents say to their children “I brought you into this world I can take you out” and even though the hairs on the back of my neck use to stand up when I heard this, I never said anything because when I looked around everyone else seemed to thing it was OK, that it was ‘normal’. I stopped trusting myself and gave into what what was considered ‘OK’. Thanks to developing a greater connection with myself I no longer go against what feels true or wrong for me – regardless if it is considered normal or not.
And Caroline, we will develop a new ‘normal’, a normal that is based on living to our inner feelings that considers all other human beings when making choices in life.
This is brilliant Nico I have also fallen into this role of taking on ideals and beliefs to try to be a good father instead of being a true one. This and one of the other blogs, Wise Dad dedicated Dad-or just being me? has been a real help in remembering to just stay true in what you feel and not get sucked along and into the old ideals and beliefs trap.
Our kids really need their real Dad, not the manufactured one who is trying to be a good dad. This first relationship our kids have is fundamental to the relationships they form in life and the way they relate to people and life. Our girls and boys need to feel the tenderness and natural love of their dad and being valued for just who they are.
Thanks for sharing this Fiona, it really touches me when I read this. Allowing myself to feel that my children NEED the REAL dad in me and not the manufactured one. Your comment does directly let me go to my tenderness that is asked for and I can now also feel the great healing meeting each other with this ‘dad quality’ is bringing to our children and humanity as a whole.
What a great blog Nico. What you have shared is truly valuable, thank you. Pictures that we hold ourselves to, serve only to divide us from feeling what is there to be felt, shared and honoured between a parent and a child, even any adult and a child for that matter. I do feel that there is a lot in what our current society presents that is ‘ set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside’ as you have questioned. It certainly has been an unraveling and a beautiful unfolding developing the trust from within, from my knowing whilst taking down the pictures. But as you also shared a deeper connection with myself has allowed a deeper connection with my step children and in all relationships really.
Thank you Carola, unraveling the pictures we have taken on, and while doing that not to replace them with new ones, we have to trust our own inner knowing and wisdom. Living from there will have an effect on all relations we have. They are so different from how they used to be for us in the past, because we allow ourselves to shine our light and invite the other to do the same.
Expectations, from within and outside of ourselves, around parenting abound. I readily accept that I made many mistakes when I was raising my children as I felt I had to conform with what I thought was the norm for being a ‘good mother’. It has only been since attending Universal Medicine presentations that I have begun to get a clearer picture of why I carried so much tension around the role and began developing a more genuine understanding of what parenting entails. I believe my relationship with my children is now steadily deepening parallel with my relationship with myself.
As we develop our relation with ourselves first and start to self-care as presented by Universal Medicine we cannot else than also bringing this into all other relations we have. One of these is our relation with our children where we also have the parenting role being part of which is loaded with all kinds of expectations and false beliefs fed by society. But as you say Helen, when we build on the relation with ourselves we build on our relation with our children equally so and this pathway presents us a way of living that relieves us from the tension we felt before on raising children.
Thank you Nico for a heartfelt blog that will help every parent.
Thank you Karen, and it it is important to have the other way there to to see for other parents to be able to take it into consideration. Therefore it is a good thing to share our livingness among each other since that will help everybody equally.
It opens my heart to feel how differently you now choose to see your self as a parent. I’m going to remember what you have shared about what you thought parenting should be and open up to my father with more understanding and love for who he is. Thank you Nico.
Im am touched by the simplicity of sharing ones experiences, lived life and feelings can have such an healing impact on other people and their relations. Thank you for sharing yours Sandra.
I was very nervous about becoming a father. Could I provide enough for myself, wife and now child? Do I have it in me to pull this off? I haven’t been trained in this area, how does one prepare, what if it all goes pear shaped? These were the questions running around my head.
What is behind all of this is, that as a young boy I witnessed my dad work 7 days a week to provide for us, and I felt the burden that I felt I was putting on my father. Everyday was an opportunity to earn money to get ahead to provide a better life. I got snippets of time with my father and I loved it. I remember he pushed me around the house for two laps in my billy cart. It was so much fun. He kicked the football with me for 15 minutes and then it was back to work.
It is real for me that my daughter just wants me to be there with her. That simple. It is myself that makes parenting complicated, not my daughter.
It is great to recognise the patterns and the origin behind our own behaviours and thoughts Daniel. Only then we are able to discard them and return to the simplicity life actually is. So true that we ourselves make parenting complicated and questionable. It is all about just being with each other and to enjoy the moments we have together in full.
It is great we are in this together Nico, to be honest about what is not true in our roles like the father, the mother but also the roles of being husband and wife. Thank you for you becoming more of you every day and it is this ongoing process of letting go that deepens our relationship with each other, our children , friends and in effect with everyone equally. True love is on its way!
Beautifully expressed Annelies and confirming of your relationship with yourself and all others. Thank you both for the true and real changes that I see deepening within you every time we meet at Universal Medicine presentations at The Sound Foundation. You are both glorious and reflecting a tenderness which is lovely to enjoy when with you.
Thank you Annelies, for being with me in this beautiful life we share together in building a loving way of living together that was unfathomable to me in the past, a love that holds us as equal and does not exclude anybody. Indeed true love is on its way and we share it with whoever we meet and interact with.
I so much enjoyed reading your blog Nico
Thank you for expressing about your experiences of evolving into a gorgeous, divine Dad
It is great that you have been able to dispel the myths and expectations around fatherhood and that you are able to parent in a way that is so honouring and truly loving of your children.
And life is a joy Shirl, when we connect to the natural tender and loving people we actually are, we cannot treat our children other than with the same joy and respect for life as we feel inside us.
