Father's Day: A Day To Heal Wounds

It's often said that a woman becomes a mother the moment she becomes pregnant, and a man becomes a father the moment his child is born. Mothers have 9 months of hormonal bonding that takes place between them and their offspring in which they are literally one, prior to the child meeting the father.

Fathers have to play catch-up in forming bonds with their children. Many do. Many don't. Many won't even try. But there are those who do, often driven by their own needs to provide the fathering that they themselves did not receive.  This phenomenon, documented in the video below, is referred to as the "father wound."

Roland Warren, President of National Fatherhood Initiative says that all kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their dads when their fathers are physically or emotionally absent. Father's Day, which I refer to as Dad's Day, differs significantly from Mother's Day when viewed from this perspective.

There are more mothers who celebrate and emulate their own mothers, than there are fathers who do the same. We rarely discuss mother abandonment, but we keep and publicize statistics on derelict fathers. We also keep no such statistics on the emotionally absent fathers who leave a less visible negative impact.

Father's Day for many men, is a time to deal with and heal the wounds left by faulty fathering, or non-fathering. We can not return to our past and coerce our father's into making different decisions, or give us the time, attention, or love that we wanted or needed, but we can forgive them and allow them to serve as an example of how not to be with our own children heading into the future. In doing so, our children will flourish, and so will we as dads.

Happy Dad's Day!