I was hesitant to write about this because I am throwing my dad under the bus. He was really great in many ways. He was great in many ways, and in many other ways, he just was awful. I was very fortunate to have him and my mother and my two brothers. I was a spoiled bratty kid, preteen, teenager and young adult. Today I got to spend a little time with two dear friends, and we talked about Gestalt therapy. I was lucky enough to be in one of their support groups 30 years ago and found it to be a great experience. One of my friends said, "All you did was complain about it." Whatever. When I was in the group, I shared a weird experience with my father. I was twelve and one girl used to make fun of me in class. I finally told my dad, and for some reason, we were alone one evening. He was very kind and talked to me for a long time and I felt so much better. Then right away he yelled at me about something, and I asked why he was so angry, and his response was, "I just wanted to see if you could take it, and you can't." When I shared this little bit with the group, very quietly I heard a small collective gasp. That seemed to be enough to affirm how bad his behavior was. But then one of the counselors put a chair in the middle of the group and told me to tell my father how I really felt but I couldn't do it. When everything was over, I said that my hands were shaking and one of the counselors asked if my hands could talk, what would they say. I responded with, "I'm lonely.", and I broke down and cried. The weight of the world seemed to have lifted on my drive home. I turned on the radio and for some reason I had it on a Christian station. Something I didn't normally listen to, and a choir of men and women were singing "Amazing Grace". It was lovely and just what I was feeling. I thought that God, whoever, the Universe was saying that it was really great to have my feelings and to not run away from them and love myself through the feelings. I was. Then the choir got bigger with each verse or repeated verse. They added more voices. This might sound weird, but I felt that the voices were sort of inside of me shouting out. I never talked to my dad about that incident. I didn't need to and I'm sure he forgot about it. What I needed was God saying, "That ain't cool what your dad did." I don't think one can forgive if they don't know who or what to forgive. And Gestalt helped me with that.