Your comment resonates with me deeply Elodie. From having spent many years of my life attempting to become whatever pretzel-like shape would bring me to fit into the societal / world mould to finally letting go of continually‘trying to’ fit in, just remembering to come back home to myself in my body (my own glove!) where I am appreciating and accepting there is and never has been anything wrong with me in the first place, only an old consciousness of illusion that binds me in a glue-like grip until it is too painful to continue in this way any longer. Thank God for Serge Benhayon’s presentations which have inspired me to know the true way with returning to a connection with myself.
Thank you Nico for choosing the confronting task of taking responsibility for giving up responsibility in the first place. I have really felt the expectations to live out my life a certain way to fit into society’s mould…and it’s no wonder I have never fitted in like a glove. No one really does fit in, we just try so hard to make it look like we do, and conform like contortionists, for what appears to be no good reason other than to not be us, forgetting there isn’t anything wrong with us in the first place.
Thank you Elodie for bringing in this point, the fact that we tend to like to fit in into society but that we never fit in the way we believe we have to be in it. It will be a forever struggle and we will never be enough in this way. Instead if we live from our inner-heart, from the place we know the truth, there isn’t anything wrong with us and we will add our unique expression to society that will always fit in.
Thank you Nico. I can relate as a daughter. All those expectations get in the way of true connection and equalness.
So true Laura, I can also relate to this story as a son of my father. I have always felt the true man in my father but at the end I became disappointed and gave up on him because he did not show his true tenderness in his life. Now I can see that he too was caught up in these pictures and I do not blame him for this as I do understand he did not know any different. I can now also feel what it does to the child, when the father lives these pictures, for me, I came to giving up on him and this affected at least the way I started becoming a father to my children henceforward. I was insecure about how to be as an father and hence took on the false pictures that suited me.
Indeed there is a lot of healing needed in the way we are and have parented Shelley. And it is such a blessing that we are able to stop this by us simply becoming ourselves aware of the fact that we actually are all equal to each other and continuously repeating the same pattern in parenting over and over again. Now we have the possibility to stop this and explore another way of living together in families and in society.
Thank you Nico for this great article. It is amazing that we can have a ready set of rules and regulations as soon as the baby is born. It’s great to question and start feeling in our bodies what is our truth in all this. As a mother and daughter there is much healing here.
As I read what you share Shelley I cannot but feel how the pressure of the ‘ready set of rules and regulations’ that any of the societal roles and expectations that we place on anyone traps them and stops them being who they truly are.
Great article Nico. Trying to live up to the picture we paint for ourselves of what it means to be ‘a good parent’ is doomed to failure. Children have a way of just being themselves and showing us that being a parent is not about trying to make children conform to our ideals and beliefs but supporting them as they find their own way in life.
So true Mary, and it is all around us that people are failing on being the parents they had in mind to be. And the same with schools, they too fail in meeting the children and assisting them in finding their way in life. We as a society will enormously benefit when we start to approach our children as being unique and precious to us all in the first place and that we are there from the start to develop relations with them that will support them in becoming true members and servants for the society we live in.
I love time with grandchildren and being humble enough to accept their wisdom. Observing their truth being expressed with other family members can be interesting – it does not always sit well with their parents or others!
Humbleness is a great gift Stephanie, it gives us the possibility to be honest with ourselves and see the truth of things in relation to ourselves. Children do cary a wisdom equal to us adults, grandparents or parents. Wouldn’t it be great if this was a known in our whole society?
Agreed Nico, if the whole of society truly respected and valued the wisdom children carry, how valued the children would feel for being met for who they truly are, rather than how people/parents sometimes treat them as having no understanding……how different the teachings handed down through the generations would be then.
Nico, this is a great reflection on parenting and the ideals and beliefs around being a “good” parent. I can really feel how at times I was quite disconnected from myself when my boys were young- in this disconnection I hung onto the ideals and beliefs as it was too scary not to. I did not really allow my boys to teach me what they knew -again a belief about parents always knowing best. It is beautiful in the awareness I have now to connect to them as equals and to have them share in total honesty with me about what they remember as children and how they felt at that time. I appreciate them pulling me up when I over mother them or when I am not being the gorgeous woman who they know me to be.
Great point you bring in Anne, that as a parent we tend to feel superior to our children and we do not allow ourselves to learn from them. And yes it is great as they call me out when I am less connected or not fully living from my truth and when I can accept this from them as they are equal to me.
Wonderful to read your article Nico, and how, as you started to let go of the ideals and beliefs surrounding parenting, you developed a deeper connection with your children. A connection based on love and equality, sounds beautiful.
Yes Peter, I can now develop a connection with my children void of any ideal and belief. My relation with them is more equal than it ever has been, and I can now connect to the fact that I do love them so dearly just for the beautiful people the are and not for how they perform as being my children.
You sound like an absolutely gorgeous father Nico.
Nico, I can so relate to this through being a good mother. When my daughter was born I did not trust that if I connected to her I would know what she needed and could support her from there. I asked everyone I knew for their advice and read books. Interestingly none of that worked. I was forced to listen to my daughter and myself and trust from there. That itself was a great opportunity. That is when things began to turn around. Now that she is 10 I am constantly reminded when I don’t make it about love first through her expression and the complication that comes in. I am constantly inspired by Serge Benhayon and Deborah Benhayon to parent with love, support my daughter to be all of who she is not who I want her to be and that that is all that is needed in true parenting.
