Daddy, Where Are You?

Living in a home run by a single mother is no easy task, yet we do the best we can with what we have. If you were raised in a fatherless home, it’s easy to fall into your statistical inheritance. Chances are, if you were raised without a dad, you’re more likely to drop out of school, have emotional problems, run away from home, and have a criminal background; three to five times more likely than your peers.

In fact, being raised by your mother only may prevent you from growing into adulthood at all as you are five times more likely to commit suicide before you turn 21.

Times have changed. Back in the day, families staying together was a matter of survival. In modern society, much less importance is placed on the family as it is easier to walk away with few consequences if any, though mothers are more empowered to leave relationships that could be potentially abusive or dangerous.

More and more the growing number of us are being raised by single moms.

As children who were raised by a mother-only household, as adults, you’re more likely to be financially disadvantaged, have poor educational and social skills, be prone to alcoholism, illicit drug use, and continued trouble with the law.

In adult prisons, 39% of men and 42% of women were raised in homes without a dad.
Moms, thank you so much for what you did for us. We know you sacrificed and did the best you could, and we love you immensely for it, even if things didn’t turn out the way you hoped or had planned. We honor you and hope that our lives will reflect our gratitude for the life you gave us.

Not having a positive father figure can leave a hole inside you that if left empty will leave you longing for something… a loving father… or something else to fill the void.

The good news is that you do not have to let yourself become a statistic. At any time in your life, you can make a choice to carve out a life for yourself independent from what society may expect from you, as many others have.

I am one of those statistic-breaking individuals. Of course, I didn’t do it alone. Everyone makes their own way through life in their own way, and though others may have broken through the confines of societal expectation in ways similar to the way I did, everyone’s story is very unique.

For me, I discovered sanity and solace in God in my senior year of high school. I became so enthralled with the idea that I threw myself into religious activities full-heartedly. Billy Graham told me that I was blessed to not have a father because it allowed me to have a direct connection with God, without having to submit to my father.

I took his words to heart. I studied, engaged in the ministry, turned 18, married, and started a family.

After a while, even though we worked together in ministry, our marriage ended, and I started to notice things in organized religion were not as they seemed. My heart broke in many ways, but continued my ministry outside of strict religious confines, in the form of coaching, counseling, and consulting, which allowed my effectiveness in the world to grow.

Along the way, I felt like I made the best decisions to support my ex-wife and children at every opportunity with varying results, confident about my vision for long-term effects.

I also dabbled in musicianship, teaching, mentoring, entrepreneurialism, law enforcement, absorbed a myriad of helping and healing modalities to benefit my clients as well as myself and continued my personal exploration, expansion, and evolution.

At times, I thought the whole world was chaotic and crumbling all around me, but as I persisted to grow and be open to emerging awareness as I was able to perceive them beyond the veil of what would be considered widely held beliefs, I would experience a personal growth spurt.

It wasn’t long, and I noticed other people who were also going through a process of awakening.

While it sounds like a great idea, in the beginning, it is a difficult path to choose for one’s self, because this endeavor is not an easy path to pursue. It’s much easier just blindly going through life comfortably numb, that to face the challenges that lay ahead for awakening expansion explorers.

For me, it meant being in the world but not of the world. Being open to all the possibilities, ever consciously aware of my friends, relatives, and clients (or anyone, for that matter) to be wherever they were on their own individual journeys, regardless of whatever I, or anyone else, might think.

I could be fully empathetic, engaged, and offer only love and support for them, without judgment.

This has been my life’s journey, sharing and serving, and I am so excited about every day that I have left to fully experience even more in this life.

All this to say, you, too, can make a choice to not be a statistic.

Maybe you have been a statistic up to this point. You may feel as though your experience ‘til now limits or defines you. This is a lie. This is the lie that is propagated by society, that statistics are what they are, and there is nothing you can do about it. You are a lost cause.

You are not a lost cause.

You came to this life fully prepared, endowed with special gifts and abilities which are unique to you. You have a divine purpose for which you were called, and the world needs you to discover who you really are and is in dire need of the emergence of the real you.

Now it’s up to you. What will you do to change the who, who you are, to be who you were meant to be?

And all the experiences you have endured up to this point have been keenly offered to you as blessed education which has prepared you for this moment.

This is your time.

Your time is now.

Daddy, Where Are You?

It’s Your Fault Mom and Dad

When any of us are working with a client, we will use any effective means necessary, whatever will achieve the greatest measurable results in the least amount of time possible. One such method is to blame one’s parents for the client’s current circumstance. While this may seem a disservice to parenting and could potentially drive a chasm between the child/parent bond, the results make it all worth it.

