Seeing My Father Through New Eyes

This morning I woke up with more in the tank than usual.
Not just energy-wise — though 69% at 10am isn’t bad — but emotionally, too.
Something softer in my chest. A little more space to see things clearly.

I found myself thinking about my dad.

About the time he took me and my sister to the Natural History Museum, even though he must’ve known it would dysregulate him. How he rushed through everything, not because he didn’t care — but because he cared too much and couldn’t stay grounded in the overwhelm. I remember how he left the cinema once because it was too loud. He was trying to give us a childhood he never had, and it cost him something.

He was ashamed of how hard it all was for him.
But it wasn’t his fault. He never had the support he needed.

And I think… I can finally see that now.

He had this old African proverb pinned up in his office:
“We do not inherit the world from our parents; we borrow it from our children.”
That was his heart. That was what he wanted to live by.
But when your values and your nervous system are in conflict — when you’re carrying unresolved shame — things get messy.
And I think that mess, that grief of not being able to live out the fatherhood he imagined, slowly killed him.

It’s painful. But it’s also a gift.
Because I can see the humanness in him.
And through that, I can extend more grace to myself.

I see how exhausting it can be to answer question after question — how hard it is to stay regulated without support.
My son asks just as many as I did.
And yet, I find myself wanting to meet him in the way my dad wanted to meet me.
That’s the gift. That’s the repair.

I can’t fix the past. But I can soften it.
And maybe — by tending to my own shame, my own needs, and my own energy — I’m building something my dad tried to build, but never had the scaffolding to complete.

And that feels like love.