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Healing the Father Wound: A 40 Year Journey

By Jed Diamond

Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for more than 40 years. He is the author of 10 books, including MenAlive: Stop Killer Stress with Simple Energy Healing Tools, Surviving Male Menopause, and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome. I offer counseling to men, women, and couples in his office in California or by phone with people throughout the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on Mens Health and a free subscription to my e-newsletter go to http://facebook.com/menalivenow. If you enjoy my articles, please subscribe. I write to everyone who joins my tribe of followers.

Many of us have been wounded by our fathers. For some we experienced abuse growing up. For others we dealt with neglect. For most of us, our fathers were absent physically or emotionally more than we would have liked. Many of our fathers died too soon. The first wound occurred for me when I was five years old. My father, a writer like me, was having great difficulty making a living during tough economic times. He wrote in his journal: Your flesh crawls, your scalp wrinkles when you look around and see good writers, established writers with credits a block long, unable to sell, unable to find work. Yes, its enough to make anyone blanch, turn pale and sicken. Yes, on a Sunday morning in early November, my hope and my life stream are both running desperately low, so low, so stagnant, that I hold my breath in fear, believing that the dark, blank curtain was about to descend. Four days after that journal entry, he tried to commit suicide. The first wound occurred when I learned hed wanted to die. Why doesnt he love me? I thought. Why does he want to get away from me? I didnt understand. He was 42 years old and I was 5. The wounds didnt end there.

Camarillo State Hospital My uncle Harry visited my father every Sunday and it was my job to accompany him. It was a two hour drive from our house in Los Angeles to the hospital outside of Oxnard. I knew we were getting close when we drove between a huge stand of eucalyptus trees that lined the road. The closer we got the more terrified I became. I wanted to see my father, but the other inmates were strange, sitting alone rocking or talking to themselves. Remember this was 1948 and a mental hospital wasnt a great place to be. I did my best to cheer my father up, but he was usually quiet, and interacted very little with me. Driving back my Uncle would tell me how glad my father was to see me and how much I helped him by being there. I hated going, but even then I was a good little boy and thought it was duty to be strong and do what I was told. I went to Camarillo every weekend for a year until it became evident that my father didnt know who I was. Hed look right through me and my Uncle would have to remind him that I was his son. I finally was allowed to stop going and I felt I was given a reprieve from the weekly wounding. Hell Never Leave. Hell Die Here The doctors told my mother that hed never leave the hospital. His mental illness hadnt improved and she could accept the fact that he needed to be taken care of the rest of his life. I started having nightmares about going crazy and being locked up for the rest of my life with my father. I didnt tell anyone about the horrible dreams. In school, particularly around holidays, like Fathers day, other kids would ask about my father. At first I would tell them he was in the hospital. But I was stymied when they wanted to know when he was getting out. I finally told them he was in a mental hospital and I didnt know when he was getting out. I felt very ashamed to have a crazy father and the kids taunted me endlessly. When I changed schools in the third grade, I told anyone who asked that my father is dead.

But he wasnt dead and we got a call from my Uncle one night telling us that my father had escaped from the hospital and police were out looking for him. My mother was terrified that he was coming to get me and so she sent me to live with neighbors. I lived there for a couple of weeks. And one day there was a knock on the door. It was my father. I hid under the bed and he finally went away. I knew he was out there somewhere and my mother continued to tell me to be careful. Theres no telling what your father might do. But he didnt do anything. He disappeared. We never heard from him and gradually I concluded that he probably was dead. A Ghost Attends My College Graduation I graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara and had been accepted to U.C. San Francisco Medical School in the fall. I felt on top of the world. As I walked across the stage to shake hands and get my diploma, my hand turned to ice. I saw someone in the audience that reminded me of my father. It was a momentary glance and then he turned away. I was shaken to my core, but I didnt tell anyone. A day later I got a letter in the mail from my uncle. He said he had run into my father by accident in Los Angeles and had given him the information about my college graduation. He seemed OK, my uncle wrote, and he said he wanted to see you. He also left his contact information in Los Angeles. He goes under the name of Tom Roberts gave me a number where you can reach him. After I returned home for the summer, I called him at the number I had been given and we set up a meeting. I had a jumbled mixture of feelings. I longed for the father I had never known. I was afraid of his craziness. I felt I should help him. The first meeting went pretty well. He told me that he was a street puppeteer and I saw how much joy he brought putting his shows on around his neighborhood in Ocean Beach. But he still had an edge of anger, weirdness, and unpredictability. I visited a number of times, but by the end of the summer he seemed to be becoming more and more agitated. I didnt know what to make of him and Im sure, unconsciously, I was going to medical school to find out what was wrong with him and how he could be fixed. I had planned a trip to Mexico before I

