A letter to my daughter
Sheila, my wife, will never see my three paternal Grandchildren. I have never seen my grandchildren; I have not seen my daughter Emily for four years. Family shit I am told.
Sheila never had a family, abused by her dad at 7, travelling alone across Birmingham from age 6, left home at 15, married at 19, divorced at 21 and all of that helped create the strong woman she is today.
She would have loved being a surrogate grandmother to my grandkids. She wrote a letter to Emily that was never acknowledged or responded to.
When Sheila and I announced our wedding, I did receive a message along the lines of F off, I hate you. My children refused to attend. My own brothers refused to attend. Mandy, my sister was there (in heaven looking down), my mum and dad were fab.
I’m struggling writing this as the tears are dropping on my keyboard.
Here is the letter to my daughter. Maybe now she will respond? I doubt it but she is still loved. There is no But in true love.
November 2017
Omm dear Emily
Excuse my familiarity as I’m aware that we have yet to meet and yet I feel I know somewhat about you through how your father and grandparents speak of you. I understand that you will have opinions and thoughts about me which are unfounded in personal truth but formed of second hand knowledge and opinions, so be it, for the moment all I can ask is that you put those aside as you read this.
Colin showed me your reply to the wedding invitation and it was that that caused me this sense of wanting to speak to you. If you like, is to give a view which is relatively independent and clear of history.
I’m aware that each of us, in every situation, have our history, feelings and opinions and that for each of us these feel like our truth as we see a situation from our own experiences. We also create alliances to help us cope with our own or our allies’ situation and when this happens, often we lose connection to our own truth to enable us to support the other and yet this feels like the right thing to do in that moment. I’m also aware of the saying ‘blood is thicker than water’ and the relationships and bonds which we undertook when we incarnated are there for our greater lessons in life.
Here I simply wish to put forward my perspective which has been gained over a relatively short time, just less than two years, but it’s been two years of big change in yours and your family relationships which has caused each of you deep challenges and pains.
I am happy that Colin and I met when neither of us were ‘looking for a partner or sex’ and so our relationship developed in a way which was not fuelled with passion and lust.
I have witnessed Colin in so many times of pain around the divorce and family issues. It took great courage for him to break his patterns of well over thirty years. From the stories I have heard, the marriage appears to have been filled with love along with abuse, control, reaction, rejection, separation and reconciliation often in the height of sex and passion rather than discussion, understanding and a commitment to change. Some of which you were protected from knowing or at least hearing his side of it. There were times in the past when he wanted to tell you things and the advice he was given was not to involve you as you were the children.
I heard the disappointment, upset and failure he felt when you left the boat in anger or frustration in March/April 2016 when he was seeking reconciliation and understanding. I felt his pain as he tried to meet with you and his grandchildren on the times he was in north London and your rejection of this. I felt and saw his joy and happiness as he showed me videos he had made for his grandchildren involving his tractor and the garden. I saw him photographing and heard him wishing that you were at the family friendly festivals we were at and how you would love them. I have seen him wanting to take care of you at times through the divorce and give you a freedom which he senses you don’t have. He often fantasises of your seedball business being based in one of the adjoining farm buildings and the children playing freely in the countryside with nature.
I see his pain at being deprived from ever seeing Chris’s children as well as his frustration with the way Chris has become the ‘middle man’ which may not be ‘his own man’ and his questioning of how this affects him.
I have heard the pain in the stories of his relationship with his wife who pushed him to his edges and yet he returned. I see his difficulty as he sees the divorce advice which Kerry has been given and has followed which has not necessarily been legally accurate or in her best interests.
I have witnessed him being truthful and honest on so many different occasions that I see that this is in his makeup, yet in the divorce, he has been treated in a way that questioned this in him and the pain that caused him.
I have seen his messiness at his home and his Mr. 100% on the boat which are such different characters. I have also experienced his craziness when under the influence of drink and cannabis and how his character changes at this time, as it does in us all. I hear how he often resorted to these as a coping mechanism and so living with that will have brought its own challenges for each of you.
