I am writing this blog post today, as I am hoping I can articulate how I went from having hatred and resentment towards my dad, and not seeing him for years; to now letting it all completely go, healing from it and having him back in my life. I have another blog post on ‘Father’s Day’ which gives an additional insight into our relationship, but here is the background for you to understand our relationship and the process I went through to get to this point.
Here goes…
My parents separated when I was just a baby. My mum told me that he was an amazing stepdad to my older sister, and they had planned to have me, but as soon as I came along, everything changed. She attributed the change in his behaviour and him leaving to me being born, and in turn I grew up with this inherent belief that being born was a problem and that I wasn’t good enough. In a nutshell, he let her down a lot and he let me down a lot. You see, my dad had and still has an alcohol addiction.
I don’t remember much of my childhood due to the trauma I experienced (explained in the other blog), as my brain has done a very good job at suppressing it for me, but as I grew up, I watched my mum sit and cry. She would literally sit in the dark crying to Bonjovi, Bryan Adams and Meatloaf. She was just so depressed and sad. That is all I do remember. But with my lack of memories, my mum chose to fill in the blanks and told me all about the things he did to her, and how he let us down as a family. There are many examples I could give but I’ll only give a few to give you an idea. Once, he worked away in Germany, and he said he was going as the money was so good for us; but didn’t send us anything and we were left with nothing, not even money for gas and electric. He came back empty handed as he had spent it all on alcohol and women. When they separated, she struggled in every sense of the word but particularly financially. She had nothing but always made sure she looked after us the best she could. She saved for months to buy herself, my sister and I a bike each, and one day my dad asked if he could take us out on them. She agreed as she wanted us to see him, but instead of taking us on a bike ride, he took us to the pub and sold them. You can imagine over the years as I watch my mum as she sobs her heart out and tells me these things, why I then grow up with a lot of hatred and resentment towards him, backed by my own experience of not seeing him. I have hundreds of examples but obviously cannot detail them all, but hopefully you’ll get the gist. As I grew up there was a part of me that absolutely hated him for it, whilst simultaneously desperate to be loved by him too. We all have an innate desire to be loved, it’s just human nature,
Fast forward to me being in my teens, I would be around 15/16 and I used to get the bus and visit him and built my connection with him through drink. There was a huge part of me that was longing to be loved by him, and so I must have felt this was my way join him to artificially create a bond. However, outside of the alcohol fuelled experiences, there wasn’t really much else; but even during these experiences I remember being let down. On my 16th birthday he told me he had a card and money for me, and when I got to the house, he wasn’t there. I called him and he told me he was in the pub and that my card was on top of the fridge. When I grabbed it, the card was ripped open, and he had taken the money back out. Then later that evening when he got back and I was leaving, he walked me to the bus stop and when we got there, he asked me to borrow £20. He said he would give it back, but that he really needed it for some electric. He walked to the shop and said goodbye, and just as the bus was driving away, I saw him walk out of the shop with a crate of beer in his arms. I was so upset that he had just manipulated me and blatantly lied to me to get alcohol. I was 16 working in a café washing pots; that was like 5 hours of work for me. I kept this to myself for a long time and I of course never got it back, but I remembered thinking I will never be as important to you as drink.
No matter what it was, I just always felt let down and like he didn’t care. This feeling never left me; it was always with me. I used to see my friends with their dads, being so close and sitting on their knee and I used to stare in awe of them, wishing for something I knew I would never have. So many movies have depictions of amazing father bonds too which was something I desperately longed for, and it was constantly building on this mountain of feelings of not being loved.
Fast forward to being 17 and able to go into pubs, I would literally meet my dad and go get ridiculously drunk. I would pride myself on how much I could sup with him! Everyone would tell us how much we looked alike and how we were so alike (pissheads) and that really gave me a sense of connection to him. Everyone loved my dad too. He was a happy drunk; never nasty or fighting or anything like that. When I would go out with my friends drinking where he lived, and I would mention who my dad was, the reaction was always amazing to me. It was like he was a local celebrity and people would be tapping other people on the shoulder and telling them who I was. They would tell me they had heard so much about me and seen pictures, so this to me felt like validation – clearly he does love me even if it doesn’t feel like that sometimes. I kept going to visit him and we would always have a good laugh, and I enjoyed that I had some form of bond with him, even if it wasn’t the one I had always hoped for. It was better than nothing put it that way.
