A Deep Bow to Fathers Everywhere

This is a letter of appreciation to fathers, and to the fatherly qualities that parents of each gender offer as nourishment to our beloved children.

Thank you daddy, for making sure that we have a roof over our heads, that we have food in our bellies, and that we have a place where we can relax into each others arms in safety. Thank you for holding me like I am the most precious jewel in the entire world. Thank you for mirroring to me my presence and my own essential nature. And thank you for simply breathing with me as we hug, holding me firmly but gently against your strong body until I am ready to let go.

Thank you for standing nearby while I struggle with doing things on my own, for not interfering until I am ready to receive help, and for not letting me give up to soon.You have shown me the value of steadfastness, of sticking to something until it is done right, and in turn I have grown confident and my will is increasingly becoming aligned with the will of the universe. Thank you for embodying support — that quiet, mountainous quality that I know I can push off of as I enter into the world. And thank you especially for always allowing me to collapse back into your loving arms whenever I just need to completely let go, refuel, and come back to a place of deep holding and rest.

Thank you for your strength, your courage, your vitality. Thank you for your playfulness and rough-housing with me. I learned so much about how to regulate my energy and emotions through our horsing around, how to take one on the chin, and how to pick the other guy up after going to far — to be able to say, “I’m sorry.”

Thank you for showing me that life is not about avoiding failure, but embracing it. Inviting it even. Thank you for showing me how to feel disappointment, and to shed tears of sadness without a hint of shame. Thank you for showing me that real men cry often, that we live with open and vulnerable hearts because we know we are made of the earth and can survive any storm that Life throws our way. And thank you for embodying patience and a basic trust in Life, for showing me that True Nature has it’s own intelligence and timing. Thank you for showing me how to appreciate and enjoy each and every season.

Thank you for helping me structure my life so that it supports me in reaching my full potential. And thank you for letting me rest often, and for always reminding me — with and without words — that I am perfect exactly as I am. By you living your authenticity you have invited me to live mine. By way of you pursuing your passions, I feel free to pursue mine.

And thank you for showing me how to honor and respect women; to see them as the powerful and courageous beings they are — the living and breathing embodiments of Mother Nature herself. Thank you for helping me stay in touch with my own feminine nature, for setting straight the distorted and narrow stereotypes of our confused culture. Because of this, I feel more whole.

Thank you for showing me how to hold the hand of the old and the sick, and not be afraid of these inevitabilities of life. Thank you for showing me how to look death in the eye, to weep fully at the loss of a loved one, and how to return to life with the full appreciation for this moment and a passion for the living and loving that still lies before us.

Thank you for sitting with me quietly in a field for those timeless hours, for allowing me to experience the deep peace that still exists in this plugged-in and overstimulated world. My mind and body are less agitated because of this, and now I know how to reset when I begin to get overwhelmed.

And especially, thank you for being real with me; for not hiding yourself and your true feelings from me. Through our mixing it up, our being allowed to be angry and sometimes brutally honest with each other I learned that love can heal all — that real relationships are sometimes messy, but that the mature amongst us always choose love over being right.

Your particular fatherly-flavor of love is essential to my becoming fully myself. So thank you daddy, for authentically being yourself and loving me so unconditionally.

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