When someone is in crisis, helping them overcome their most difficult challenges can be tackled by having an anchor, a base from which to launch their new more empowered approach to starting over.

In childhood, we are all victimized, traumatized, and programmed to be fearful. We learn about injustice, how to lie, and how to represent ourselves as “a good person” to others, even if we know this person is not who we really are. Our dreams are crushed, and we let others tell us what we should believe, do, how we should act, what we’re allowed to feel.

If you parented a child, even though it was no fault of yours, you were an active participant in the reprogramming and socialization of your son(s) and/or daughters(s) and assisted into transforming innocent and empowered children of God into subservient taxpayers. You didn’t know any better, and you were only doing the best you could do at the time, having fallen victim to the same programming in your youth.

It’s been going on for thousands of years, and no one would fault you for how you raised your child/children, that is, until now.

Your son or daughter is reaching out for help, and help is here for him or her, but unfortunately, you are the key, possibly the sacrificial lamb, which will usher in a better life for your offspring.

Many parents, and even I, would gladly take a bullet to help any of my children have a better life.

If your son or daughter is reaching out for help, try not to take it personally, as you are blamed for your son or daughter’s sense of incongruency. This dichotomy between what your child was brought to this life to do, and the way you participated in robbing them of their highest and best, would drive anyone to the brink.

For thousands of years, very few have awakened to the knowledge of having a higher calling in life. In the past, the socialization of our children was an effective way of controlling humanity en masse. That is, until now.

Your child is awakening, and the truth is, it’s not their fault they are they way they are, it’s yours, not yours alone, because all of society supports this programming, but you were the closest person to them in those most formative years.

You were the first person to deny your child’s divinity and assist in his or her reprogramming.

Your son or daughter did suffer the consequences of your parenting. While you are to blame, you are not at fault. Following the assignment of guilt, comes forgiveness and the realization that had your son or daughter lived your life, he or she would have done the very same thing(s) to his own son or daughter.

Your son or daughter may need to focus on the errors of your parenting to get through this crisis. There may be anger and hurt feelings, and rather than defend yourself and complicate things by trying to justify the past, the most honorable approach you could take is to assert your good intentions and take the heat, in effect falling on your own sword, for the benefit of your child.

You’re defending yourself or justifying your actions will only hinder or delay your child’s healing and advancement. Love your child, and let him or her act out in any way necessary to get a grip and move on. Try not to take it personally, just love your child now more than ever.

In this way, you can be there more for your child than you have ever been in the past, if you humble yourself and love him or her more than ever before.

Also, know this, your influence in your child’s life, even with all the mistakes you may have made, and the things that you could have done better if given the chance, were all a specialized part of making your child more powerful than he or she could have been without you.

So, bless your child, and these things will be realized as he or she grows beyond this crisis.

In this moment, by sacrificing your ego and silently focusing on the needs of your child right now, this is your chance to make right all the wrongs and help your son or daughter achieve his or her highest and best, live a better life, and make the world a better place.

God bless you and all that you do.

Parental Regret

Life is full of regrets, and in general mother and father, the parents in our modern society, espouse the most regrets of all having sacrificed all for the family. This is parental regret.

It’s that point in life when the father looks back at his life and the way he’s defined it, “I loved my family so much that I put them first. I worked so hard to give them what they wanted I was rarely home and when I was, I was exhausted.

I was in an almost constant state of panic, scurrying around trying to make the best life possible for my children. They meant that much to me that I sacrificed my all for them, my precious children, the light(s) of my life, whom I would sacrifice anything for, I love them so much.”

Working hard, spending countless hours commuting, working, educating yourself and volunteering so that you might be able to get a better job or move up the corporate ladder to better provide for your family which presents you with increasing financial challenges every year.

Then there is that moment when the children have left the nest and the mother lays back on the sofa in the empty home and thinks, “I loved my family so much that I put them first. I worked so hard to give them what they wanted, I never had any time for myself. Even if I could have, I wouldn’t have had the energy. I was exhausted.”

I was almost in a constant state of panic as I scurried around looking after everyone else without any thought of myself. They meant so much to me I sacrificed my all for them. Now that I have time to be myself, I don’t even know who I am without them.”

Mother and father express similar regrets with one marked difference.

In general, the stay-at-home parent/mother wins the adoration of the children because she “was there,” for them, when on the other hand, the father (or working mother) “was never there,” for them and they resent the father’s not “being there” for them.