I have also seen his commitment to change to make a new start in life. He gave up smoking tobacco after your visit in January 2016, saying that, he had his little girl back, maybe his grandchildren too, as well as a potential connection with me, so he had little excuse to continue. I heard how he changed his coping pattern after your meeting at the boat in March/April 2016 rather than go get drunk and maybe have sex, he cleaned up the boat. I have seen him doing his ‘term time’ alcohol free times when he gains greater control and clarity of his life. I have seen his commitment to getting fit and healthy. I see his playfulness and his adventure with growing and creating things, including making the house and garden his own and growing his cannabis which is a science in its own right. I see the lightness and opening in his body as his armour is being broken down by loving life as his own man, it’s long overdue.
I am challenged by his auto-responses to me in situations which are not relevant to how I am or endeavour to be in living my life with love, non- judgement and in truth as my goals yet I understand he had so many years of double guessing and trying to do the right thing, it is simply another pattern to change with time and understanding.
I have, in working with him to develop Havendock, being on the boat and more especially during the last few months as I dealt with a very unexpected health issue, experienced his caring, controlling, nurturing, supporting, trusting and ‘I’m right, do it my way’ of being, all of which I resonate with as I too have these qualities so you can imagine the sparks which sometimes fly.
It’s a gift he still has the support of his parents who are fit and healthy yet I sense a pain which they must feel as they live with a divided family.
It is beautiful to witness Colin as he opens up to reconnections from his past which he closed the doors to, endeavouring to please others.
I know that with each incident of non-communication or rejection with you he feels your pain. He feels that you had a tight bond where you could tell him anything and he misses that and he guesses you must too.
However, we are both aware that to cope, we create walls and defences. I really understand that on a very personal level as I chose in my thirties to distance myself completely from my father and his abusive relationship towards me. This caused my brother to distance himself from me as his loyalty was called to support his father. It caused my two sisters to each call on their stories of growing up, even though we have never shared these and to support me and so distance themselves from our father. So our family was fragmented. We lost our mother when I was 25 and my maternal grandmother shortly after this time so there was no family glue to endeavour to fix us. It was up to us as adults to tread our own path and it was after I divorced and was finding my own life again that I went to live in a yoga ashram. As my fiftieth birthday approached I realised for my own growth and fulfilment that I needed to find forgiveness towards my father and so eventually after fighting the idea, I began a process of communication. Initially, in writing via my brother who thankfully had not moved home, as I had no idea where my father lived but I had a knowing that unless I could meet them both the forgiveness was not there. Three years later when my brother was intensive care and on life support I knew that it was time for feeling and forgiving, not ego and so left my ashram life and I went to my brother’s bedside and stayed until he was out of hospital. A month later with my brother and aunt’s support, I undertook that meeting with my father. It was unannounced and for me an absolute disaster, as I was met with such anger, so I was landed with yet more pain and so I had another choice, continued distance or healing and forgiveness. That night after a long meditation I wrote once again, this time directly, being totally honest and open about the pain of the meeting and releasing our connection if that was to be his choice. This created more healing for us both as I received a reply. Eventually, with encouragement from a close friend, I overcame my ego and pain and made another visit this time alone and there was true reconciliation and I feel blessed that a few months later I was able to visit him once more, just two days before his death which although he was bedridden it was a beautiful experience where he really wanted to know me and my current life, twenty years on from our last real connection. I felt no need to attend his funeral as my healing felt complete and I am so grateful that I managed this. Yes I can say that I am sad that I missed out on twenty years of relating, support and connection because that is the fact. I’m now so aware that love was not present during this twenty years just numbness and closed down feelings. Even in the forgiveness love was distant, I just knew I needed to clear up some of the history, although we never discussed the abuse he put me through. Neither of my sisters found this path of forgiveness and I feel the regret that one feels and the anger the other still holds, she chose to deprive my father of any connection to her three children. It took a lot of courage, non-judgement, forgiveness and letting go of the old stories, I can’t say I felt love for myself or him during this time and I wish I did as it would have been even richer to have felt on that level. So of course my healing was not completed at that time, just simply the one level I could manage at that time, which was that of physically meeting, I have continued to work on the emotional and cellular issues of the wounds and who knows when those will be fully healed but I am engaged with the process and it is in that I can endeavour to be whole.
I am so grateful that Colin experienced Findhorn before I found it, so that he understands the mechanism of sharing and way of council. I travelled there a year or so after the healing with my father and chose to live there for almost five years, it was there that I really faced my emotional and cellular healing journey. It was here that I came head to head with my tendency to judge and so a journey of working with that began and it was full in my face in the relationship I began but eventually ended. Thankfully, we have remained friends as we saw through the process of sharing that we each needed the other as a teacher to learn from even in the pain we faced.
