17 July 2026

Curse Breakers

“I never beat you as much as my mom beat me!”

“Well, Dad, I didn’t beat my first kid as much as you beat me, and I haven’t beaten my second kid at all, and I won’t. That’s how you break the curse, one generation at a time.”

My biological father, my “sperm donor” as some scathing part of me wrote in January, my Dad, if I’m invoking my best self, left today after staying two nights at my home, which I eagerly invited him to do when he called on Wednesday, completely out of the blue, because he was a few hours north of me, fishing the Allegheny River, which he knew led to Pittsburgh!

He called me, in fact, just as I was writing about Father and Time for another project, when I had been thinking of how I could text him and ask if he would visit me in August, to help me with my younger child when I’m going back to work and before she starts kindergarten. And then Dad just calls, perfect timing!

If you had suggested to me, at any point in my adult life prior to last month, that I would someday be excited to see my dad, to have him stay with me in my home, and actually bummed out when he had to leave, I would have laughed in your face. The laughing probably would have quickly escalated into me crying, as I was once again reminded of this fundamental wound I’ve carried for forty years.

No trust, and very little love, for the man who lost his temper, and scared and hurt me, when I was a kid. My wound does not stop bleeding, but I limp along, arrowhead still in me, determined to survive, with my subconscious just as determined to recreate the dynamic that led to the wounding.

To give me a second chance to move through it, with power this time.

So I chose a husband who scared and hurt me more than my father did, over a longer span of time, and when I finally stood up to him, I was, concurrently, starting to break free from an internal oppressor— a dangerous masculine presence in my psyche, a part who can look and sound like my father or my brother or male partner, one who fills my head with loud criticism and devalues my joys. A soul-killer.

I remember that dream where I knew my brother had shot at someone, was trying to shoot someone, and him threatening me, and I ran to tell my dad, and he didn’t believe me or care. I can feel the emotions overlaying that dream scene: the horror that my brother would aim to take life so casually and laugh about it, the rage that I couldn’t stop him, the desperation and fear that made me flee, the utter desolation of my truth being ignored, the heartbreak of my father not caring about my pain, him looking away, unwilling, instead of meeting me in my suffering or trying to help me.

That’s the “emotional web around the archetypal core” (This Jungian Life) associated with “Father” in my mind. Then I partnered and procreated with a man who reinforced this parental complex— because while he had superficial differences from my father, like enjoying books, he had many problematic similarities, like getting aggressive when angry.

Stuck deep in the mire of this echoing illusion, I was operating out of guilt and anxiety in my relationship with my husband, almost continuously. While there were easier moments to break up the daily grind, I also knew that individuating away from him, expressing myself authentically, asserting needs that ran contrary to his, or wanting what he considered unnecessary, would be treated as suspect, or a threat, and met with criticism or hostility that might escalate.

Just like when I was a kid, but actually way worse!

Psychology is a wild trip. So there I am, in my home that I’ve liberated in the name of peace and love and self-respect, and my dad is sitting in my husband’s old seat in the Kitchen of Doom, and he’s saying some wacky shit to me, like how if I had followed his religion, I probably wouldn’t have gotten raped so many times. This is egregious talk, no doubt, but I’m not scared of his judgement, and I’m not reactionary with my anger. Somewhere in the back of my mind, some part of me is laughing, and another is puking, but no one is crying. I am wholly calm.

Here is another opportunity to practice. Onegaishimasu. Let’s begin, Dad.

“No, I don’t think that’s true. The religion taught me to be obedient— to do what I was told, even if I didn’t like it. And you taught me I’d be hurt if I didn’t do what a man wanted.”

“I never hurt you!” My dad recoils from me, and I register his body movement dispassionately. Oh, he’s not rejecting me, he just cannot handle this information. Ah, now he’s minimizing my experience. Hah, he’s using the word “pats” to describe his spankings to me in childhood, just like my husband did about slapping my ass over years of my repeated objections. I weigh the two bouts of harm from these two different-but-similar men. Hmm, yes, I think my dad actually comes out the better man. And he’s so… scared? Of me? He’s flustered. He can’t handle talking about these things and feeling the feelings associated with them. He’s got low emotional processing stamina, but is holding it together way better than my husband.

We’re able to keep talking through it, and I’m able to shift the weight of the conversation into the present and future, talking about the opportunity we have now, to build a different kind of relationship that’s open, honest, and real. I can sense his longing for this, and his hurt comes out next. He’s childlike as he recounts that I said to him once, “Too bad you never went to college, Dad, you could’ve really made something of yourself.” I groan and put my face in my hands. “Ugh, Dad, that was so rude. That’s a horrible thing to say, and I’m so sorry.” These are my completely true feelings, straight from brain to mouth, with no filter. Kids are so rude. I wonder how old I was when I said this stupid, hurtful thing to him. I remind him that both of the men I married did not go to college, and they’re all doing better than me-with-the-degree, financially.

My dad scoffs, and says I knew teachers didn’t make any money when I picked that job. I get a little smug right back at him, and say that while I might not be making six figures right now, next year I am on Year 11 of the pay scale, and I will (hopefully, contract being negotiated) be making very close to six figures, doing something I love, that I’m good at, that rarely feels like work, often feels like a sport or a performance, and is sometimes literally “a walk in the park.” He is a little jealous, I think, hearing this, even though he is officially, comfortably retired, and doesn’t have to work another day in his life. He’ll never stop being busy, though, just like me.