Penny, it is great that we have such wonderful markers (if we allow ourselves to see them), that if we fail to truly parent from our hearts that things become complicated and nasty and will backfire to us so to say. And I agree with you that we have to appreciate the fact that we have such beautiful role models as Serge Benhayon and Deborah Benhayon who continue to show us what true parenting from the basis of love is actually about.
Great comment Joseph it is only by being who we are and not hiding in roles that we can bring our true gifts to those around us. I am in the process of becoming a truer me Nico and I have been seeing the damage I have done by fathering according to beliefs, thank you so much for this insightful and inspiring article.
Thank you Tim for your open and honest sharing. It is inspiring for me to discuss the fatherhood issue among men, that we can speak openly about how we feel about it and to honestly share about the harm we unknowingly and unintentionally have done to the people we actually love that dearly.
Wow – great questions that you ask Nico. I feel in posing these you bring true fatherhood to us all. So amazing, compared to the cardboard cut-out, one-size-fits-all fatherhood by-numbers we buy into as we grow. It’s beautiful to read you seeing through these ideals. I am feeling now how these stereotypes work with being a man, a woman, a lover, a professional and even an esoteric student if we let them. Your words remind me that we have all we need, naturally. There’s no need to hide in any one of these constructions.
Joseph, I love the way you express the false fatherhood picture we bought into as being a: “cardboard cut-out, one-size-fits-all fatherhood by-numbers” picture that is presented to us by society. I would like to add ” take it or leave it” and then I would say go for the latter. By choosing from our inner knowing instead, we are able to show the world that it is possible to have true relations with our children based on equality and, that we as men can naturally love and take care for the children that live within our families.
Thank you Nico, I very much relate in the way of experiencing motherhood. So many ideals that then affect my relationship with my son. Thank goodness for the awareness I have come to through the work of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon so I can unravel this tangled web of beliefs throughout my body and come back to the natural and true meaning of motherhood…
As you say Sara, the beliefs are held in my body and act more or less autonomously when I am not aware of the fact that I run my life based for a large deal on how society shows me how I should be. It is unbelievable how my relationship with fatherhood and parenting has changed since I have started to unravel the, as you call it, web of beliefs throughout my body. Fatherhood is just a tender and loving way of being that represents the love and care for the young and growing up in our communities.
Thank you Nico for helping me to unravel my own beliefs around fatherhood. Like you I have heavily identified with being a “good” father and want to become a true father.
Thank you Tim, it is great to help each other with unraveling the what we are not. It is really lovely how my relationship with my children has changed in a positive way. We where held in the belief of me being the father and them being the child. With releasing this picture we all are more free to be who we truly are and to build our relationships from there. We now have relations with each other based on equality and all the ugliness of being the “good father” and being the “good child” has disappeared.
Thank you Nico for sharing this. I like how you ask the questions to unravel all the pictures of being a good father. There are so many many pictures we have of the different roles in life we play or rather we think we have to play instead of just allowing ourselves to just be ourselves and do things from our inner understanding and feeling.
So true Ester, we are so much more if we put aside all those ideals and beliefs and stop with playing the roles that are part of these. We naturally are equipped for everything we encounter in our lives when we live a life connected to our inner knowing instead of living a life being dictated by society.
Amazing blog Nico. It is so great you are able to see all these beliefs around fatherhood you took on and are now letting go of them. As your daughter I know all about the ideals and beliefs that I had in my ‘role’ as daughter. Now I am letting go of those just like you and am enjoying this extremely loving and fun relationship I have with you.
Thank you Lieke, indeed it is amazing how our relationship has developed after we have stopped to live our ideals and beliefs. I am thankful to have you in my life.
Talk about exhausting! I can feel as I read your blog Nico how draining it is to parent in this way. To feel almost the weight of all these ideals about being a father and the burden of having everything else in life to do with the only reward being the success of your children. It feels truly freeing to see and hold your children as equals.
Thanks Joshua for pointing to this aspect on the way we parent our children. You are completely right, holding on to these ideals and beliefs was draining my energy continuously. Although it is still a work in progress, I am liberated for a great deal of the ideals and beliefs around parenting and can now freely be with my children as equals.
‘When I write it like that now I feel how arrogant it was of me, wanting to mould a child to my ideals and beliefs and not let them grow up in their true nature.’
This sentence says it all – and it instantly removes all of the false pressure of what ‘being a father’ means. It’s no wonder so many parents are stressed, anxious or nervous when they hold such an immense expectation of what their child ‘should be. It is so beautiful that you have shared this Nico, and your experience of being a truer father is one that offers connection and love – so your children can be who they already naturally are.
And know that not only me was doing this but that almost all parents do that with their children. How different would our world be if we stop ‘moulding’ our children to the ideal images that are shown by society and instead foster what innately is within the children we as parent raise. It is beyond our imagination how this will look like.
Thank you, Nico, for prompting me to consider what ideals I may still be holding onto as a parent, and for inspiring me to be prepared to see how imposing they have been on my daughters over the years.
We tend to have quite a lot of them, ideals and beliefs about how we have to be as a parent and I continue to work on discarding them. And as you say Janet, we have to be prepared to see the imposition we have used and to honestly look at these. It is sometime shocking to see what my way of parenting is returning to me, what my children reflect to me as being the outcome of the choices I have made in the past and for some of them I still continue to choose. But on the other hand, by letting go of some parenting pictures and choosing the wisdom I feel from inside instead, the relation with my children has changed amazingly to more equalness between us and that we now are putting effort into building a brand new relation based on love first. How beautiful life can be!
Ideals and beliefs are just so ingrained in how we live, to hear how you have unfolded in your parenting and made different choices is just beautiful.
