My Father’s Story Is the Root Narrative of Humanity

In the summer of 1938, my grandmother gave birth to her fourth child, my father. He would be the youngest in the family with two brothers and a sister who arrived before he did. But theirs was not such a dramatic beginning as his turned out to be. His mother was not allowed to see, touch, or hear her new-born son for ten days. And the only reason she was given for such a radical act of cruelty was that he had a blister on his eye.

Fast forward some seven decades later, after a lifetime of believing he was born blind in one eye, Dad was advised by an ophthalmologist that there is physical evidence to suggest he was actually injured at birth. Which certainly could explain why his mother was kept from her baby, and her baby from her, as there may have been fear that if the truth of medical malpractice were known, there’d be professional and possibly financial consequences.

For all his life, my father has felt like a loner. He explains it to himself through the story of his birth. “I’m like a calf who couldn’t get to his mother, so he stayed in the bush, and learned to survive on his own.”

Dad’s right eye has one-tenth vision which means he can basically distinguish daylight and dark. As a kid, he was always squinting because the sunlight bothered him, but he contends, “it never slowed me down.”

That certainly rings true for me because I’ve never seen or experienced my father as having any disability. In fact, he is supernatural! He knows things have happened before he is told. And he knows things are going to happen before they do. Where there is strife, he brings calm. He witches for water. He has a way with animals. And as a backhoe operator, he works the earth with such precision that people call from far and wide for his service.

“When I take a hold of the backhoe controls, I feel the earth,” he says. “I can foresee danger where most can’t. If someone wants me to do something with the hoe that I know isn’t going to end well, I’ll just tell them I’m not going to do that.”

When you ask him if it’s like he has a strong intuition, he says, “I guess you could say that. I just know if it’s wrong. And I know I have to listen to myself. I can’t be cornered. I can always see a way out to be happy. And I think it has a lot to do with me being that calf who couldn’t get to his mother. I have some funny ways. I’m hard to deal with sometimes because I’m protective of myself, and will only do things my way.”

When I hear Dad describe how he experiences his world, it makes perfect sense to me from within his perception. But I also glean a deeper understanding through my experience of him as his daughter. I’ve witnessed how he lives with a kind of social anxiety and the impact it’s had on our family.

The anxiety is an energy so big in him that it prevents him from participating in what most would assume are normal social activities. Although he would say it’s the way he keeps himself safe — stay home rather than participate socially — I know it emanates from a belief that he is not safe. And I easily imagine why he carries such a belief. Right out of the womb he was ripped from his mother! Who knows what those first days of his life were like? Was he held? How was he fed? Did anyone love him? If his parents weren’t allowed to get near him, then one can only think he may have been subjected to medical treatment we know nothing about. He may very well have been left alone like that calf out in the bush. What does that do to a human being?

Regardless of how I might try to answer that question, there comes a point in a human being’s life when the possibility of transcending one’s circumstances presents itself. Every encounter is an opportunity to learn and become more ourselves. And what helps us do this is to consider an expanded narrative. This story isn’t just about my father. The pain caused by being separated from his mother at birth is the source of Dad’s mother wound. But it is only a symptom of a much larger story in the collective human psyche.

The human psyche is not some ephemeral nothingness driven by random occurrences in life. It is the only way we know our immediate experience, and it is governed by a grid of deep and abiding order. We tend to describe our external experience as material because it seems to come at us from outside of us. And we generally think of our internal experience as spiritual. It is this duality of perception — outside and inside — that creates the illusion of earth school. But when we deepen and expand into the domain of the human soul, this duality of perception doesn’t exist. In truth, all is one. And earth is school for the human soul where we might remember the truth of who we are.

So the ultimate pain for human beings is caused by the belief that we are separate from the Source of all that is because we have forgotten how to see and how to feel beyond the duality of perception. And the pain caused by the belief in separation is the ultimate mother wound. It divides us against ourselves from within. And as a wise man once said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

The wounded child’s wound is actually a systemic mother wound revealing the human condition we find ourselves in now — many people believe they are separate from the source and sustenance of all life and this gives rise to disharmony in the human experience. Fundamentally it’s a belief that one is not safe in the world.

In truth, we all live, move, and have our being in the cosmic womb of holy mother divine. The divine is everywhere and in everyone! Realizing this is the shift that changes everything and empowers us to overcome the limits of our personal stories. We don’t deny our lived experience, we move beyond it. For we are all children of a common mother and it’s time to start living the truth.