In terms of the overall effect of parenting, the mother wins the love of the children while the offspring resent the father for his (or in the case of the working mother, “her”) lack of attention and constant absenteeism.

And if that wasn’t enough…

When the children grow up, no matter how hard you did the best that you could to give them the best life possible, they spend the rest of their lives in therapy because of you.

(In the best-case scenarios, the parents are left in the dark about the thousands of hours and dollars spent on their offspring’s therapy due to their genuinely inspired attempts at child rearing.)

… more parental regret.

So, what’s the answer?

As much as you might desire a do-over, the only hope we have is to look at the past and from this moment forward navigate toward a better future.

Fathers and mothers who are working hard away from the home to support the children better make it a priority to find and/or make time to spend with those precious children if you want them to value you and your sacrifice.

Also, if you’re a parent, it is important to take some time out to do a little something-something for yourself occasionally. You need this to re-charge your batteries and to better serve your family without resentment or regret.

Parents should also make time for private time spent celebrating each other. Without this, you will drift apart and lose that precious love-connection.

For the parents whose children have already left home to live their lives and consider the possibilities of starting their own families and careers:

Embrace the regret and reject the guilt of your past parenting shortfalls.

Regret allows inspiration to do better from this point forward, while guilt relentlessly punishes you repeatedly for something that cannot be changed.

The fact remains, you did the best you could with what you had.

If you recognize you could have done better, accept the fact that what is done is done, and from this point forward you can make a better life for you and your children, no matter how old they might be, by celebrating their lives with them in the now.

Even if you weren’t “there for them” in the past, you can be there for them now.

Starting now.

You Picked Your Parents

Sometimes in life it is beneficial to reverse engineer it to have a clearer understanding of how your life has unfolded, led you to where you are now and prepared you for what lies ahead.

you pick your parents before you are born
You pick your parents before you are born

Your life usually starts with the selection of your parents.

Before your arrival you are aware of what your mission, purpose, message and song will be. You scour the planet looking for just the right parents to maximize your development, to hone your life skills and find the melody of your song.

You know your life will need enough environmental thicket to build your character, compassion, and emotional acumen so that when you exit the jungle of your training camp you will be better prepared to fully engage and assume the responsibility of being true to your calling.

Your parents are a key component in preparing you for your life’s journey and though it may feel accidental, there was no randomness in which family you were born into, the circumstances of your birth, or the journey that resulted from the moment you emerged as your new self.

Prior to your inception you scoured the planet for the ideal circumstances that would lead to building you into the person you would need to be to accomplish your mission. Unfortunately your incarnation separates you from the greater part of yourself which is a necessary part of the journey if you are to train effectively for the mission that lies ahead.

It’s not uncommon for someone to ask, “Why?” Why wasn’t I born into a different family? Why this family? Why under these circumstances? Or any number or variations in the question, but if you can look deep inside that quietest most aware part of you knows your life, beginning with your parents was no accident. You carefully selected them at the right time, in the right place and under the unique circumstances prevalent at the time to assure you would have what it takes to achieve your highest and best.

As you become more aware of the perspective of your higher self the seemingly random acts begin to transform into highly purposeful, precisely timed turning points resulting in either redirecting your path or assisting in your learning lessons promoting personal growth, making you even more prepared for what lies ahead.

Experiences that once perplexed you because of their negative impact on your life suddenly have deeper meaning as you realize they were necessary to fashion you into the person you were intended to transform into.

When things are at their worst and it feels like there’s no way out, no possible way to go on, you know you are at a critical junction in your life’s journey. If you are there, right now, you can rest assured that the best part is about to take place. If you have already come through the bleakest moment of your life, you know it’s true. You would never be where you are now, if you didn’t go through that part of the process.

And it all starts with the parents you chose to launch your mission of life.

If it wasn’t for them, you would not be the person you have become – and are becoming – to fully emerge as the hero of your life’s story.

Could I have picked better parents? No way. If I was to become the person that I am, I couldn’t think of anyone better who could have helped me find my way here. I did such a good job of picking them and now that I am more aware, I am even more appreciative of all the opportunities that I have been exposed to that helped me to have experiences and develop skills I would have otherwise been deprived of, if born under any other circumstances.

And if you are a parent, it becomes apparent how blessed you are that your children chose you at the right place, the right time and under the unique circumstances to maximize their life’s journey.

I send an enormous outpouring of heartfelt gratitude to the children who picked me as their point of entry, as they are the bling in my life and I love them so much. I can’t imagine my life without them.