A lovely blog thank you Nico, that raises some great points for reflection, like is it possible, ‘Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside?’ This then sets us up to take on these external ideals and beliefs instead of trusting our inner wisdom. Beautiful that you came back to trusting your inner wisdom.
A beautiful revelation Nico on being a father. How amazing would this world be if we were to raise children up or if we were to be parented this way.
Ouch, indeed. I too was under the illusion that ‘keeping the peace’ was the thing to do, and I now see that it is my responsibility to make sure that issues do not remain unresolved, and that any disrespect gets exposed.
Another ouch from me too Janet – I now know just how harming keeping the peace is to everyone, myself included – claiming responsibility and exposing ill energy and disrespect feels so different in my body. It may not always be liked by others, and I am getting over that too.
Wow – Nico – this is a whole new way to raise a child! It is amazing how much of ‘what society says’ stands in the way of being our true selves and trusting our instincts. We’ve let parenting become a role and something that we ‘do’ rather than just being and seeing children as equals.
I really love how you have broken down all the things you did to fill this role, and actually, the simplicity you now feel when you don’t try to tick boxes. What an amazing way to bring a child into this world, seeing them as an equal so they don’t feel less, ever.
A great blog Nico, parenting is a difficult subject to talk about because each person has their own guide lines and principles that can then become the ‘right way’ or the ‘wrong way’ to parent. Quite often our main reflections of parenting come from how our own parents parented us, and so it can be easy to take on many ideals and beliefs from them, whether we are aware of this or not. When we parent our children by being loving and caring of ourselves first, then we have a natural understanding of what is needed, without needing to fall back on all the ideals and beliefs that surround us.
I agree Alison I have noticed how I have a tendency to either parent in a way that is the same as I was parented (if I liked that bit!) or parent in the completely opposite way to my own parents (in reaction to it!). Either way it still means that I am parenting under the influence of outside information and experience rather than feeling for myself what is a loving way to parent my own kids. More and more I have been feeling for myself what I feel is a true way to parent and I know it won’t be perfect but at least it will be from me to the best of my ability and not just a regurgitation from outside.
This makes a lot of sense even from the perspective of a daughter as I read this blog. I can see similar pictures that my own father tried to implement as I was growing up and how often they did not work. I can’t judge or blame my parents as they were not parented any differently, only the situations and times were different. Now an adult myself and through the presentations of Universal Medicine, am I understanding that I can be my own parent if I listen to my feelings over anything I have been told. I now have the chance to provide that love I wanted back then from others to myself.
Wow, Nico. I read your list of ideals and beliefs about fatherhood and saw my own late father in all of them! Your blog’s message has enabled me to get a different perspective on what drove my father’s parenting style and to appreciate what he felt he was up against and had to prove to himself and those around him. As such I’ve been able to drop all judgment of him and the overly-protective, sometimes stifling boundaries he established in our family. So many thanks to you for providing such a game-changing blog. It should be in a prominent place in every maternity ward!
Hi Nico. I loved reading how you are unravelling ideals and beliefs and your “fatherhood pictures”. Very inspiring for any of us to unravel any of the roles we have taken on.
Nico. A powerful blog on fatherhood. We all try to bring up our children in the best way possible. Teaching them right from wrong, but letting them also find their true way in life. They will always call on you for help and advise.
Thank you Nico for such a true and beautiful sharing of fatherhood and exposing its ideals and beliefs so clearly. It makes sense of how we are brought up as children from both our parents and by relinquishing our ideals and beliefs how we can parent truly.
Very inspirational and beautiful to read and feel .
Beautiful Nico. What you share is inspiring. Through looking at my parenting beliefs I know that I fell into wanting my child to perform well as I saw this as a reflection of me being a ‘good mother’ How very selfish to put my self value onto a child so they carried the weight of my value rather than me having it myself. Quite ugly really and one that I have let go of as a result of basing my life and relationships on loving connection.
Thank you Nico for a beautiful blog and for unpicking the ideals that you as a father found yourself with. It is gorgeous to experience such gentleness, care and honesty around the subject of parenting. I was touched by your description of your first daughter when she was born when you ‘felt how fragile and helpless she was’. It is no wonder parents look outside of themselves for answers as they often feel quite vulnerable and helpless themselves to start with. Your blog has showed me how important it is to stay with the vulnerability in any situation and learn to feel and trust the beauty in that.
It seems many people sacrifice who they are when they become parents, leaving who they are behind in order to conform to their ideals and beliefs of what being a parent means. Thank you for a great blog Nico and, as a daughter, thank you for the healing.
“I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!” Nico this sentence says so much in terms of how we limit ourselves to these roles which have such a narrow definition and are so restricting. When we consider being who we really are, I can feel how that is so much more than any role we could play.
Ideals and beliefs can tie us in knots. As a parent I was so consumed with trying to match the picture I had of what a ‘good’ mother should be, and be seen to be, I never lived up to my own expectations, and I completely lost sight of who I was. I can now see that this was offering a very poor role model for our children and was not healthy for the relationship I had with my husband. Seeing the imposed ideals and beliefs for what they are and learning to let go of the control, allow each of us to be ourselves and make our own choices as we find a loving way to be with ourselves and everyone around us, is very liberating. Our family is much closer and loving without the suffocating ideals and beliefs.
So beautiful and true Mary. And very healing too.
Very clear message….for me, it is to question any assumptions I have about life and the roles that I take on…Great to read how powerful the change can be when being honest.