I feel very blessed to be in a mirror relationship with Colin, in a spiritual and love journey with him that allows us both to grow and soften our built up defences. He sees my walls and protection and challenges them and I see his and challenge those so together we can each break down to finding unconditional love, not the fuzzy infatuation thing but a much deeper, challenging type of connection where truth, non-judgement, honesty and sharing are the keys. Each of us is broken, imperfect and human in a repairing state towards enlightenment only a few become Buddha but each of us can have Buddha moments along the way. It’s a real gift when we meet someone who recognises this and does not try to fix but endeavours to mirror so that we can see ourselves more clearly and so we can change for our own good rather than to please another. Who allows us to be ourselves with all our imperfections and beauties and appreciates each as a gift of being and learning.
So Emily, now you now know a snippet of me and all I ask of you, is that you take time to sit in the silence of your own truth, without judgement and feel, do that again and again until you see through your walls of protection and so feel the love which exists between parent and child even though it may be hard love, hidden or rejected. From that place you will know what is best for you. You cannot know what is best for Colin, your children, your mother or brother as they each have their own journeys to undertake. However, I offer that I know life is richer with self love rather than in numbness, pain, anger or grief only then can you be love to others. Family is a minefield and it’s where we often cause the most pain as we have expectations which are not necessarily met.
I do not need your love or connection for myself, however, I know that until there is a healing between Colin and all his family members then pain will ensue and this pain will influence our life together as we live in truth.
I wish you well with whatever you choose to do with this, which has been passed on to you by Colin so that he is aware of what I am saying to you. I am happy to engage in dialogue with you by email or phone or to meet. I am also aware you may choose to do nothing with it, so be it. I simply sit in non-judgement, truth and trust. I look forward to the day, whenever that is, when we can all meet, so I can witness you both in a healing space.
With best wishes, love and light
Sheila
Today from my teacher: Sivananda's Message of the Day for Thursday, November 2, 2017
Cling not to your ego, your lower self and limited mundane life. Soar high into the highest realms of eternal bliss.
-- Sri Swami Sivananda
For my next post click here.
Sheila never had a family, abused by her dad at 7, travelling alone across Birmingham from age 6, left home at 15, married at 19, divorced at 21 and all of that helped create the strong woman she is today.
She would have loved being a surrogate grandmother to my grandkids. She wrote a letter to Emily that was never acknowledged or responded to.
When Sheila and I announced our wedding, I did receive a message along the lines of F off, I hate you. My children refused to attend. My own brothers refused to attend. Mandy, my sister was there (in heaven looking down), my mum and dad were fab.
I’m struggling writing this as the tears are dropping on my keyboard.
Here is the letter to my daughter. Maybe now she will respond? I doubt it but she is still loved. There is no But in true love.
November 2017
Omm dear Emily
Excuse my familiarity as I’m aware that we have yet to meet and yet I feel I know somewhat about you through how your father and grandparents speak of you. I understand that you will have opinions and thoughts about me which are unfounded in personal truth but formed of second hand knowledge and opinions, so be it, for the moment all I can ask is that you put those aside as you read this.
Colin showed me your reply to the wedding invitation and it was that that caused me this sense of wanting to speak to you. If you like, is to give a view which is relatively independent and clear of history.
I’m aware that each of us, in every situation, have our history, feelings and opinions and that for each of us these feel like our truth as we see a situation from our own experiences. We also create alliances to help us cope with our own or our allies’ situation and when this happens, often we lose connection to our own truth to enable us to support the other and yet this feels like the right thing to do in that moment. I’m also aware of the saying ‘blood is thicker than water’ and the relationships and bonds which we undertook when we incarnated are there for our greater lessons in life.
Here I simply wish to put forward my perspective which has been gained over a relatively short time, just less than two years, but it’s been two years of big change in yours and your family relationships which has caused each of you deep challenges and pains.
I am happy that Colin and I met when neither of us were ‘looking for a partner or sex’ and so our relationship developed in a way which was not fuelled with passion and lust.