However, on my 21st birthday, I didn’t hear from him. You expect to hear from your parents before anyone else on your birthday, especially a significant milestone, but I didn’t get a text or a call. My partner had gone all out for me, his mum had spoilt me, my sister, my mum, my friends, everyone had made such an effort, but all I could think about was that my dad hadn’t even messaged me. All I could think about was that I was either that unimportant to him that he had forgotten me, or that he simply didn’t care. I had a good cry and did my best to go on with my day, but there was a feeling of sadness in the pit of my stomach which cast a dark cloud over my whole day. Even though everyone I cared about made so much effort, I couldn’t concentrate on that, it was like it didn’t matter to me as much. I was so desperate for my dad’s validation it was a joke! Later that evening, around 10pm, I received a Facebook post. It read, ‘Hap er birthday daught’. I literally burst into tears. This feeling of not being good enough was deeply embedded into me, and I felt like if my dad made an effort with me, I would finally feel like I was good enough, so when I got the most pathetic Facebook post it just reconfirmed to me I was nothing.
A few years later, my grandad passed away and my grandma was incredibly lonely. She raised me as a child instead of my dad, and I spent every other weekend with her. My mum couldn’t cope with how much my dad was letting me down, and so my grandma stepped up for me. My dad would see me at their house if he ever wanted to, but I never knew if I would see him or not. My grandma stopped telling me if he was coming, as he had a habit of saying he was and then not turning up. I spent countless times waiting for him outside, for him to never come. I absolutely adored my grandparents, and they really provided me with the certainty and safety I needed, which is why if you know me already, you will know how much I adore my grandma Nora, and why Evaila is named after her.
So, when my grandad passed away in 2016, I decided I would do for my gran what she had done for me; I would step up and be a constant for her. I would drive over and take her out on a weekend and my dad would come out with us too. It was mostly always pleasant, until I had too much to drink, and then I would start crying and kicking off at my dad for not being there for me. That was the issue I had with alcohol; everything would come out with a drink! However, most of the time it was lovely, it was only bad if I drank myself past the point of no return. But despite these drunken outbursts, we really had a great time together. He lived with my gran during that time, and he massively stepped up for her, whilst also suffering with the grief of losing his dad too. I really valued him for that. I would literally spend so many of my weekends with them and I felt like we formed a great bond during this time. I genuinely felt like I finally had a dad I could rely on.
November 2017, I found out I was pregnant. This was where everything changed.
The pregnancy was not planned, and I had no house and no savings. I was determined to save every single penny, and ensure I bought a home before the baby arrived, which is exactly what I did. However, at the time, I needed as much help as I could possibly get. My dad asked me what he could get for me. I needed everything, but I told him I needed to get her a cot. He told me to buy myself one on my credit card and that in January he would give me the money for it. Cast your mind back to my 16th birthday; my dad wasn’t exactly the most reliable person with money. I literally said to him “Dad, I can’t buy it on my credit card, it’s almost maxed out. I really cannot afford to do that if you don’t give it me back.”
He reassured me that in January, he would give me £500 and I could count on him. I ordered what I needed on my credit card, but I was reluctant to do so. I was just so worried he wouldn’t give it me; and guess what, he didn’t.
I didn’t see him for the duration of my pregnancy, as I wasn’t going out drinking. I started to realise that if I didn’t go to the pub, or drive over there, then we wouldn’t see each other. I started to feel this buried feeling of rejection all over again.
Fast forward to August 20th 2018, and my beautiful daughter Evaila Nora was born. When I made her announcement on my Facebook two days later, I got a Facebook comment on my wall from my dad that said ‘Congrags on the birth of Aviva, or whatever car insurance company you’ve named her after’. I was absolutely devastated and burst into tears. My family were telling me to not let it bother me, but it made me so angry as I knew he was obviously drunk and taking the piss out of my child’s name. It broke my heart. I had honestly convinced myself that we had built a proper father/daughter relationship, and I just knew in that moment that I had fooled myself.
He didn’t meet her until Boxing Day, and he only met her because I took her to visit my grandma and he was there. I was so upset that he didn’t make the effort to come see her when she was born. He lost his licence years ago through drink driving, but he could have got a taxi or asked someone to bring him. It was the lack of effort that hurt the most. I never got any messages to ask if we were doing ok, or to let me know he missed us or was proud of us. He once posted a ‘happy birthday’ status on his wall for my cousin but couldn’t even ask how his granddaughter was. It used to drive me insane, so I sent him a big message about how upset it made me that he never made any effort, and he read it and didn’t reply to me. In a nutshell, Evaila is now 5 and he has met her a handful of times and that is because I took her over to meet him. I truly believe he wouldn’t have met her at all in these 5 years if I didn’t do that.