In the past I had felt let down by my father, as I have grown into an adult I have learnt to understand were he is at in life and not put expectations on him. This has supported our relationship and it has grown to be one of understanding and mutual respect. To learn to live every relationship through Love rather than a Role is a great inspiration. Thank you.
Such a truly beautiful article to read, thank you for sharing this Nico
What a gorgeous blog Nico. I can feel the openness to a real way of fathering you have allowed by discarding all those beliefs. I have seen fathers who have desperately tried to live up to their beliefs about what it is to be a good father. Some of these beliefs are so unrealistic that they cannot be lived out which can leaves both parties feeling like they somehow failed and are not good enough to warrant the title father or daughter or son.
From reading your blog I am asking myself, what are my beliefs about being a good daughter and do I berate myself in any way because I do not live up to those beliefs? In the past I know I have berated my father for not living up to my beliefs about what a good father should be like. I feel there is further healing to be had for us both by my looking at this again more deeply. Thank you for inspiring this.
Hi Nico, I especially appreciate how you have made it so clear that the ideals of parenting are not actually that useful or even appropriate when raising children. And the strength with which you write about just being yourself and trusting what you feel, that to me feels like true parenting, and is very inspiring.
Hi Shami, thank you for raising this point since it is an on going process of unwrapping myself from the ideals and beliefs I have build around being a good father. The other day I was experiencing some issues with one of my children and once again I was confronted with the harm I had done by the way I have parented, from these ideals and beliefs. It is such a blessing when I am able to see in honesty what is in front of me and that I can go from there with the understanding and acceptance; when I allow and trust my feelings. Communicating from my feelings always comes from equalness and is looking for true evolvement of us and of the relations we are in.
I’ve noticed that as a father, when we invest in our children growing up to some ideal we have held they should be, it only holds them back from and allowing them to be themselves in full. It’s like we make things more complicated than they need to be.
Thank you Nico for this exposing and inspiring blog – how we can fall so easily into certain behaviour ‘traps’ through a mental image/picture of how ‘it should be’. This opened up further awareness for me of how damaging on any relationships this mental picture is across the board – good daughter, good son, good wife, good student, good husband, good mother…. when all we truly need is a relationship with ourself first to bring true qualities to all other relationships.
Nico there is so much to consider here. All the pictures we buy into as parents and the expectations we have of our parents, which will be smashed if they do not deliver. This is such a huge and important topic, thank you Nico.
Wow. An amazing, honest and very clear expose of how we can fall for a picture a mental image of what a ‘good father’ is. As a father myself I can relate to most of your list of ideals and beliefs and great question to ask ‘where do they really come from?’ And why are they any better than trusting my own inner wisdom? I can also relate to your point that the best form of parenting is simply getting out of the way and allowing and encouraging a child to naturally develop into who they really are rather than who I want them to be or appear to the world to make me look good.
Absolutely Andrew, ‘the best form of parenting is simply getting out of the way and allowing and encouraging a child to naturally develop into who they really are rather than who I want them to be or appear to the world to make me look good’. How freeing is this for the child. To simply meet and love them for who they naturally are, without any expectations.
Nico this is an article that has made me think about how I’ve taken on the ‘role’ of motherhood. I too have doubted myself and often read books about parenting rather than trusting my own feelings.
I can certainly relate to much of what you have all shared here. It’s no wonder men in general are so lost and out of touch with who we naturally are when ideals demanding how we ‘should’ be abound; to be a good: man, father, husband, son, brother, friend, worker, student, etc… They are really rammed down your throat from such a young age. To simply let go of all that and allow myself to be the naturally tender and gorgeous man I am has been, and still is, a most empowering and liberating process.
I feel the same as a woman and a mother, sister, daughter, etc. there are so many boxes to tick if we wanted to live that way. But nothing compares to letting go of all of these criteria and just enjoying being me.
Beautifully written, Nico. Thank you for sharing.
I agree Conor a great article to reflect on that gives us a different perspective of what being a “good” father is really all about.
Hi Nico, I found this beautiful to read and feel – I was feeling how the love you have developed in you has allowed this honest and open review of parenting. It is incredible the arrogance we have about knowing what is best for our child without consulting the child. All those ideals and beliefs as you say we take on board from our own parents, the media and society in general. The presentations from Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom have been an inspiration to me too which has meant I have begun to develop a true connect to self and love and started to use that connection to reflect on how I live and how truly I love.
It is great what you have felt and shared here especially “Where did these ideals and beliefs about being ‘a good father’ come from?” for me I could relate this to many different roles not just about it being a good father but how in the past I have automatically taken on roles as daughter, sister, auntie without first truly connecting to my relationship with that person and coming from there. Without first truly connecting to me. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Nico, for so beautifully exposing the madness of choosing not to feel or ponder the roles we take on and just absorbing a rule book from somewhere ‘out there’. And then how sweet and simple it is when we let go and allow our true nature to inspire the way we live and relate to our children and everyone else.
Hi Matilda, I love the way you call it ‘the madness of choosing not to feel or ponder’ and how ‘sweet and simple’ it can be when we let go of looking for solutions somewhere ‘out there’. For me I can feel this deeply now to be true. When I was looking for solutions ‘out there’ it only ever brought me some level of recognition from another I was looking at, not any true clarity that I now feel from within.