I have witnessed Colin in so many times of pain around the divorce and family issues. It took great courage for him to break his patterns of well over thirty years. From the stories I have heard, the marriage appears to have been filled with love along with abuse, control, reaction, rejection, separation and reconciliation often in the height of sex and passion rather than discussion, understanding and a commitment to change. Some of which you were protected from knowing or at least hearing his side of it. There were times in the past when he wanted to tell you things and the advice he was given was not to involve you as you were the children.
I heard the disappointment, upset and failure he felt when you left the boat in anger or frustration in March/April 2016 when he was seeking reconciliation and understanding. I felt his pain as he tried to meet with you and his grandchildren on the times he was in north London and your rejection of this. I felt and saw his joy and happiness as he showed me videos he had made for his grandchildren involving his tractor and the garden. I saw him photographing and heard him wishing that you were at the family friendly festivals we were at and how you would love them. I have seen him wanting to take care of you at times through the divorce and give you a freedom which he senses you don’t have. He often fantasises of your seedball business being based in one of the adjoining farm buildings and the children playing freely in the countryside with nature.
I see his pain at being deprived from ever seeing Chris’s children as well as his frustration with the way Chris has become the ‘middle man’ which may not be ‘his own man’ and his questioning of how this affects him.
I have heard the pain in the stories of his relationship with his wife who pushed him to his edges and yet he returned. I see his difficulty as he sees the divorce advice which Kerry has been given and has followed which has not necessarily been legally accurate or in her best interests.
I have witnessed him being truthful and honest on so many different occasions that I see that this is in his makeup, yet in the divorce, he has been treated in a way that questioned this in him and the pain that caused him.
I have seen his messiness at his home and his Mr. 100% on the boat which are such different characters. I have also experienced his craziness when under the influence of drink and cannabis and how his character changes at this time, as it does in us all. I hear how he often resorted to these as a coping mechanism and so living with that will have brought its own challenges for each of you.
I have also seen his commitment to change to make a new start in life. He gave up smoking tobacco after your visit in January 2016, saying that, he had his little girl back, maybe his grandchildren too, as well as a potential connection with me, so he had little excuse to continue. I heard how he changed his coping pattern after your meeting at the boat in March/April 2016 rather than go get drunk and maybe have sex, he cleaned up the boat. I have seen him doing his ‘term time’ alcohol free times when he gains greater control and clarity of his life. I have seen his commitment to getting fit and healthy. I see his playfulness and his adventure with growing and creating things, including making the house and garden his own and growing his cannabis which is a science in its own right. I see the lightness and opening in his body as his armour is being broken down by loving life as his own man, it’s long overdue.
I am challenged by his auto-responses to me in situations which are not relevant to how I am or endeavour to be in living my life with love, non- judgement and in truth as my goals yet I understand he had so many years of double guessing and trying to do the right thing, it is simply another pattern to change with time and understanding.
I have, in working with him to develop Havendock, being on the boat and more especially during the last few months as I dealt with a very unexpected health issue, experienced his caring, controlling, nurturing, supporting, trusting and ‘I’m right, do it my way’ of being, all of which I resonate with as I too have these qualities so you can imagine the sparks which sometimes fly.
It’s a gift he still has the support of his parents who are fit and healthy yet I sense a pain which they must feel as they live with a divided family.
It is beautiful to witness Colin as he opens up to reconnections from his past which he closed the doors to, endeavouring to please others.
I know that with each incident of non-communication or rejection with you he feels your pain. He feels that you had a tight bond where you could tell him anything and he misses that and he guesses you must too.