I close the distance between us, entering his space, showing no fearfulness because I feel no fear. He’s talking about all my cousins, now, his ADHD kicking in hard to steer him away from the tough stuff. He’s recounting which marriages have fallen apart, first and foremost, and these are sordid tales of manipulation, cheating, and amounts of money I will never comprehend, let alone possess. The courts favor women, he says, and I hear about evil woman after evil woman. He even tries to throw in a dig about “Black culture” based on the behavior of the Black ex-wife of my white cousin. “No, Dad, that’s wrong,” I say calmly. I explain the obvious to the man who doesn’t get it yet, and he doesn’t quite agree with me, but he doesn’t persist with the racist blather, either. I tell him I hope the courts do favor me, and that they should. He does agree with that.

He yawns, and I remember the empty container of weed gummies by his bed the night before, with the dispensary sticker in my step-mom’s name. I asked him about it, and guessed aloud that he didn’t have his own medical card because he was worried about it messing with his concealed carry permit. He practically beams with pride that I was able to deduce his reasoning. He uses them for sleep, he says, nothing recreational. I tell him I’ve been recreating and surviving with weed for exactly half my life, this year! I ask if it interferes with remembering his dreams, something I worry about, and he doesn’t know, but says it interferes with him having to get up to take a piss five times a night, which he appreciates, and misses when he’s run out.

He never left the toilet seat up, the whole time he was here, the exact opposite of my husband, and when I complimented him on his noticeable diligence, he gave me the impression that my step-mom would kick his ass if he did such a thing, and that he usually only forgets in the middle of the night, and he’s up before her, and can always catch it and put it down before she sees. Maybe he’s being dramatic, but I hear the little hitch of anxiety in his voice. Um, Dad, I think you might have a complex, too. What if you put that psychological junk into your adrenal tumor, and maybe it will get removed when you have your surgery! He jokes, I hope, that the ivermectin didn’t work to shrink the tumor, so he will follow his doctor’s orders to have it removed, despite the ever-present threat of Big Insurance and Big Pharma, who control and manipulate doctors into pushing treatments people don’t need.

I think about my husband refusing to schedule medical treatment for his minor-but-pervasive-and-potentially-consequential-later health issue for years, and how it was somehow my job to gently ask about it occasionally, just so he could repeat his emotional reasons for refusing to care for his health. Points to my dad, again, though points have been deducted for paranoia. You gotta watch that with daily weed use!

The recliner would be nice to put your feet up in, I say, before the long drive home, and then I’ve got him sitting down in the nice cushy chair, mellowing out even further. Is this manipulation? Did I unlock a new evil skill? Feels like victory, to have my dad almost dozing off under my influence.

To wake him back up, I’m getting out the photo album that my maternal grandmother made for me, and all about me, twenty-some years ago, and he’s looking through my baby photos, telling me little back stories for different people, and remembering details with me. I hear about some of my cousins again, the ones who are doing well in their marriages, and thus their lives, like my brother and sister are, and we find a picture I had loosely stuck between pages in the album, of my dad holding my elder child when they were an infant. I stick the photo in the edge of a picture frame hanging on the wall behind us, because I know he’ll like that.

We’re watching me grow up again, picture by picture, elementary to middle to high school to college, and at some point, maybe 7th grade, I cringe and say, with plenty of good humor to hide my shame, “Ugh, look what a nerd I was— so ugly!” and my dad rejects it, with sternness, “You’re weren’t ugly, look, you were beautiful,” and even though that’s just, like, his opinion, man, and he doesn’t have any proof of anything, I can admit I’m very into his approval of my physical appearance long ago. This is pure, unfiltered external validation, and I will breathe it in deeply. (Please don’t fart, Dad.)

My dad tells me, when we talk about the year 1994, how he was so desperate to “find a mate” after my mom divorced him, because he just knew he couldn’t raise kids on his own and work. I asked him if he thought I was going to be able to run my house on my own, raise the kid living with me, and do my job.

He suggests I find a “nice guy in his twenties with a lot of energy,” and I laugh, saying “Why would that guy want me?” He blends with my self-deprecation and reminds me that while I am middle-aged and have kids, a definite downside for most guys, I am in “pretty good shape” and maybe a guy my age could be okay, too, as long as he has a really good-paying job. I demur with, “Maybe older than me, and someone who’s really good with kids.”

We joke around for a while about what we would each ask my prospective suitors if they were filling out an application form to date me, and we’re having a good time again, and he exclaims something like, “I love laughing. I love making people laugh. That’s all I wanna do!”

I hear his deep background wanting for that heart-to-heart connection, that secure attachment that feels so safe and so right that you wish it would last forever, and his childlike joy present in the moment, sparkling over his words. This sounds exactly like something I would say, and all our positive similarities are shining and reflecting back at me now, like we’re two faceted gems in the sunlight. I see the wholeness of my father, and here is just another child of God, clawed, flawed, holy and mundane.

Domo arigato, gozaimasu.

Thank you for practicing nonviolent conflict with me.

Thank you for healing with me.

Thank you for making peace together with me.

I love you and goodnight.