Nico, this is a great article and I thank you for your beautiful honesty. It’s a blessing for all men, women and children to hear and feel such honesty. You’re expression is gorgeous. What strikes me about your article is how massively complicated we make it! Isn’t it fascinating that the road to true parenting is actually ALL about LETTING GO. Yet, as a parent that is exactly the opposite of what we do. All along the journey, and it starts way, way before the child is even born, we are collecting images, ideals, beliefs, hurts, doubts, dreams, hopes, fears, goals etc… thousands and thousands of bits of baggage that weigh us down and crush us – that’s the true reason we are exhausted as parents – not the sleepless nights!! But what your blog has explained and what I am learning myself as a parent, is that the more I let go of all the externally imposed garbage, the truer a parent I become. It’s super simple. I have it all. Just be me. Thank you Nico for your inspiration. I shall be returning to this blog often!!
Thank you Otto, it is indeed all about letting go of that what is not me and that not only frees my energy and vitality but also releases my physical body of the constant tension, pains and strains that are there to hold the taken on ideals and beliefs. It is indeed very simple if I allow myself to feel who I truly am and stop looking outwards to what the world expects me to be.
Yes Otto I can relate to how we complicate things and the expectations of how things ‘should’ be start way before the child is born.
I love your point Otto and it’s true. Trying to keep up with all the checklists in our heads of how and when to do things for our children can frazzle your brain and drain your body. How liberating to know none of it is needed just the real essence of you.
So true Otto, I love what you have shared about it being all our ideals etc. that we try to live up to that cause our exhaustion as parents. It is a constant work-in-progress for me to let go of what I am Not, and to parent simply from who I am.
This is Beautiful Nico. Great sharing and a lot of insights about relationships and especially parenting. Also what you astutely outline, the extent to which we can take on ideals and beliefs that do not belong in our heart and we run with them at the expense of our true expression – this can just as easily be applied to any aspect of life. You provide a great way of asking ourself questions to clarify it for ourself. Thank you.
Yes Golnaz, as you say this can be applied to all aspects of life. For me when I ask myself if what ever I am doing feels right for me or not, most the time it is my body that gives me clear answers, that I then live by and with that am able to let go of the old that is not me.
Beautiful Nico, what an expose on parenting! It feels so exhausting to set foot on this conveyor belt of manufacturing and delivering perfect children! Thank you for your deep honesty in sharing your journey and how beautiful to know and feel that deepening connection and love you are building with all the members of your family, from a place of equality rather than authority. What a huge blessing to the world.
Hi Nico, wow I really felt the amount of pressure parents take on from the ideals and beliefs we have around children, how liberating that you have begun to let all this go and live from what you know is true, rather than what you’re told is true.
Thank you Nico for so honestly sharing about your journey through parenthood and that you now have “a connection that is based on a true equalness, and a deep trust in myself and in what I feel.”
I remember when I first had my daughter being anxious of being found out as ‘not a good mother’, I felt to support her to explore her own path but didn’t have the confidence to follow through with that. She has come back to live with me as an adult in the last year and we have both found it challenging but are gradually establishing a relationship based on more honest communication. She also helps me to care for my elderly father who I have spent most of my life in reaction to but feel that this time with him has been very healing as we have both been letting go of our ideals about what a ‘Good Father’ looks like.
It so amazing to read this Helen and I know that the more I am learning to simply be myself and communicate honestly and gently, the more healing it brings to my whole family. Years of guardedness and defence from deep hurts are falling away, to be replaced by simple straight forward conversations with no agenda. Whether we are parent or child, we all have a responsibility to simply be ourselves and be honest and caring towards one another, without any expectations. Life is much lovelier when we do.
This is a great article, Nico, and great questions that you ask. It has stimulated me to dig deeper as to how I relate to being a father by asking these questions. Thank you for the inspiration.
Your blog is so clear and beautifully expressed, Nico, and reminds me to keep working with the ever ongoing and deepening relationship with my own children, (now in their forties). We are still letting go of the ties, but as we do our relationships become far more honest, equal and harmonious. And the ties are about investing in the identity of “mother”, “daughter”, “son” first before being ourselves in who we truly are. So then it is generational as I consider my relationship with my father and mother, long since passed over, and find I am still working with that. From a simple beginning, “What made me a Good Father”, you have widened and deepened and made it relevant for us all, thank you.
My mother is still alive, age 90 and it is beautiful to be able to appreciate her as a person and being able to let go off the previous frustration and resentment I held previously.
We have both learnt much from the harm the ideal ‘good mother and good daughter’ syndrome played out in our lives and continue to explore this to bring more awareness and love into our interactions.
It is a great thing when we are able to acknowledge that what we have lived has not been true but was there because we were not aware of it. By becoming aware of the fact that our parents too lived a life based on the the ideals and beliefs which were told to them by there family and communities they were part of, we are able to see through these falsities and can reconnect to our true connection based on love.
Yes Nico, Awareness is a true key for bringing us insights into what is actually not true. As my own awareness has deepened (and continues to do so), so many old outdated ideals and beliefs are no longer’ able to bind me up causing such grief and perceived struggle.
Thank you Nico, this is very inspiring to read. I can relate to what you have written, when I had my son I wanted to be a ” good mother” and drove myself crazy listening to advice from health care professionals, family and friends. There was so much different advice I felt lost as to know what to believe. In the end I began to learn to trust myself and make my own decisions and so things changed and I begun to truly connect with myself and my son. The experience of raising a child was then completely different and became most of the time, enjoyable, playful and amazing.
I love this blog Nico – you know why – because it’s sooo relatable to all relationships. What a beautiful opportunity you’ve given yourself and us all in exploring how relationships can be based on True Love.
Exactly Shevon great point. With all types of relationships we can often go in wanting them to be a certain way, wanting to mould it into a way that suits us – how arrogant that feels. Yet what an amazing way to also relate what Nico has written to having real relationships not just “good” suitable ones.