began Medical School in the fall and my father suggested we spend a few days in San Diego before I took the bus on to Mexico City. Our time started off OK. He showed me parts of San Diego he liked, bought me a book of letters from Theo Van Gogh to his brother Vincent, and we went out for our last dinner before my planned departure in the morning. But when I got ready to go the next day, he became extremely agitated and angry and forbade me to leave. Youre my son and you have to stay and take care of your father. I was dumb struck. I couldnt believe what he was telling me. As I boarded the bus he screamed after me, Youll never be a good doctor, if you cant even take care of your own father. Brief Encounters of the Wounding Kind I headed for Mexico, badly shaken, but glad to get away from this crazy man. I wondered where the gentle, supportive father I was dreaming of having had gone. I had a great summer and started Medical School in the fall at U.C. San Francisco. I lasted less than a semester. I dropped out and enrolled at U.C. Berkeley in the school of Social Welfare. I took many years to deal with the curse hurled at me by my father. It took even longer to realize that he was probably right. Medicine wasnt for me, but not because I wouldnt take care of my father, but because I had to learn about taking care of myself. He and I ran into each other unexpectedly four more times over the next fifteen years. Each time wed spend a few days together and I thought maybe we would be able to have a real adult-to-adult, father-and-son, relationship. But each time it would end the same way. He would make some demand that I wouldnt meet and he would scream at me, Youre no son of mine. I disown you. Get out of my sight. I had armored myself to the blows and they didnt hurt as much, but they still struck home. The Last Wound and the Courage to Heal I hadnt seen nor heard from him in over five years. When my first book, Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man, came out, it developed a wide-spread readership. I wrote about my father, his inner demons, and our wounding relationship. I got an email out of the blue: I read your book and was very touched by what you said

about your father and your relationship with him. I work at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco and Im a nurse on the ward where your father lives. I think hed like to make contact with you. I wrote back and said, I wasnt so sure, given our history. But I wrote a letter to my father. For the first time I told him the truth and didnt hold back my feelings: Dear Dad, I just learned that you are in the hospital and Id like to come visit you. But things have to change. Im tired of being blamed for your pain and Im through with your angry outbursts when I dont do what you want me to do. It was you who left me, remember? I was five yours old. All Ive ever done was to try to love you and all youve ever done is reject me over and over. You are my father, but this is the last time Im reaching out to you. Im the only one in the family who makes any attempt to get through to you. If you keep acting like this, youre going to end up a lonely old man. Im through. Its up to you. I figured that would be the end of things for us. At least I could say I had done my best to connect with my father. But Id done what I could do. I was totally surprised when I got a letter back and even more surprised with what it said.

Dear Jed, No one has ever talked to me like that in my life. And youre right. I have blamed you, the family, everyone for my own unhappiness. And I dont want to do that anymore. I do want to see you and I promise to you that I will treat you well. Please give me another chance. The End and the Beginning I did go and see him and he did treat me well. The only exceptions were letters I would get which were written at 4 AM (hed always but on the date and the time). He was depressed and would chastise me for having plenty of time to travel all over the world, but didnt seem to have much time for your Dad. I didnt

get many of those. And theyd usually be followed by a much more positive letter written in the light of day. As a mid-life man I now understood something about the weariness, depression, and sadness that can hit us when were awake into the wee hours of the morning. We spent 10 years together until he died at 89. He met my wife and children and put on puppet shows for them. He even came to a family reunion was able to heal a lot of wounds with his brothers and sisters. I would visit him at his little apartment in the Tenderloin District. I still remember our last walk together. The new San Francisco library had just opened and he wanted to leave a flower on the steps to thank all those who had helped bring the library into being. It was a long walk and we took it one slow step at a time. He laid his flower on the steps and we sat on a bench to rest. Finally, he looked me in the eye, gave me a slow smile, and told me Its time to go home. A week later he died. At a gathering of friends and family I told the assembled group: By the standards of society, my father was not a success. He didnt make a lot of money. He was labeled as mentally ill. He liked to live among people that society pretends do not exist. Someone read one of his last poems, Because of you, said one, old madness has become new meaning. Because of you, my tongue is no longer lead. Happy Fathers Day. May all our souls heal from our father wounds. Its never too late.

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