At the end of 2019 I became a single mum, and as I have a counselling degree, I developed a great understanding of psychology. I knew that if I didn’t heal from my past, then I would just continue to meet the same demon in a different man. My ex was very similar to my dad. I understood why I was having the experiences that I was, but I didn’t know how to change it. I was obsessed with figuring out how to heal so that Evaila wouldn’t grow up to suffer the same fate as me. I was determined to break the cycle for her.
Very long story short, I had therapy with my wonderful friend Esther. She helped me significantly, and her guidance was the catalyst to my transformation. However, in November 2020 I found myself in a situation which caused me to pretty much have a breakdown. I had moved in with a family friend to get back on my feet after my separation, and he massively abused my trust and preyed on my vulnerability. He is currently on remand in prison and I will speak about this in detail when I can. But after this experience, I really struggled, and I had to take a deep dive into therapy and healing my heart. It unearthed so much anger, resentment, and hatred to so many people in my life who had let me down. I had no idea just how much my childhood had shaped me and how it was affecting my relationships and my life.
As I went through this journey, I shared it online. I shared everything very openly and I used my social media like my diary. I would literally come online on my Instagram story crying my eyes out, which became like therapy for me too. I definitely forgot that I had thousands of people watching me though and became so engrossed in how I was helping others, that I was blissfully unaware that my dad might see it. To be fair, he never interacted with me, so I genuinely didn’t even consider it, but I specifically shared how the relationship with my dad affected me, and one night I came to learn that he had blocked me on Facebook.
The next time I went to visit my grandma, I told her that he had blocked me, and she said that she knew and that my dad said his reason was that I never made the effort with him, and that I snubbed his Christmas gift for Evaila. Just to clarify, it was a kids ride along car, that had already been used and was outside in his garden. It definitely didn’t seem like a present specifically bought for her put it that way. He wasn’t even expecting us as I was visiting my grandma up the road and she made me call down, so the likelihood it was for her was very slim. He then told me to take it home with me, but I politely declined as she already had one and I was currently living in someone else’s house, and all of her toys were already taking up too much space. I told him it would be nice for her to have it at his house to play on when we visit. To me, this felt totally unfair to be defined as a snub, and I got really angry and said “it’s just his shitty excuse to deflect his shit behaviour onto me.” I couldn’t believe my grandma believed I would ever do that, which made me even more angry. I thought about it though, and trusted my intuition on it and knew I was blocked because of my vulnerability on social media about my childhood and not because of this used toy. I truly believe his coping mechanism in life is to lie, and he has lied for that long he genuinely believes his lies, and so reading my post felt like an attack on him, even though it was the truth. However he couldn’t say his reason for blocking me was that, as he can’t deny letting me down to my grandma, so made up the reason about the gift.
What happened next, is that I decided to accept the fact that I had been blocked and made a decision that I didn’t need him in my life either. After all, I would never see him if it was left down to him. I would never get so much as a message. I used to tell him that if he asked to see us, I would drive over, but I didn’t even get that! I also believed that he was the parent, and I was the child, and it was his duty to make the effort with me; if he cared enough to have a relationship with me, which he clearly didn’t, therefore he could politely, f**k off!
Two and a half years go by, and it gets to my 30TH birthday. I remember thinking, ‘I wonder if my dad will contact me, I wonder if this will be a good enough reason to reach out;’ but he didn’t. I could tell all this self-work I had been doing was paying off though, because it didn’t make me cry, it didn’t consume my day, and I let the thoughts of him come and go. By this point, I had stopped drinking for four months, so I believe that also helped with my mentality around it. Then one day, Evaila and I were doing our gratitude’s and talking about who we love and who loves us, and she named all her grandparents. She then said, “mummy, how come you don’t have a daddy?” I said, “I do have a daddy, I just don’t see him.” She looked puzzled and said, “does he know about me mummy, because maybe if he knows you have me, he will want to see us.” I told her that he knew about her and showed her some pictures of them both, but she didn’t remember. It honestly broke my heart. I kept thinking about the good times I had with him, and I knew he did care deep down. It was bothering me, and I thought to myself, I just know that if anything were to happen to him, I would regret not seeing him. But my mind was having a battle because I was stuck on the fact that he blocked me, and the belief that it was his responsibility to resolve it.
Fast forward to November 23rd, 2022, it was my dad’s birthday. After all the healing I had done, I had a completely new knowledge and understanding of human behaviour and realised that absolutely nothing in this life is personal. I decided to be the bigger person and send my grandma a message to tell her to wish him a happy birthday on my behalf. The funniest thing was, she posted on her own Facebook wall for everyone to see, saying, ‘JULIAN, HEIDI WISHES YOU A HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUT SHE CAN’T BECAUSE SHES BLOCKED, LOVE MUM.’ It absolutely cracked me up. But I felt proud that I had at least taken a step forward and had found peace in the situation.
