CatholicWritersGuild: Healing the Father-Wound

I wish my father had read The Healing Power of a Father’s Blessing by Linda Schubert. He parented his three daughters from a distance, following the familiar pattern of how he was raised. Oh, Daddy was in town, working six days a week at the five-and-dime stores he managed in towns around Texas and New Mexico. He was sometimes home at suppertime and sometimes went to church with us. He wasn’t a demonstrative man who hugged or kissed much or sat down to read to us or ask us about school. He suddenly died when I was 18. I once asked my mother if he loved me, and she said, “Of course he loved you — because you reminded him of me!”

In the slim little book, The Healing Power of a Father’s Blessing, Linda Schubert described the “father-wound” that so many of us experience. Father-wounds, the deepest wounds on earth, cover our hearts in layers and often are healed in layers. Father-wounds come from lack of bonding in an abusive or insecure environment where the child feels fatherless, not provided for and unprotected. Children with father-wounds are so vulnerable to the dominance of others that they cannot think for themselves or develop their unique self.

Read how you can heal your father-wound at CatholicWritersGuild.org