Some years ago, my oldest son, Matthew came to me and asked me to write “I love you” on a piece of paper. I saw already written on that paper were a few other lines of the same phrase, “I love you,” and I asked him what that was all about. He told me that he had got his brothers and his mother to all write that phrase, and he was going to engrave it permanently on his arm as a tattoo. If you look on his right forearm, you will see that tattoo today and it will be there for the rest of his life. He’s never going to regret getting that tattoo.
He had some pretty intense emotional struggles as a child and teen, and he’s worked really hard to become a remarkable, strong and loving human being. He has a degree in Outdoor Education and he’s working on his degree in Psychology. Matthew is a yoga instructor, he’s been a wilderness therapy guide, he’s been an instructor for wilderness leadership trainings with Outward Bound, and he currently works helping men at an alcohol and drug rehab facility. My relationship with Matt has been really difficult at times over the years and last week, Matthew asked me, “Dad, you have this emotional wall with me that you don’t have with my brothers. What’s up with that?”
I responded, “Matt, you’re right and I’m so sorry.” Over the 24 years of his life, this has been a painful subject for he and I because it’s true. I have always felt more emotionally comfortable with his younger twin brothers who are both amazing people themselves. Through childhood and their teenage years Matthew’s brothers, Craig and Connor, never challenged me or called me out so hard like Matthew did, and they never rebelled quite so aggressively to my face like Matthew did. As a teen he would tell me that I liked them better than I liked him. This time he just said that I have an emotional wall with him that I don’t have with them, and I noticed the growth in his perceptions of the subtleties of this often-painful dynamic in our family. Today he does know how much I love him and I believe he knows that I can’t imagine loving him or his brothers any more or less than each other.
What I also noticed was that when Matthew said this to me last week, there was no anger or hurt, only love for his father. He tells me every day how much he loves me, and how grateful he is that I am his dad, and I know he means it. One of Matthew’s many gifts is that he a straight talker and he never says anything he doesn’t mean, but now he’s learned how to be that direct with kindness in a truly non-judgmental way. I felt the tears welling up as he called me out last week, and his loving strength, clarity and honesty are deeply impressive and moving to me.
Matthew asked me when this wall between us started and I said to him, “You were almost two years old when the twins were born, and you hated that they took my attention away from you. I could never give them any attention without you getting so upset, and I didn’t know how to make you understand as a two-year-old that I couldn’t just ignore them whenever you were around. I didn’t know what else to do so I started to put an emotional wall up with you whenever you were all in the room together and it just continued from there.”
All Matthew said in response was, “I forgive you, Dad. I forgive you.”
This emotional wound between us is also a family legacy passed down from my relationship with my father as well, because my dad consistently said to me over the years, “Steve, out of all my seven children, you gave me the most trouble.” This is because, like Matthew, I also had trouble with speaking out directly and honestly when I probably should have kept my mouth shut. Whenever I had a problem with something Dad said or did, I would call him out and challenge him more directly than my siblings would. That was probably uncomfortable for him like it was uncomfortable for me with Matthew. Karma is a bitch sometimes, and I am profoundly grateful for Matthew helping me to heal my family legacy of broken relationships between fathers and sons by learning to communicate honestly and directly with kindness and without any blame and criticism.
Matthew knows that despite all our painful struggles and our ups and downs over the years, that the truth between he and I is that that we love each other, and nothing else matters. He knows that only love is real and everything else is just an illusion made of smoke and mirrors. Even though as a child I often didn’t like some things my father did, or I struggled with how he didn’t have time for me because he worked so much, I realize now that everything my father did was because of his love for me and mom and all my siblings. The truth of my father and my son is love, and nothing else really matters.
Once people sort through the layers of fear and ego baggage that they have, they always find this same love at the heart of themselves and every other human being. Learning how to recognize this love and act from this loving place is what Matthew did for me in our conversation last week and it is life transforming. This is also what I teach as a therapist, and I have seen this transformation occur hundreds of times when people begin to sort through their own layers of fear and ego baggage to see the core truth of love within themselves and in their family, lovers and friends.
In a few weeks, for the first time, Matthew is going to help me lead a workshop training on how to help people see and act from the core truth of love within themselves and others in their lives, and I feel so blessed to have him there in this healing work with me.
Namaste,
Steven Fisher
