The God Triton
As I am working with the Divine Masculine and Great Father archetypes of late, the concept of “Father” and what that means is very “up” for me. I am healing my own inner masculine, as my model is my internalized biological father, grandfathers, uncles, and other father figures, and they weren’t particularly healthy or nice.
I’ve really been asking myself what “Father” means. You know, I just can’t answer that question. I feel that I’ll know it when I see it, but I can’t say I’ve seen it in totality yet. Maybe it doesn’t exist.
I’ve seen glimpses of qualities in people (strangers and folks I know) that I would dearly love to have combined in a father figure, such as fierce protectiveness, providing for family, honor and respect, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual safety, the will and confidence to do positive things in the world, and a wise, learned perspective passed down with discernment and kindness. But my journey has not materialized that man in my life yet. So, like my ideal mother, I have been working to manifest him within myself.
What do we do when we don’t have a father? Statistics say that fatherless children are much more likely to act out in the world, flailing about to find the edge of the acceptable boundaries since they were not taught where the acceptable ones are. Father, or the masculine representative in the unit of father/mother, is a manifestation of individuation, correct and responsible behavior, how to be a contributing member of the physical world, in contrast to the feminine principle of connectivity, holding space for emotion, nurturing and caretaking. The masculine principle is the polar opposite of the feminine principle, and in an ideal situation both principles are actively working together as partners. Children who grow up without a healthy, functional father are sometimes the ones incarcerated in prisons, or more frequently failing as a mature, integrated and functional member of society.
Yes, we (hopefully) learn boundaries from our mother, too. Don’t touch the stove, it’s hot. Don’t run across the street, it’s dangerous. It’s safe to cry or be angry because I am holding the space for you to explore these natural human feelings and will guide you to feeling okay again.
But in the traditional model, the physical boundaries of how to operate in society are shown to us by our fathers, the men of the tribe. Our father actively shows us by his behavior what appropriate behavior in the functioning whole is. What if your very body, the only thing you truly claim as your own in this world and the vessel by which you navigate through the maze of larger society, becomes the fertile ground on which inappropriate behavior is taught?
My journey of 45 years has included 24 years of examination of these and other concepts as I have tried to understand what healthy parenting is. My own father is a man I have alternately idealized and wanted to kill with my bare hands since his sexual abuse came to my consciousness. How desperately I have clung to a picture of him as a good man who lost his way, or was victimized by the meanness and craziness of my mother and her family of origin. How much my inner daughter has wanted to make him the good guy.
I have come to a greater balance, I think, in which I can acknowledge the harmful, toxic behavior patterns with open eyes as well as see the positive things my father gave to me. It feels like the uncomfortable, correct placeholder in my psyche….to span the spectrum of the goodness and the badness that is my father, and claim it all.
The fact is that he has made choices over the years, just like we all do, and that some of those choices were extraordinarily hurtful. And that he remains a flawed human being (aren’t we all?)
But here is what makes the difference. Despite all of my forgiveness work and my own attempts to heal him by reaching out when I had done enough recovery work to feel I could be in the same room with him safely, to ask him repeatedly to go to therapy, to practice compassion for him as a man who was a boy that was probably abused himself, he does not want to heal himself. And despite my years of rage work, body reclamation, consciousness-raising, and learning about alcoholic families and the patterns, labels and roles we take on as their children, I cannot save him.
My father has not chosen to reach into his universal heart for the courage to make things right, with me or within himself. And it is here in this place of knowing things could be different, loving him from afar, and protecting myself from his illness that I remain standing, fatherless.
I wrote this piece in 1998 for a ceremonial circle in Asheville NC as a way to honor my father, while also speaking my truth. I read it to a rapt audience on a quiet Sunday morning, much like this one; many of them wept silently.
6-21-98 Father’s Day
I am going to introduce you to my father. His name is Tom. He was born in the Outer Banks village of Hatteras; it pokes about as far out into the ocean as North Carolina can reach.
His tales of his childhood took on a mythological quality which held all within hearing range spellbound. There was no paved road into Hatteras then; a remote fishing village was the seemingly perfect place for a boy to grow up. I imagine a freckled faced boy with Carolina blue eyes and big front teeth (like mine), golden salty sunlight in his hair as he ran the beaches, roamed the marshes gathering eels and frogs, rode his obstinate pony to the farthest reaches of the island at will. The stories about getting lost in the sound at dark in a rowboat, the sharks closing in. Being scared to walk the bog at night for fear of the dreaded “swampus”, a creature of untold menace and terror. My father was a boy once.
He spoke of a simple life; the priority was survival against the hurricanes, the sea and the isolation. He spoke of his mother as the rigid keeper of the household. “Take those greasy shoes off! No sand in my house! Your feet are black as tar!” He did not speak of his father that I can remember.
He was the local boy who left the flock. He met my mother one fateful summer night at a village dance. She was on vacation with her family; they were “city folk”, or “ferners” as grandmom called people who did not have the distinction of being sea worthy. My parents dated long distance for two years, then eloped when he was 19 years of age, much to the horror of both families. He dropped out of UNC Chapel Hill. I was born 10 months later.
I don’t know exactly what caused him to be “emotionally under”; probably a myriad of things. My personal experience of him was that there was a soft, vulnerable side that he covered, or surrounded with a rigid moral construct and stoicism. I have vivid impressions of the set of his jaw when he angered, or his clenched fist held up in front of him to signify that I was not to say another word. I think a part of me thought he would kill me, although I cannot remember him ever spanking me. As a teenager warring with my mother, I took any opportunity to bond with him. This typically took place after he had consumed several beers. He would talk and I would sit and listen. I can remember sitting out on the front porch one evening hearing the gruesome details of his sex life with my mother, whom he called “frigid”. I did not know then that my yearning for father became subsumed in his need for a confidant and mistress.
I confronted my father 8 years ago about the sexual abuse. I was so afraid that he would respond by saying that I was crazy or that I’d made it all up. Instead, he did not respond at all. He has not spoken to me for these 8 years. I have been many places about this loss; I was so angry for a long time that I didn’t care that we had no relationship. Other times I have wanted to cave in completely and say that I didn’t mean it, that it’s alright. It is just in the last year or two that I have considered him as a person, a little boy who grew up into a man who happened to become my father. I have started to notice the good things that I got from him. I don’t know where this will lead. But this feels like a more human place to be.
