So it’s Father’s day today, and my daughter is with her wonderful father Billy, having some quality time together as they always do. I thought with my free time today, instead of aimlessly scrolling social media, I would instead write a blog post and get my thoughts out as to why Evaila having an amazing bond with her father is so important to me; and why it should be important for you too.
If your child’s other parent is absent for any reason, it still might be valuable to look at your own parenting, and/or look at your own childhood.
When I was growing up I never really saw my father, I instead went to see my grandparents on the weekends. It was then his choice to visit me there if he wanted to. My earliest memories I recall waiting at the door, or looking out of the window for him once they told me he was coming. When ever he did show up, he was always drinking, and I remember feeling a little shy but he did show me love when in my presence. He is a very funny, witty, and actually a brilliant person. The loveable rogue that you can’t help but just like. Unfortunately he has an illness and addiction is something that got the better of him. More often than not, he just never showed up, so it got to the point where my grandparents just stopped telling me whether he was coming or not and if he did show up it was a bonus. This caused me to have an ambivalent (anxious) attachment style.
Research attachment styles if you would like to understand yourself a bit more. This was the biggest lightbulb moment of my whole life reading ambivalently attached children. It explained me to a T! It was actually this very moment I became obsessed with psychology because I realised my life was textbook obvious! If it could be explained, I knew it could be changed, and in that moment I had hope.
Anyway, my mum bless her, absolutely idolised my dad, but he just ripped her heart into shreds. She knew he was cheating on her and letting us all down, but no way would she ever leave him. He actually did some despicable things, but she was just so desperate for him to love her more that she stayed in the hopes he would change. She married him and planned me with every intention of being with him for the rest of her life. They only separated because he left her, and when he left she begged and pleaded for him to stay. I am actually grateful that my dad did the right thing and left. He told her that he had to because he knew he wouldn’t stop hurting her. Staying with someone that you do not want to be with for the sake of the child/children is NOT the right thing to do. You’re also not IN love with someone you’re cheating on, so set them free to find someone who will.
What proceeded to happen over the years, was that my mum grew so much resentment towards him, it turned into hate. She was able to accept they weren’t together but she just couldn’t accept that he didn’t care to see me and would constantly let me down. She once told me that he called me and said he was coming to get me, and so I packed my little rucksack and sat waiting on our swinging bench for him to come. She kept coming outside asking me to come back in, as it was hours past the time he was due, but I refused because, “daddy told said he was coming”. It was experiences like that which made her hate him. She could deal with her own pain, but seeing her child in pain was way worse for her.
As a mother myself, I genuinely can’t even imagine how painful that must have been for her to repeatedly experience. I understand that she just couldn’t keep her pain held in, so I do not have any resentment with my mum for vocalising her pain, but as an adult now, I wish she didn’t vocalise it to me; a child. I am understanding in adulthood now the unnecessary damage it did and hope to maybe prevent it for others. But I do want to point out here, that my mum did the absolute best she could, and she had no idea it was going to affect me the way it did, which I assume most people who do this; don’t.
The man my mum proceeded to marry after my dad was much, much worse than him. She endured so much trauma, and as a result my sister and I did too. As young children, we just wanted to protect her from ever experiencing any more pain than necessary, so we always hid our childhood fights from her and never vocalised our own struggles or upsets. She used to tell everyone her kids were amazing, they never fight or argue, but it was just all behind closed doors as we couldn’t bare to give her anymore grief. Can you imagine 5/6 year old children not even bickering and doing it all quietly so they don’t upset their mum? Its unfathomable what was going through our little minds to do that at such a young age.
Anyway, if I was ever upset, in any way at all, I kept it to myself. I sprained my foot and broke my toe and at 10 years old never said a word and suffered in silence over it. My foot still hurts to this day and people point it out when they see it, because it healed wrong and literally sticks out of place. I never told her because I was programmed to believe it would break her heart and so I didn’t want to be the burden of any more pain. My sister and I grew up very quickly because of what we witnessed and I believe that this is why my mum felt comfortable to tell me what happened between her and my dad. We were 7 and 10 year old mini adults.
