It’ll be time to pick my kids up from school soon, so let me get to the point. Today, I don’t get to hide behind my work. Being with my kids will leave no room for that. My fear of being someone who is incapable of engaging with them in a meaningful way will just have to wait. I know that fear is only mine because I inherited it. Today I get to practice not making it my legacy.
When I became a father, the new responsibility for more than just myself was a huge trigger for me. Among other things, it made me switch careers. It awakened an urgent desire to manifest myself as somebody who is of vital importance to others. Driven by that desire, I encountered Compassionate Inquiry®.
At the very start of my professional CI training, I learnt that wanting to be important to others had nothing to do with their needs, and everything with my own. It would not have occurred to me that I was still affected by forgotten wounds worth seeing, had it not been for the support that I received as part and parcel of my training.
Our third child was just five months old when I certified as a CI Practitioner. By then I was no longer getting in the way of my clients’ processes, having compassionately deconstructed my need to be important to them. Outside of the therapeutic safe space, however, my certification fueled my attempts to be of utmost importance to those most important to me like nothing before. Certification became my new best shot at achieving that illusive home-ownership that would finally rid my family of our reliance on social housing and governmental low-income support. With it, I would finally prove my worth as a husband, a father, a man.
Without knowing it, I hid behind my work again. Only this time was different. This time my wife got ill: digestive problems, anxiety attacks and heart palpitations. We were in and out of the doctor’s office, but none of the heart-, blood- or stool-tests indicated anything diagnosable. Eventually we asked the difficult question: what was her body saying ‘no’ to?
Listening carefully to her answers rapidly changed our lives. My wife lives in her own house now, where I see her take on responsibilities that I previously assumed could only be mine. Instead of breaking free from our dependence on social housing and state support, we now run two households. Instead of increasing my caseload, I now reserve a big chunk of what used to be work hours for being with my children. But I don’t regret our choice, and neither does Anna. All of her symptoms are gone.
There is a strong and growing love present in how I am now separated from the mother of my children. Together, she and I grew to see the patterns we would have kept each other locked into, had we not embraced our current separation as our further growth. Moving through the heartbreak, we are now at the distance that we need. Here we can remain in loving support of each other’s further unfolding. There’s more space now to tend to our wounds, grieve over losses, and celebrate new beginnings.
Something has broken open, and broken through for our children too. In general, they are cheerful, playful, and not afraid to show themselves when hurt, scared, sad, or angry. They have two parents, increasingly available for all of it. Two days a week they are with me, two days with their mother, and three weekdays we spend together.
One of the results of how our family has been rearranged is that there’s no hiding behind my work anymore on days like these. Instead, I’m gaining experience with actually being present to my children and the ongoing tests of fatherhood. That experience disproves my old belief that I am somehow incapable of being there for my kids.
The ability to simply be present is a gift that I have finally started bringing home from work. And although I’ve significantly reduced my working hours, I even seem to be more productive now. Even in the few hours of work that I get to squeeze in between running errands, I’m getting so much done. All of the resources I previously invested in struggling and hiding are available for something else now. The real work I’m sinking my teeth in, is that of transforming hiding into emerging. Starting with my own. On moments like these, it seems to be working. I’m right here.
Alright, that’s it for now; I need to run. Ooh, I think we’ll have tortillas tonight.
In September 2024, my wife and I attended a lecture with Dr. Gabor Maté in our home country, the Netherlands, where we had the opportunity to ask Gabor a question. You can watch his answer in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNd8MqzGEOQ