However, we are both aware that to cope, we create walls and defences. I really understand that on a very personal level as I chose in my thirties to distance myself completely from my father and his abusive relationship towards me. This caused my brother to distance himself from me as his loyalty was called to support his father. It caused my two sisters to each call on their stories of growing up, even though we have never shared these and to support me and so distance themselves from our father. So our family was fragmented. We lost our mother when I was 25 and my maternal grandmother shortly after this time so there was no family glue to endeavour to fix us. It was up to us as adults to tread our own path and it was after I divorced and was finding my own life again that I went to live in a yoga ashram. As my fiftieth birthday approached I realised for my own growth and fulfilment that I needed to find forgiveness towards my father and so eventually after fighting the idea, I began a process of communication. Initially, in writing via my brother who thankfully had not moved home, as I had no idea where my father lived but I had a knowing that unless I could meet them both the forgiveness was not there. Three years later when my brother was intensive care and on life support I knew that it was time for feeling and forgiving, not ego and so left my ashram life and I went to my brother’s bedside and stayed until he was out of hospital. A month later with my brother and aunt’s support, I undertook that meeting with my father. It was unannounced and for me an absolute disaster, as I was met with such anger, so I was landed with yet more pain and so I had another choice, continued distance or healing and forgiveness. That night after a long meditation I wrote once again, this time directly, being totally honest and open about the pain of the meeting and releasing our connection if that was to be his choice. This created more healing for us both as I received a reply. Eventually, with encouragement from a close friend, I overcame my ego and pain and made another visit this time alone and there was true reconciliation and I feel blessed that a few months later I was able to visit him once more, just two days before his death which although he was bedridden it was a beautiful experience where he really wanted to know me and my current life, twenty years on from our last real connection. I felt no need to attend his funeral as my healing felt complete and I am so grateful that I managed this. Yes I can say that I am sad that I missed out on twenty years of relating, support and connection because that is the fact. I’m now so aware that love was not present during this twenty years just numbness and closed down feelings. Even in the forgiveness love was distant, I just knew I needed to clear up some of the history, although we never discussed the abuse he put me through. Neither of my sisters found this path of forgiveness and I feel the regret that one feels and the anger the other still holds, she chose to deprive my father of any connection to her three children. It took a lot of courage, non-judgement, forgiveness and letting go of the old stories, I can’t say I felt love for myself or him during this time and I wish I did as it would have been even richer to have felt on that level. So of course my healing was not completed at that time, just simply the one level I could manage at that time, which was that of physically meeting, I have continued to work on the emotional and cellular issues of the wounds and who knows when those will be fully healed but I am engaged with the process and it is in that I can endeavour to be whole.
I am so grateful that Colin experienced Findhorn before I found it, so that he understands the mechanism of sharing and way of council. I travelled there a year or so after the healing with my father and chose to live there for almost five years, it was there that I really faced my emotional and cellular healing journey. It was here that I came head to head with my tendency to judge and so a journey of working with that began and it was full in my face in the relationship I began but eventually ended. Thankfully, we have remained friends as we saw through the process of sharing that we each needed the other as a teacher to learn from even in the pain we faced.
I feel very blessed to be in a mirror relationship with Colin, in a spiritual and love journey with him that allows us both to grow and soften our built up defences. He sees my walls and protection and challenges them and I see his and challenge those so together we can each break down to finding unconditional love, not the fuzzy infatuation thing but a much deeper, challenging type of connection where truth, non-judgement, honesty and sharing are the keys. Each of us is broken, imperfect and human in a repairing state towards enlightenment only a few become Buddha but each of us can have Buddha moments along the way. It’s a real gift when we meet someone who recognises this and does not try to fix but endeavours to mirror so that we can see ourselves more clearly and so we can change for our own good rather than to please another. Who allows us to be ourselves with all our imperfections and beauties and appreciates each as a gift of being and learning.
So Emily, now you now know a snippet of me and all I ask of you, is that you take time to sit in the silence of your own truth, without judgement and feel, do that again and again until you see through your walls of protection and so feel the love which exists between parent and child even though it may be hard love, hidden or rejected. From that place you will know what is best for you. You cannot know what is best for Colin, your children, your mother or brother as they each have their own journeys to undertake. However, I offer that I know life is richer with self love rather than in numbness, pain, anger or grief only then can you be love to others. Family is a minefield and it’s where we often cause the most pain as we have expectations which are not necessarily met.
I do not need your love or connection for myself, however, I know that until there is a healing between Colin and all his family members then pain will ensue and this pain will influence our life together as we live in truth.
I wish you well with whatever you choose to do with this, which has been passed on to you by Colin so that he is aware of what I am saying to you. I am happy to engage in dialogue with you by email or phone or to meet. I am also aware you may choose to do nothing with it, so be it. I simply sit in non-judgement, truth and trust. I look forward to the day, whenever that is, when we can all meet, so I can witness you both in a healing space.
With best wishes, love and light
Sheila
Today from my teacher: Sivananda's Message of the Day for Thursday, November 2, 2017
Cling not to your ego, your lower self and limited mundane life. Soar high into the highest realms of eternal bliss.
-- Sri Swami Sivananda
For my next post click here.
Thank you so much Sheila. It is a Blessing to be reminded that we are all broken. Peace to you for eternity.
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