Blaming Daddy? | Part 2 of 2

by Elouise

‘Have you forgiven your father?’  A fair question, never easy to answer.  With regard to forgiveness, I aim to become one of the tough-minded Lewis Smedes talks about in his book, The Art of Forgiving.  Here’s his hard-nosed take on it:

Forgiving is for the tough-minded.  It is not for the soft-headed who cannot abide people who make judgments on other people’s actions.  If we dare not blame, we dare not forgive.  Forgiving is for people who know their own faults but who recognize a wrong and dare to name it when they feel it done to them and have the wisdom and grace to forgive it.  (p. 85) 

In Part 1 I showed you my first written attempt at blaming Daddy for beating me harshly.  I also reported (1) that my skunky husband gave it a big thumbs-down; (2) that I took a second look at what I’d written; and (3) why I ended up agreeing with him.  It took about two weeks to come up with a second draft.  Here it is.

Blaming Daddy
Three criteria for blameworthiness (with thanks to Lewis Smedes)

  1. You did it.
  2. You intended to do it.
  3. No one forced you to do it.

In other words,
You beat me intentionally, and of your own will.
You began beating me when I was a toddler, and continued beating me until I was 15.

I blame you for beating me.

  • I did not ask for any of the beatings.
  • I am not responsible for any of the beatings.
  • I am not to blame for any of the beatings.
  • I blame you and you alone—not my mother or any of my sisters.

I blame you for abusing your power over me

  • As my father
  • As an adult male
  • As an ordained clergyman

In other words,

  • I am not to blame for your abusive misuse of power over me.
  • The beatings and other forms of abuse were not motivated by love.
  • They were not commanded by God.
  • They were motivated by your determination to break my will and by your own lust.
  • You abused me as my father, as an adult male and as an ordained clergyman.
  • You were not God’s agent sent to abuse me in any way.
  • There was no true power struggle between you and me.
  • You held all the power when it came to beatings.
  • You held all the power when it came to speaking as ‘God’s agent.’
  • You held all the power when it came to humiliating, shaming and abusing my female body by way of beatings, inappropriate touching, intrusive conversation, and willful sexualizing of your own behavior toward my mother in my presence.

_____

What next?  Two things…
First, I need to say this out loud:  When I read the words above, a strange mixture of fear and sadness wells up in me.  I can’t shake the feeling that somehow, somewhere, I’ll be found out.  Someone will decide I was and still am the problem, not Daddy.  I know this may sound irrational.  Yet the feelings well up from time to time.

I don’t often feel crippling shame these days.  Not the kind that comes from keeping secrets like this for decades.  In addition, I don’t often feel hot, rage-filled anger.  Not that it never comes up.  More often, I feel productive anger that fuels my determination to speak out.  Not to save all the children of the world, but to bear witness to what happened to me, especially inside me.

Second, after I completed the revision you see above, I kept feeling the statement wasn’t yet complete.  Yes, it’s clearly a statement of blame.  Direct, to the point, concrete, specific.  What more could there be?

We live in an Age of Blame.  Not that it hasn’t been around for ages.  It’s already present in the Garden of Eden.  Adam blames both Eve and God (‘the woman You gave me’).  Eve blames the serpent.  The blame game isn’t new.

Unfortunately, we also live in an age increasingly allergic to assigning blame.  Is it because we don’t know how to blame?  Perhaps.

Perhaps it’s also because we carry blameworthy loads around with us—hoping no one will ever find out.  They weigh heavy on our hearts and minds and spill over into our relationships.

After reading my second attempt many times, I decided to do one more thing.  Why?  Because I want to account for my adult self that knowingly and unknowingly passed along my own versions of the damage done to me.  My end goal isn’t to blame Daddy and then walk away.  It’s to step up to the plate with my eyes wide open, refuse to accept what doesn’t belong to me, and accept what does–as a mature adult woman moving on with her life.

So here’s the second part of my latest Blaming Daddy document.  I finished it on July 16.  Read it as though it were attached to the first piece above.

Allocating Responsibility
You are responsible for

~Willfully, intentionally and without coercion from anyone, using your power in ways that abused my body, my spirit, my mind, my emotions, my developing sexuality, and my overall identity/sense of self

~Abusing your power as my father, as an adult male, and as an ordained clergyman

~Not knowing or loving me as I was and am, beginning from early childhood and continuing throughout my adult years

~Creating an atmosphere of intimidation at home, not an atmosphere of safety

I am responsible for

~Stepping up to take responsibility for myself as a mature adult woman by

  • telling the truth and engaging in personal work with safe persons
  • understanding the nature and extent of what happened to me
  • taking steps to pursue healing for myself
  • acknowledging ways I have harmed myself and others knowingly and unknowingly, whether willfully or not
  • making amends wherever possible to myself and others, without doing harm to myself or others
  • doing my part to create an atmosphere of safety at home and in my external activities
  • sharing my experience, strength and hope with others
  • doing what I can to raise awareness and to support those who help children, young people and adults suffering in similar ways
  • being truthful to myself, to God and to others about the reality and outcomes of being abused as a child and young person
  • making peace with myself about my relationships with my father, mother and sisters

_____

Do I want to forgive my father?  I do, and the events of my childhood and teenage years shaped my entire life.  Sadly, I’ve blamed myself unjustly many times over–sometimes as part of consciously or unconsciously maintaining family secrets.

Smedes’ three guiding questions give me a way of reflecting on my life.  Have I ‘taken the  blame’ for wrongs done to or by me that would not pass the 3-question test?  If so, I want to clarify what is and is not my responsibility, and forgive myself as appropriate.

I’m weary  of carrying unnecessary, perhaps unjust baggage any longer.  I want clarity and healing.  Perhaps along the way I’ll have already forgiven my father.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 13 September 2014