Nico, In reading your blog I really felt where that harmful paper dragon, FEAR, comes from. It is born of the emptiness when we abandon our true innate knowing and then fed when we take in the outer belief systems in search of guidance which we are, then, not feeling within. I cried at the end where you express that you have come back to your own senses, your own truth and to Love. So healing.
Jo, I love the simple and powerful way you have exposed fear here –
“… that harmful paper dragon, FEAR, comes from. It is born of the emptiness when we abandon our true innate knowing and then fed when we take in the outer belief systems in search of guidance which we are, then, not feeling within”
Nico this line says it all “Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside,” and then of course we raise children who don’t know how to trust themselves as they have had role models who don’t trust themselves. What a massive set up! Great to be beginning to free yourself of these constraints of ideals and beliefs. I too am slowly developing that trust in myself so I can too parent from a connection to me and then to the other. It is so much more freeing! And Loving!!!
That is so true Vanessa, we don’t trust ourselves, so of course that then gets passed on to our children and we perpetuate the doubt. I have enjoyed reading all the comments on this blog as it shows its a topic that needs to be more openly discussed. Even though my children are now adults I can still feel how I have expectations and constraining beliefs around parenting.
I don’t have children but these ideals and beliefs around family play out in my relationships nonetheless the examples of expectations and wanting things or people to be different.
There are that much ideals and beliefs around us of how we should be with family and in relationships it that it is almost impossible to not adapt one of these when we are not aware of this fact and as you say Elaine, then it even does not matter if you have children or not, we almost all have images of how we should be as a parent.
You are an inspiration to all men Nico, and I too love you dearly. You hold an amazing quality that is strong and powerful so this article is just one way of confirming that.
Beautifully written. Thank you for your honest sharing Nico.
Hi Nico, what a great sharing on such a fundamental topic. I’ve been very inspired by this along with Serge Benhayon, Michael Benhayon and Curtis Benhayon as true role models of being a father. The points you raise about the fatherhood picture are massive. Where did these things come from and just what are they for? As I’m not yet a father I’ve not taken much time to consider these points, yet if I do – a similar set of how would I be as a father comes up. A great point to reflect on, as when I look after children I get the same things come up and the fear of what to do. Thank you.
Amazing Nico – imagine if all parents were like you, the world would be a very different place. I don’t have children as yet, but many of my friends do and I have watched many of them struggle through taking little care of themselves. It’s hard but ultimately the lack of self care leads to this being taken out on the child however long later. This results in stressed out parents and kids who are both relieved by TV and sugar to get them through. However, meeting lots of parents associated with Universal Medicine and seeing how they have introduced self-care for themselves and how they raise and treat their kids and what the end result is, in that by teenage years they are full of love and beauty and able to be a real shining light at school and in those challenging times you go through as a child and young adult, I am now beginning to consider parenthood myself. The impact we can have on children by showing them love for who they are and not what they do is huge and is the foundation for humanity sorting itself out for sure.
Thanks Nico for the blog, and great comment Rachael – I love your last point “the impact we can have on children by showing them love for who they are and not what they do is huge and is the foundation for humanity sorting itself out for sure”…. You have just solved much of the world’s exhaustion and stress – from trying to live up to what is expected of people to ‘do’ instead of just ‘being’, as we have (not so cleverly) learned to do as children.
Beautifully written Nico. What a wonderful set of questions you asked yourself. If every father stopped to ask what it truly means to be a father without the ideals and beliefs of how you should be, what amazing children we would have in the world today.
Thanks for this article Nico. It is a great reminder that there is another way to parenting.
Yes the ideals and beliefs we take on are so capping of ourselves and so damaging to others. I am learning more and more that the true art of parenting is simply to be myself and maintain a consistent loving quality in what I do and simply allow my children to express from their naturalness with no preconceived ideas about how they should be doing it. Firm boundaries definitely but no capping on expression…
Greatly said, it proves difficult sometimes as I catch myself trying to steer my children in a certain direction, but as you say there’s a difference between boundaries and expression.
“Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside” – this is true Nico, thank you for your wonderful sharing. It is a blog that would benifit every father and mother to read as society is plagued with ideals and beliefs on parenting that do nothing but hold us back.
“….. life is about love and nothing else – that in life, is all we need.” Beauty-full!
Thank you Nico, I also tried to be the good father sacrificing who I was, to become something I was not. I can feel the truth in your statement, “Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’.”
Hi Steve, it is really beautiful what we are able to expose in all aspects of being a man. One of these is being the good father. Thanks to the teachings and immense support available from Universal Medicine and their associated practitioners we are able do this now and become more and more who we truly are.
Pow – Steve you nailed it right there for me. I have tried and tried to be a good somebody in so many of my relationships and always ending up being something that I am not. This is particularly true as a father, and obviously begs the question “who is Dad”. That has been a big ouch for me in exposing the ideals and beliefs.
“Who is Dad” These three words really stood out to me Simon, for the longest time had I ever of been asked such a question I would say I would not have been comfortable or confident in answering such. Yes I know who my Dad is but since both him and I along with the rest of our family have each been willing to look at ourselves underneath the roles we may play. Each to various degrees and by no means perfect but I can now say that I have a greater sense of “who is Dad” now more than ever as I am allowing myself to feel more the person underneath the roles of ‘good this or that’. That true person doesn’t even compare to the actor of whatever role anyone may take on and this is something that is building the more I feel me under anything I may pretend to be.
I really enjoyed this blog, thank you Nico. I was particularly struck by your question, ‘Did I look for a certain type of fatherhood picture I was familiar with or did I select some on purpose’. I had not thought to ask this sort of question about all of the roles and beliefs that I have taken on.