As I got a little older and appeared to understand, she outpoured all of her pain onto me, and I was repeatedly told what my dad did to her. Literally, I could recite every story word for word. So I went from watching her sadness, to being told all about it, and as a result, I grew up with so much hatred and resentment towards him too.
The issue here is, that wasn’t my pain to carry.
An adult may be able to comprehend it if they asked, but not a child. They shouldn’t ever even have to.
The story I was told is that my dad was an amazing step father to my sister Danielle, but that as soon as she had me everything went wrong and their marriage broke down. It was as though the cement of the marriage and baby did something to his subconscious and he had to abort. But what this did to me, is I grew up believing that I was the reason for this and that it was my fault my mum was in this pain and why my dad left. Him not showing up and consistently letting me down was just confirmation of this. I felt he didn’t love me, and that made him not love my mum and sister anymore either. It is no surprise that I was so desperate to be liked and accepted as I grew up. If simply having me made him leave, then I am the problem; therefore I will desperately attempt to please anyone I come into contact with. I don’t want to be the problem for anyone else, therefore I will be so well behaved and kind to anyone no matter what. One of the most important needs a human can have is the need for certainty, and so people pleasing was my way of creating this for myself. If you agree with everyone, you’re well behaved, people will like you right?
I didn’t actually know that my subconscious belief was that I wasn’t good enough and unlovable, but it was evident in how I showed up as a person and the relationships I chose.
All of my relationships resembled my upbringing in a number of different ways. For example, I became a co-dependent in two of my major relationships, and have had an undeniable need to desperately help people, feeling like it was my responsibility to do so. Co-dependency is very typical and almost a given if you grew up with a parent who was an alcoholic, because the pattern of neglecting your own needs for the needs of another is so familiar.
I became an empath from my experiences and couldn’t bear to see anyone in pain. I never wanted anyone to have a negative emotion towards me either, which is why I was such a people pleaser and suffered so badly with anxiety. I had such a desperate need to have acceptance, that I never felt comfortable saying no, disagreeing, or arguing with someone even if they were the ones that hurt me. I literally had zero boundaries or self esteem because my desire to be liked and accepted was way more important to me. You could literally control me, be nasty to me, bully me and say ‘right that’s it we can be friends now’ and I’d be ok with it. It would all be brushed under the carpet. That is a key point to note here but too much for this already long post! However, this is what caused such issues in my adult relationships because I felt it was an impossible task to do what was right for me, especially if it meant leaving someone else hurt. I couldn’t bear to see anyone upset, let alone be the reason for it. So I stayed in relationships I desperately didn’t want to because I cared way more about how they felt than I did. A direct result of my childhood and how I learned to behave growing up, and it is through understanding my childhood that all of this made perfect sense.
When I was 19 I went to University to study Counselling. Like I said, I had this ridiculous need to help others and so I felt that was a fitting career, but what I found whilst there was that I was the one who needed to be counselled. Once I delved into psychology and could see the clear casual links between my childhood, my actions, emotions and my relationships, I became obsessed with studying it. However, understanding my beliefs and how I formed them was the easy bit. I could make sense of why I was attracting the people that I did, but I had zero clue how to change it. It was only after having Evaila that I truly understood and implemented a change and that is why I have a great relationship with her father, because I sought therapy and I now know that he never meant to hurt me and actually it was our programmes that brought us together.
The reason I am explaining all of this, is because it is our subconscious mind which forms the basis of who we are and it controls 95% of what we do. It is created between the ages of 0-7 years old and this is why it is so incredibly important to be consciously aware of what your child’s subconscious is being subjected to. Everything they experience during this time is creating the foundations of their adult life.