The next time I went to see my grandma, she said my behaviour affected my dad and he was really upset with me. I sat for a moment and instead of being defensive like I previously would and thinking ‘my behaviour? How can he be the one that is upset with me? I have literally not done a thing wrong;’ I thought, ‘well, I am happy that he is expressing he’s upset about the fact we aren’t speaking, or whatever I have allegedly done.’ To me, that was better than him not caring about me at all. Then, whilst we were there, she facetimed my dad. She then put me in the camera view, and when he saw me, he looked happy and said, “why don’t you pop down.” He only lives just down the road from my grandma you see, so I agreed.
When I got to my dad’s, he was very drunk. The most drunk I think I have ever seen him. His partner immediately took Evaila’s hand and said, “let’s go to the shop.” I went to follow, and she said, “she’s ok with me you know, you need to speak to your dad!” I really wasn’t happy about that, but the shop was literally a few doors down, and I did think it was best we spoke whilst Evaila wasn’t there.
What happened next really shocked me. He couldn’t even get his words out for crying. He basically said that he had seen one of the social media posts I had shared about being let down as a child. He felt so hurt by it that he didn’t want to see my posts anymore. I knew my intuition was right! It was interesting that the truth hurt him though. This was absolute proof to me that he had convinced himself he had reasons for what he did and never thought to consider the effect on me. His thoughts were just about him and how he was feeling.
He really couldn’t get much out if I am honest, and as I say, he was very drunk. Evaila and his partner came back, and my dad went outside to play in the garden with her. His partner sat with me and basically said that it wasn’t her choice to block me, but that what I wrote online really hurt him. She tried to say he struggled seeing me as a child because of my mum cheating on him and that the only reason he didn’t see Evaila and I was because we didn’t visit them. She was quite aggressive in her approach and wasn’t willing to see my perspective. I know my dad lies, and believes his lies, so she was only going off the information she had, but she got quite nasty and I raised my voice. I asked her if she thought that with me having a newborn baby, I should be the one to drive over and make the effort, and she said “yes, absolutely!” To me, that was just ridiculous, and I can literally tell you now, prior to having my therapy I would have grabbed Evaila and walked out of there. But I realised that when you’re drunk, there’s no way you can have a rational mind, let alone see anyone else’s perspective, so I just let it go. Ultimately, people are entitled to believe what they want to believe. She is allowed to feel that way, and I don’t have to let it affect me. I have a choice.
Even though my dad was drunk, you could see how happy he was that we were there. It actually really upset me, and I knew in that moment that he just has problems, and my problems have come from my interpretation of his actions, due to those problems. I realised that there really are always two sides to a story and even if you think yours is the ‘correct’ one, they still have their version. I genuinely believed that I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I still don’t believe I did to be honest, but his interpretation of events was completely different to mine. It’s important to remember that our actions are driven from what we feel, or what we don’t want to feel, so our focus is on ourselves, not on what we inflict on others. What I realised was that in my entire lifetime, my dad had never changed, he had always remained the same. He had always been a drinker and he had always been inconsistent in my life. But, as I aged, I accepted his lifestyle in order to form a bond. I then spent about 9 years being perfectly content with our relationship revolving around drink. I would drive to see him, it was always me who made the effort, and I had always been ok with that. Never once in all the time of us growing closer did he come to see me off his own back; I always picked him up. Even in my entire childhood he didn’t come to see me, I only saw him if he was at my grandparents. So, his behaviour had genuinely remained the same. What I never grasped this entire time, was that our relationship changed, because I changed. I subconsciously expected him to change with me and had no conscious awareness that I was altering the dynamic we had, whilst not communicating that to him. I had Evaila and I had new priorities. It was no longer convenient for me to drive and collect him, and suddenly I expected him to make the effort. I expected him to not let me down. I expected his financial support that he had promised, and emotional support I believed I deserved, but where did this expectation come from? I had mistaken that duration of time as a healthy relationship, one that I thought was two sided, but never grasped that it was only one. I didn’t realise I was the only one maintaining it.
