In one of the opening lines of my documentary film, “All Men Are Sons: Exploring the Legacy of Fatherhood,” therapist and author Terry Real says, “Each man is a bridge. He spans the father that came before him and the children that will come after him … and his life is literally the distance between those two points.” Beyond genetic coding, we as dads can largely determine what does and does not come across that bridge.
In my work, I encourage dads to explore their relationship with their own fathers, whether he was present or absent, warm or harsh. By sorting through the gifts your father may have given you and coming to terms with the liabilities he passed along, you can gain a clearer understanding of how to create a positive, hopeful legacy for the next generation: your children.
An important step in this process of sorting through your father’s legacy — trying to gain clarity and be intentional about the legacy you want to pass on to your children — involves having a heart-to-heart with your dad through letter writing. This exercise is not only cathartic, but it will aid you in bridging past, present and future generations.
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
Adapted from a similar exercise created by licensed clinical social worker Belinda Berman, you’ll write three letters as a way to have “the talk” with your father. You may decide to send or read these letters to your father, or you may not. You may instead decide to read them to a friend or partner. This activity is more about the process of writing the letters. What you do with them is up to you, but it’s important to write the following three letters in order:
1. Write to your father about what it was like for you growing up with (or without) him. Describe what was positive, as well as what was difficult or negative. Think about the things you’ve wanted to say to him but never have. You may cover your entire childhood or choose to focus on a particular time period or even a specific incident.
2. Write from your father’s perspective. This letter should start with “Dear Son,” and capture what you imagine your father would say to you in response to letter No. 1. How would your father react to that letter? Would he accept your point of view? Would he argue certain things? Would he be loving, hurt or angry? Imagine, as best you can, his response.
3. Write again from your father’s perspective. This letter should capture what you hope or wish your father’s response would be. In other words, if he were to respond in the best possible way to reading letter No. 1, what would he say? This letter is a way for you to imagine your father giving you everything you wished he would have given you.
[Read: Fathers: We Must Learn From Our Children.]
You may choose to express gratitude or anger, tell him how much he meant or means to you, say things you’ve never said but always wanted to. The letter may involve holding him accountable for his bad behavior or letting him know he’s been forgiven for the mistakes he’s made.
Inside each of us, we carry our father’s legacy. This may include his values, habits, attitudes, stories or, at the very least, his genetics. Thus, one of the central tasks for every man — even those whose fathers were absent — is to get as clear as possible about how that legacy may affect him as a parent for better and for worse.
Each generation of dads has a responsibility and an obligation to turn and face the past with an honest and loving eye. The love is mainly about our children; exploring the past is a way of saying, “I care enough about you to pass on the gifts I’ve been given and to protect you from whatever harm has been done to me.” Similarly, by looking back, we can acknowledge our gratitude for the good our father, and those generations before him, have done.
We cannot, however, protect our children from the mistakes of the past if we are not honest about how our father’s mistakes or shortcomings affected us as young boys, still affect us today as men and may become liabilities to us as fathers.
For many men, this process of exploring their father’s legacy may bring up powerful feelings of anger, sadness, disappointment and grief. Whichever of those painful feelings we refuse to face will likely get passed on to our children. This is a psychological process called “carried feelings,” whereby the child experiences the father’s unwanted, unacknowledged painful emotions from the past. I could not, for example, hope to stop the legacy of rage that has run through my family, if I did not face the painful feelings of what it was like witnessing my own father’s angry, and at times dangerous, outbursts.
A liability is defined as anything for which somebody is responsible, especially a debt: something that holds somebody back. Think of your father’s mistakes or shortcomings as liabilities to manage for the next generation. As the saying goes, “pass it back or pass it on.”
[See: 10 Ways to Raise a Giving Child.]
It’s imperative that we come to view our fathers (even if absent) realistically, not in black and white terms. If we overly idealize him, we may miss the liabilities we carry; if we dismiss or devalue him, refuse to see anything positive (even the gift of our life), we may end up holding resentment and never move into forgiveness. By seeing our fathers as flawed human beings who did the best with what they had, we remain humble as fathers ourselves. Then, we can help our own children to see us realistically — not as heroes or as villains — by owning up to our mistakes and striving to do better.
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Beyond Heroes or Villains: Looking Back at Your Father?s Legacy originally appeared on usnews.com