The subconscious mind absorbs EVERYTHING. Understanding this should help you understand your adult life and the relationships within it. It was in doing so that I was able to separate myself from my experiences, knowing that it actually had nothing to do with me being good enough or not, and everything to do with what I witnessed growing up. As I said, it is formed in the first seven years of your life and comes from everything you experience within that time. So, imagine your child has a camera on their head filming everything that goes on around them, even if they’re not subjected to it directly (e.g. they’re upstairs but can still hear what is going on). This seven year long film is then the basis of all their future relationships. Therefore, you absolutely have to become aware of what you’re feeding their mind. In my experience, I felt unloveable and therefore had relationships where I never felt like I was enough. These relationships confirmed my belief system that was created as a child. I can guarantee you now, that if you go from relationship to relationship and it always ends the same way, or you’re in a relationship now you’re deeply unhappy in, it is simply your programme confirming your belief. Dig deep my friend because somewhere along the line you believed you weren’t enough and your relationships are simply a reflection of this.
We didn’t have technology when I was a child, but my mum was so depressed that she wasn’t actually ‘present’. Because she was so distracted in her own mind she would get snappy when we would ask her something. I can safely say, with technology now, there will be an entire generation of children who will grow up to feel like they’re not enough. When they want to show you that little jump and spin, but you want to watch Tiktok or scroll on Instagram, or they just want your attention and you end up snapping, over time they will feel like they’re not enough and that you prioritised something else over them. It will be the start of low self-esteem. Over time they’ll lose the confidence to say ‘watch me’ because they are learning that you don’t want to watch. Celebrate every single scribble and jump and spin because I promise they will form a stronger self-belief system in doing so.
I was doing this, being on my phone too much. Which is why now on a Wednesday Evaila and I have a full day of playing and when she is with me on other days I try to be as present as possible. I run a business via my phone, but it is just about taking small conscious steps and knowing that your child will be an adult before you know it, and they wouldn’t seem as annoying or whiny, if they were being played with and didn’t feel second best to technology. Guaranteed if Evaila is snappy with me it’s because she’s probably had to say mummy quite a few times and I haven’t responded to her. When we just play, there is barely no falling out. Unless playing snakes and ladders and she lands on a snake. Boy is that kid a sore loser haha.
I am never going to be perfect but I will always learn and do my best. Isn’t that good to do? To continue to learn and know you can adapt and change. Saying ‘that’s just how I am’ is toxic and wrong. It’s how you’ve been and you can change it. It is being able to look at myself and acknowledge where I have made mistakes, that I am able to become a better parent and person.
To reiterate then, in this seven year time frame particularly, we have to protect our children from anything we wouldn’t them to experience in their adult lives. This is literally the basis of our programming and so we have to make it as secure as we can. Now I fully understand some parents have no control over the other parent letting the child down, but you do have control over how you handle it. You have a vital part of the programming, and so it needs to be as stable and loving as possible. Which is exactly why I will always celebrate Billy being an amazing dad and never tarnish Evaila’s view of him. My experience is completely separate and will always remain that way. Plus, I fully do not care anymore. At one point I wanted to shave his hair and eyebrows and Chinese burn the fucker. But I am truly over it now. Haaaa, I make myself laugh.
Finishing up then, when you’re a child and a parent leaves or seemingly doesn’t care about you, the way a child makes sense of it is that they’re to blame and must be doing something wrong. We then crave for someone to love us like we wished we had been, but instead seek out relationships that mimic the ones we had in our childhood. Like I said, I can guarantee you that if your relationships are failing or you’re deeply unhappy, there will be a direct link to your childhood. Not necessarily a parent, it could be secondary socialisation, i.e. school, but more often than not, it comes from the family of origin.
I feel like I could talk for days about my own experience and how it shaped me but that isn’t what I wanted to get across today. What I wanted to highlight, was that whatever happened during my relationship with Evaila’s dad, has absolutely nothing to do with Evaila. As far as I am concerned she doesn’t ever need to know, it is our business and it doesn’t even matter anymore, so why should it matter in her later life. The one thing that does matter is that we both love her. Out of the blue the other day she said “my daddy loves me” and it literally made me cry. She has such secure loving relationships with both of us separately. Had we stayed together and argued and shouted around her, her little brain would be soaking it all in and she would have that within her programming and go on to create it in her adult life, and that’s something I wasn’t willing to allow.
