I longed for a love that would change me.

For someone to come along and heal each broken piece of me.  Someone who would feel honoured in placing my shattered jagged parts back together and make me once and for all feel whole.

I spent so much of my life hoping for this person to arrive, dreaming of what life would be like.  Needless to say disappointment flooded my existence.  I was drowning in worthlessness and despair.  Somehow believing that it would be someone outside of me that could put me back together. That it would be something outside of me that could give me all this love I so deeply wanted.

Everything  else was secondary.

Nothing seemed more important than this search for love.  I arrived at dead ends, feeling like a failure in what seemed so simple….someone to love me.  My children loved me, my friends loved me, my family loved me but what I came to realized was that the man I had been waiting for all along was my dad.  The day he left and never came back would be the day a part of my heart broke.

He is a stranger to me, never playing his part the way I wanted or needed. His absence created a hole so unbearably deep within me.  My whole life I have seen beautiful relationships between fathers and daughters, always feeling that would never be me.  I would never have him to walk me down the aisle, to see my children grow, to wipe away my tears and hold me when I felt life was falling apart.  I wanted him to be my hero, my saviour.  I allowed this loss to take over my life and my relationships.

No one could ever fill the shoes I had laid out, they were enormously huge and impossible to fill.

Then there came a time I knew I was the only one.  Left with only myself and a past full of heartache was the only way I could see that is was never anything outside of me that could fill those shoes, that could repair the damage that long-lived inside of me. This was now between me and the Divine.  I had to let it all go.  My dad, each failed relationship, the years of disappointment and self punishment for never feeling good enough to be loved. For a lifetime of not allowing myself to really be open to love and fearing love. It was time to release it all.

There is a blessing in each of our troubles.  Look closely and you will see.

His absence lead me to each partner I chose and each of them offered me a gift.  For me the greatest gifts were my 2 sons given to me by a man who I tried to make fill those big shoes and eventually helped me realize how much I needed to love myself and save my own Soul.  To this man who is forever my family and friend, I will always be grateful for each moment we shared, the good and the bad because it led me here.  To this exact moment in time.  And please know how much I love you and always will and that my absence from you is not out of love lost but love to be found.  For me.  To save myself.

Because of you, I chose me. In this moment I am grateful.

Much Love,

L