On a day like today I often hear the phrase, “I may be a little off today, it’s Father’s Day.” I generally respond with, “I get it. I’m here for you.” Getting it. Understanding a Complex Father’s Day for someone is a profound thing you can give. Now, it is not easy to get it. It is not easy to understand complex relationships of any kind.
Complex Father’s Days can start with the bombardment of congratulatory comments in feeds and stories in your social media outlets. Flooding, a psychotherapy term, of anxiety-producing stimulus around the theme of father can rev up unwanted feelings. Loss, anger, resentment, mixed with desire to belong, nostalgia, and guilt.
A Complex Father’s Day can bring back the unbearable absence or the overpowering weight of a father’s presence. A Complex Father’s Day can bring the questioning of the role of the offspring to a complex human being that is your biological father, or your adopted or chosen father. It can also bring mixed emotions to you as a father with a complex relationship with your own father.
I argue to see all fathers with their complexities on Father’s Day. When elevating the role of fatherhood and placing it on a pedestal, the space for human fault is rarely given.
For many years, I too used the phrase, “I may be a little off today, it’s Father’s Day.” Even though I had many father figures, a biological and a stepfather, my vision of who a father “was supposed to be” was idealized.
Fatherhood can mean many things. Yet, besides the societal and gender expectations of fatherhood at this time and age, recognizing that it is the perfect moment of strength needed to bring a winning soul to life has been a game changer for me. That moment of cosmic creation is the recognition of you as worthy of life. Worthy of life to live with complex human beings around you, including your absent or present father.
I encourage you to bring down your father from that pedestal of idealized fatherhood and get to know his story. Fathers are also men with complex desires, wants, shadows and pains. If there is absence of stories about your father, ask who limited the telling of his stories? His stories are in part your stories.
One day, my Complex Father’s Day became just Father’s Day. Not an idealized Father’s Day, but one where what is celebrated is the push for life. The embodied realization that without the journey of life my father figures have taken I would not be here, and nor would you. This recognition over the years has led to tremendous admiration and respect for the lives my fathers have led. I hope your Complex Father’s Day turns into a Father’s Day with colorful life stories to tell.
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