I let go of any anger and resentment when I understood that if I didn’t, and I didn’t do the work on myself, I would just meet the same demon in another man and Evaila would be witness to damaging relationships regardless. The sad thing is, most people have absolutely no idea about psychology and subconscious programming and so they don’t even know that they can create a change, or know the damage they’re causing staying in these kind of relationships, or telling the children unnecessary information about them.
Usually parents slate the other parent to the child because they feel safe to do so. Speaking bad of the other parent with your child is honestly the most harmful thing you can do to them. It has absolutely nothing to do with them. You chose their mother/father. They had no control over it, therefore they shouldn’t be involved in any of the negative consequences of the relationship breakdown either. You should never speak bad of the other parent. The child then feels obliged to act as though they don’t really like them either to please you. They then learn to lie and deceive and not honour their own feelings because you haven’t allowed them to do so. If the other party is unstable, and it is better protection for them to remove them from your child’s life completely, then do what you have to do, but in the process of it all, keep the information to your child at the bare minimum. Allow the child to understand that the other parent has issues and it has absolutely nothing to do with them. If you feel so let down and hurt by the other parent because they have cheated or left you etc, not allowing them to see their child out of spite, is the most selfish and harmful thing you can do to your child. But I guess those that do that, just want to hurt the other person and don’t actually understand the harm they’re causing their child in the process. I do not judge these people, rather wish they had this understanding. I guess this is why I am so passionate about sharing my experiences to help spark something within another person. I can guarantee you will be able to link every negative relationship back to someone/something in your childhood. It might just be a process of digging deep enough of seeking the help of a therapist to help you do so.
I was always going to have my experience and feel rejected from my father, but I did not need to know the details of everything he did in which I didn’t have my own memory of. All I witnessed growing up was my mum crying, which resulted in me never speaking about how I felt because I never wanted to see my mum sad. This then transcended across all of my relationships, even friendships. I literally didn’t have a voice. I always put myself last and cared about others before myself, and that is what made me so anxious, I just didn’t have an understanding at the time as to why I was doing that. It is now absolutely crystal clear to me and the anxiety was because I was never living in my truth, always living in fear, and agreeing with things I didn’t agree with, just to try and keep the peace.
My aim of this post is to help even just one person understand that each and every person is a product of their childhood. Therefore the childhood your child is experiencing right now, is shaping their life. Ensure they know they’re loved. Make sure they are not around shouting or fighting, and never speak to them like they’re your personal therapist. Never ever speak bad of their other parent to them. Most of all, be present. Whenever your child takes a liking to another adult, guaranteed their reason is because ‘they play with me’. Take the time to play with your kids. Really play.
I grew up hating my dad, whilst secretly absolutely desperate for him to love me, and that is exactly what I had in my last relationship. I no longer hate my dad, and I hold no resentment to anyone else at all actually. I see everyone as a hurt child who is doing what they can with their programming. They’re thinking about themselves not you, and so I do not take anything personal. This is the hardest thing to grasp, but when you do it is so freeing. You physically cannot find your self-worth in another person. You have to seek that for yourself and realise it has absolutely nothing to do with another human and how much you can make them love you; absolutely nothing at all. Their lack of love has nothing to do with how loveable or worthy you are. If that is what you’re experiencing it is because you already have a belief you’re not good enough and your subconscious has sought out a relationship to confirm this to you.
So with this in mind, think about the programming you’re giving your child. Do they feel loved? Are they secure? Do you give them space to feel their emotions and not disregard them? Billy tells Evaila he loves her multiple times a day. I know this because she tells me and I do the same. She is two years old and she knows wholeheartedly how much she is loved. She will never have to question that, and we have done the best we can to ensure she grows up seeking out stable and loving relationships. So that is why it is so important to me. Her two primary caregivers give her as much love and comfort as we can, and she will never have to question that. We have responsibility over her future relationships, and that is why I am so grateful she has so much love from her dad. We will never be able to protect her from everything, but I know I am doing my best with the information I have been taught, and that is why I feel compelled to share it with others.
When we love ourselves enough, we stop chasing people who don’t. That is why it is so important to me that Evaila has the best daddy.
Happy Fathers day!