Catherine, it is really interesting to investigate the reason for choosing a fatherhood picture or any picture we choose, as an ideal or belief to take on.
What holds us from living our true selves?
Recently I found that I held a belief because I did not want to take the responsibility to stop the abuse that I had in the relationship with my son. With the abuse I mean there was inequality in our relation because of the father/son belief, resulting in not meeting each other in truth. Physically this acted out in being disrespectful to each other and not being prepared to truly listen to what we have to say to one another. When we allow ourselves to truly feel this form of abuse we can feel that this hurts as much as physical abuse.
I was in the belief that by not taking the responsibility and say stop to the abuse, I was keeping the harmony in this relationship, and at the same time I allowed the abuse to continue and even expand, ouch.
Catherine and Nico I too pondered on this question and not just around family, do we subconsciously choose an ideal or belief on purpose to keep ourselves from being honest and not looking at what needs to be addressed? Recently I have caught myself doing this quite a lot and it is very insiduous and I can only really see the belief after the event. I love your honesty and understanding Nico, we do not always see being disrespectful as abuse but it is, and allowing it to continue unchecked can cause the in-equality and separation between two people .
Well said Nico. Ideals, beliefs and expectations cause havoc in relationships.
I can certainly relate to your ‘ouch’ here – “I was in the belief that by not taking the responsibility and say stop to the abuse, I was keeping the harmony in this relationship, and at the same time I allowed the abuse to continue and even expand, ouch”.
Yes, ouch, the ‘anything to keep the peace’ which actually doesn’t truly support anyone.
The pictures that we hold onto and take on are laced with all these ideals and beliefs which have a major impact in our relationships with others as well as ourselves. Yes it is time to let go of them one by one as you say to allow us to be who we naturally are. Thanks for sharing Nico.
Thank you Natalie, we only need to be ourselves and that will do all what’s needed. When we put a picture in place instead, we will keep the others and ourselves from being who we naturally are and continue to contribute to all the relationship issues we have all over the world.
Dear Nico, there is so much wisdom in your words. That being a responsible parent involves nominating and clearing any beliefs and ideals out of the way so we can be ourselves and able to simply connect and meet our children as equals. And as you say this affects all our relationships and the way we are together in society. Thank you, Nico.
A fabulous article that applies equally to motherhood too. We grow up with so many ideas of how we should do things only to find out they were never really true.
So true Jenny. Ideal and beliefs are so restricting. It can be applied in all relationships. Looking back I can see how I acted this out with looking for a partner… holding onto a belief that they needed to have some of my Father’s qualities. However, I am seeing the ideals and beliefs more clearly now and with honesty for what they are. Great article Nico, thank you – lots of food for thought.
Hi Nico, A clear and honest description of the process (the disregarding and letting go of old ideals, beliefs) you went through. It was great to read and feel how the connection with yourself deepened and as a result, how the connection with your children grew. As you beautifully expressed: “This now reflects in my deepening connection with my children – a connection that is based on a true equalness, and a deep trust in myself and in what I feel.” Awesome.
Thank you Nico, your reflections are so important. Only when we share our true experiences can we begin to break the hold that ideals about parenting or any other aspects of life have over us, mostly without awareness. If one father is inspired to reflect more closely about his fatherhood, as a result of your sharing, what a gift for him.
It is true that most ‘fathers’ are not true in expression because they have taken on fatherhood pictures. This not only influences the relationship with their children but also with their partners and all others they are related with. So unraveling our ideals and beliefs will not only have an impact on our relationships but will also be reflected in society one day because we are related to everybody.
So true Nico, most fathers are not true in expression due to the fear of rejection and so get caught up in ideas and beliefs. Only when they start to unravel ideals and beliefs their true expression will flow and the true Father will express.
Thanks Nico for bringing this article forward.
As a mother, it’s been exposing on many levels and truly supportive.
As a daughter, it was such a healing reading this – and a gift to receive.
Thank you Brooke. It is beyond our imagination, the power exposing the false beliefs we carry, have. It can bring healing to whoever is open and willing to look at these.
Thank you for sharing Nico – it is amazing how we can be and largely are/have been run by the wave of what society tells us we should be doing and behaving – all to fit in, to gain acceptance, to think we are doing the ‘right’ thing. It is exposing yet extremely freeing, as deep down we all know the truth even though it may be hard to admit it at times.
This is so true James. We never get Love from who we think we need to be, even though it might seem this is initially the case.
yes, this further exposes that we seek love outside of ourselves until we re-connect to the love within.
I agree Nico, exposing these “false beliefs we carry”, is so very healing, and when you give yourself this freedom to be who you truly are, it is like a huge and unnecessary weight being lifted, a weight we have carried for so long without even realising it
And it was a heavy weight Ingrid, that we unnecessary carried with us. It is such a relief for my body to free itself from this weight and to be able to move more freely without it. Without the weights my body can tell me more of the truth of life it is so naturally connected with. Instead of being the supporting body for carrying the burdens of the undealt issues in life my body is now filled with joy, stillness and harmony. My body now connects me to the truth of life I originate from, a life we all deserve to live on this earth.
The false beliefs give us a false security. Thinking we will be loved, liked and worthwhile as long as we do ‘good’. It is always working hard and very tiring. No wonder we feel so much lighter when we can let go of them. Although this letting go can feel new and unfamiliar it is the greatest gift you can give yourself and everyone around you.
I agree too, as a daughter this is very healing to read and feel that underneath the ideals we carry our parents really do love and care for us to the bone.