Sharon Leigh Hill

Memories of Daddy

17 Jun 2009 4 Comments

by Sharon Leigh Hill in family Tags: alcoholism, domestic violence, fathering girls, fathers day, inspiration, inspirational books, life, life writing, love, writing

With Fathers Day approaching in the USA, I’ve found myself thinking about the years that I missed out on with my father. We were separated when I was young after he went into an uncontrollable alcoholic rage and tried to kill his family. After 33 years apart, we found each other just weeks before he died. I grew up wondering why my father never contacted me. Didn’t he love me any more?

Fathers are vital to their daughters.  The way a woman feels about herself is very much dependent on how she was treated by her father as she was growing up. Without a father’s unconditional love, girls can grow up to have low self-esteem and self-image. The lack of a father’s love can leave a girl with serious self-worth issues, especially if she perceives that her father abandoned her. Girls who’ve grown up without a father’s love can subconsciously crave male attention and seek to fill this void in unhealthy ways. Feeling ‘not good enough’ for a good loving relationship with a man, they are vulnerable to becoming involved in abusive relationships or becoming promiscuous. They are more at risk of teenage pregnancy due to experiencing puberty earlier and becoming sexually active at a younger age. Women who have missed out on their daddy’s love are also more at risk of developing depression.

I just wanted to share a snippet of my story to help other women or girls to full appreciate their relationship with their father, and also for fathers to realize just how much their daughters need them. The following excerpt is from a chapter that I wrote for a compilation book titled The Path to Success. Please enjoy my story and enjoy Fathers Day.

 

Back in Daddy’s Arms (excerpt from The Path to Success)

“Daddy, you’re my true love.” Gracie spoke these precious words to her Daddy as he tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. My daughter, like most other four-year-old girls, loves fairytales, stories of princesses and princes falling in love and living happily ever after. Her Daddy is her ‘prince’, and her ‘true love’. It warms my heart as I think about how different my little girl’s experience is from my own.

My father was a violent alcoholic. His addiction not only destroyed his own life, it almost took the lives of those he cherished the most in the world. I was the eldest of his five children–two daughters and three sons. His drunken, abusive rages confused the little girl that I once was. I knew he loved me, yet he could be so mean and cruel. It was a contradiction too hard for my young innocent mind to understand.

There were many happy times in my childhood, but sadly, the happiest were when my father was not at home. As a soldier in the Australian Army, he was often away. He spent extended periods of time overseas in Borneo and Vietnam. I missed my Daddy, but I didn’t miss his abuse. Each time he returned, our home became the war zone again, and after his return from Vietnam, things only escalated.

I remember his masculine smell, the sweet, piquant fragrance of Old Spice, mixed with the warm tones of Californian Poppy, blended with subtle wafts of Brasso and boot polish, topped off crudely with the unmistakable reek of Bundaberg rum. But my most vivid memory is of the night that I lost my Daddy from my life.

I was eleven years old. My father had been drinking and an argument once again ensued between my parents. This time however it escalated to the point that my father became so enraged, he was intent on killing us all. My mother hurried us all into the bedroom at the end of the hall and barricaded the door with furniture. She positioned herself, using her body as a wedge to prevent the door from being opened, to protect her little ones from the danger that threatened them on the other side.

We could hear him outside trying to get in, hacking at the door with a bayonet – the sounds of glass smashing and his terrifying threats to kill us all. Our fear was somewhat eased by our brave mother’s soothing words, but after several hours, we could sense her strength waning. That’s when terror truly set in.

When the police finally arrived, we all cried tears of relief. I felt safe in the policeman’s strong arms as he carried me across the blanket of broken glass, but my heart had also been broken. I now felt safe, but at what price? My Daddy and I became separated from that day forward. We didn’t even get to say goodbye. I was left with a void in my heart and a feeling of unworthiness that would haunt me for many years.

Within two years, my mother remarried and I had a new Daddy. He not only broke my heart, he deeply wounded my soul through the sexual abuse I suffered at his hands.

As time passed, I tried to put the past behind me, but the Daddy-shaped space in my heart cried out to be filled. So many times I craved for my father’s love, but it was nowhere to be found. My life became a journey of trying unsuccessfully to fill the empty space in my heart and becoming more wounded in the process. I found myself in unhealthy and abusive relationships, and even questioning my own dismal existence during a two-year battle with chronic depression, until I finally turned to God and true healing began to take place. In God, I found myself back in my Daddy’s arms.

But this is not the end of the story. I received a phone call that would change my life forever. At the time I was working on my book which I had decided to title Back in Daddy’s Arms–an autobiographical book focusing on my loss of my Daddy and my discovery of the love of my Heavenly Father. At that stage, I had no idea of just how much more there was to the title of my book, and my story. My father was in a nursing home with only weeks to live. After over thirty years, God gave me the opportunity to be reunited with my Daddy.

As hard as it was to visit him, I knew in my heart that I must. I had been going through a real transformation in my own life and I believed that my father deserved a chance to heal his own wounded heart.

Memories flashed through my mind; I saw him grab my three-year-old brother by the hair and hurl him violently against the wall; I heard his vicious, hateful words, his threats…my little brother’s cries…my mother’s desperate screams…her comforting words to her precious little ones, through her silent, desperate sobs of despair…

Yes, he had made some mistakes, but so had I. He had already missed out on so much–watching his five children grow up and have families of their own; being a grandfather to his thirteen grandchildren. He did not deserve to die a lonely old man. I visited him in the hope that it would bring some joy into the last days of his life, but I didn’t anticipate just how much these visits would do for me–for that little girl inside me who had just wanted her Daddy’s love, her Daddy’s hugs and kisses, that special love that only a Daddy can give.

He was a grumpy, frail old man. He looked much older than he was, certainly much older than I remembered him, but my heart recognised him. I remember looking at his bony, nicotine-stained hands and thinking how they were once the chubby young hands of a little boy trying to tie his shoelaces and write his name for the very first time. They were the same hands that had caressed his beautiful young wife and held me, his first born baby daughter, but they were also the hands that had caused so much pain to those he loved.

Yet the man I saw that day was no threat to anyone anymore. In fact, he gave me the most special gift. I was given the opportunity to tell him I loved him and forgave him for not being there for me. I shared with him about what God had done in my life, how much God loved him and wanted to forgive him. My father was convinced that he would spend eternity in hell, but I was with him when he made his peace with God and the weight of his self-condemnation was lifted from his heart. And this time, we got to say goodbye.

“I love you too,” he said as we hugged. It was the first time I remember him ever saying those precious words to me, and as he spoke them I realized that I was back in my Daddy’s arms.

(From ‘Back in Daddy’s Arms’ in The Path to Success compiled by Sandy Forster)

 © Sharon Hill (all Rights Reserved Worldwide)