So, let’s just see this from my dad’s perspective – baring in mind he hasn’t said this, but I am wise enough to know. In his world, he believes he’s got this amazing bond with his daughter, where we spend a good amount of time together, she has seemingly let go of the past, and we always go out drinking together, laughing, and having a good time. Suddenly, she gets pregnant, stops talking to him, stops visiting him, and starts writing social media posts about things that happened 25 years ago which put him in a really bad light. It will have felt like a complete attack on him. In his world, he didn’t do anything different, but one day everything changed. So, when I said to his partner ‘what, and do you think I should have brought my newborn baby to see you’ and she said yes, I now understand why she said that and why they would believe that. I had always been ok with that dynamic and now suddenly I wasn’t. It was always me who initiated meeting before, and suddenly I stopped. So, if the relationship this entire time was maintained by me, why did I take that away from him? I genuinely didn’t realise my expectations had changed. But when I reflect now, I can see what his perspective must be. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but I don’t believe it needs to be about who is right. In my eyes, it’s about understanding that no experience will ever be viewed the same. It is about seeing the dynamic for what it is, and not what you want it to be. Some people might think ‘yes but he should make the effort’ and maybe so, but he has never emotionally been what I needed and wanted him to be, so why would he suddenly change now.
Now, if you have a toxic relationship with a family member, and it is nothing but unpleasant when you see them, then I am not encouraging you to put up with it. I just wanted to give my perspective on my experience and share it because you never know who I might be able to help by doing so. For me, the relationship was completely one sided, but it was pleasant whilst there. I would never put myself in a situation where myself or Evaila were negatively impacted just because they were family. Boundaries are good and they are necessary. This relationship going forward would be rebuilt with new foundations, and that was a choice I was happy to make.
I had a realisation that I was never going to have an equal and healthy relationship with him and I was never going to be my dad’s priority. I would always be second to alcohol, but that wasn’t personal to me. That was because of his illness, and his inability to put that before anyone else. So, I had a choice. Do I not see my dad ever again because of my inability to accept him for who he is, or, do I make the effort again knowing that it’s the only option to have a relationship?
I chose the second option. I know that if he were to pass away, I would forever regret not having the relationship that he was capable of giving.
The biggest thing that I have learned during my therapy journey and through Esther is that literally nothing is personal. I know I’ve said it already, but I want to reiterate it. Even if it is physically directed at you, it still isn’t. Anything anyone does is a representation about how they feel inside. Even people who do selfless acts, are doing it because it makes them feel good. I help people all the time because it makes me feel good! We are all selfish even if we don’t realise it and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The reason I was a people pleaser before and I would do anything for others is because I was desperate to be accepted; again, making myself feel better. It took me a fair amount of time to truly grasp this, but once I did, it completely changed my life. So, in the case of my dad, not seeing me wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough like I thought. It was because drinking and doing what he was doing was his attempt at feeling good and escaping whatever it was he needed to escape from. It had nothing to do with whether I was worthy of his love, it was that he was incapable of giving it. I am not saying it’s ok, but I am saying I have accepted it. You can let go of so much pain through merely accepting.
One of the most incredible things for you to grasp that will help you on your life journey is this: we all age physically, but developmentally and emotionally we don’t. Ageing happens automatically with no thought, but the rest doesn’t. Unfortunately, most of us don’t know that there’s a difference and that it is separate. We expect people to somehow get better as they get older, but unless they know how, or seek help, they won’t. Many of us decide to be the exact oppositive of our parents, and so we think that if we are capable of better, then they should be too, but I promise you, if you do not have the parent you longed for, they most likely didn’t have the childhood they needed either. We are living in a world of children walking around in adult bodies. I no longer hold onto any sort of resentment, grudge, or negative feeling towards my dad. I have managed to let the vision of who I wanted him to be go, and instead embrace him for who he is. I believe in life, so many of our problems stem from longing for something that was/is never going to happen, instead of just accepting it. Without sounding patronising, I feel like I am much older than him emotionally, and so I see him like a child and nothing he does bothers me anymore. I just wonder what happened in his life for him to be escaping it for so long. I no longer wish to have more from him than he can give, and I am truly content knowing that my self-worth doesn’t derive from his love or from someone else, it is entirely down to me.
There are a whole host of things you can do to help yourself, including tapping which I speak a lot about. Esther and I are in the middle of creating affordable and accessible guided therapy, where you do not have to open up to anyone about your past or how you are feeling currently. You can do it the comfort of your own home, in your own time, when you are ready. We think it will be transformational for the world, and I know it will, because I had it and I am a completely different person now. I am truly happy. I am so passionate about the world healing its heart, and I do believe sometimes just having a new perspective can create a shift for you.
Thank you for taking your time to read this. Hopefully you got something from it, and I want you to know you are good enough, you are loveable, and you always have been. No matter who you are, I love you. You are so worthy.
All my love, Heidi.
