How can I think peacefully about a father who abandoned our child? Q #837: My daughter’s father abandoned us when I was three and a half months pregnant. He has offered no financial or emotional support since this time. He has had no contact with his daughter either. He has chosen to turn his back on the both of us. His family however continued to be interested in our lives. I found this situation extremely frustrating as his family would continually bring up my daughter’s father (as if reminding me he had chosen to abandon us). I since cut communication with the family, as I was overwhelmed with the situation. Over six months has passed and I am asking to see everyone involved in this situation differently (i.e., without judgment). I would like to heal the relationship with the family and my daughter’s father. However, when I go to call or write a note or make some contact with them, I am reminded of all the pain I went through while I was in contact with them. I don’t know how to heal this situation. It doesn’t seem to go away. However I just can’t bring myself to swallow my pride and try again at having a relationship with my daughter’s side of the family. Can I find peace with this situation without physically making contact with these people again? How do I know that I did the right thing in severing the relationship with the family? I still feel somewhat haunted by my decision, but really don’t know how to move on and find lasting peace in my mind with all of the above mentioned people. How can I look at a man that abandoned his/our child in a different light. A: Perhaps one of the hardest lessons to accept and learn as a student of A Course in Miracles is that our upset and pain, regardless of what our experience seems to be, is never the result of what someone else has or has not done to us (W.pI.5). Everything in our experience seems to shout otherwise, and it is usually not difficult to find allies who will support us in our perception of ourselves as victims. But if we genuinely want to heal our relationships and release ourselves from the conflict and hurt and anger, the Course asks us to shift our focus from the external situation to our own inner decision to invest in the belief in sin and guilt and attack and abandonment. For that is the only source of our pain (W.pI.23). This is not to justify what anyone else does or fails to do, but rather to clarify that we have always first made a decision within our own mind to perceive ourselves as a victim in order to defend against the pain of our own choice for guilt, or we could not be affected by what the other person does. This of course contradicts all the counsel the world offers, but that is simply because the Course is offering us a radically different way of perceiving ourselves, our lives, our relationships, and our world -- one that affirms that we alone are the rulers of our universe and our destiny (W.pII.253). How loudly and vehemently does the world -- and our ego mind -- protest this acceptance of total responsibility for our experiences (T.21.II.1,2,3,4,5). The Course will not advise you on the particulars of your situation, such as whether you should or should not have cut off contact with his family, or whether you should re-establish it. Helpful answers to those questions are only possible after you have addressed your own need to see yourself unfairly treated (T.26.X.3,4,5), a need by the way which you share, regardless of the form it expresses itself in your life, with everyone else who seems to walk this earth. So you don’t want to judge yourself for choosing the victim role -- all of us who find ourselves here, in our own specific ways, have made the same choice. And so until you are able to release the judgments of unworthiness that you hold against yourself for abandoning your true Self, everyone else will only continue to be a symbol of that inner choice, and contact with them will necessarily continue to be painful. As inadequate as it may seem to us to be, the truth is we are all only ever doing the best we can, given our belief in our limitations and the guilt that naturally accompanies those perceptions. And that blanket generalization applies to the father of your daughter as well. Are you aware that you do not refer anywhere in your question to the nature of your relationship with this man, other than to identify him as the father of your daughter? It appears that you so want to avoid acknowledging his relationship to you that you even refer to his family as your daughter’s side of the family. Perhaps he has been your husband or lover, but the real nature of the relationship that you want to deny is that he is your brother, a brother who is just as self-accusing and guilt-ridden as you may feel, regardless of what face he presents to the world. But you will only come to such a forgiven perception of him by first recognizing the mirror to your own self that he is holding up to you (T.7.VII.3:9; T.24.VI.8). And so to release him from judgment is only to release yourself. And in that release you will necessarily perceive the both of you in a different light. facimoutreach.org/qa/questions/questions163.htm#Q837
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 03:41:12 +0000
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