I don’t often get sick, so when I do it becomes a mission to seek out answers.

First step was my metaphysical anatomy book. You’ll know about this book if you’ve ever had a session with me and had any kind of ailment. It’s my favourite. I could feel the beginning of bronchitis, so I muscle tested to the relevant part for me… Working too hard and not letting my inner truth guide me was the gist of the message.

Next my second favourite, aromatherapy: ‘Everlasting’ with the message “Walking with head held high ‘out’ of your history, using the wisdom and healing of all your experiences to walk out of your pain and torment, with inner alignment, inner peace, true belief and respect in self, dignity and your own unique and individual sense of style”.

With this, I lay down and began to meditate – clearly getting the message I need to stop, slow down and listen for answers in good time. Visualising my chakras being cleansed one by one, I stopped at the solar plexus and began to cry. (The solar plexus is about our identity, our ego, our power and transformation.) You see for well over 3 years now, I have been angry at my father. Not just annoyed or frustrated but truly, deeply angry. And I’ve been working on this anger for as many years, slowly chipping away at it, finding new angles to it, redefining my role in all this anger.

And tonight I found some clarity.

You may think I’m unfair after what I’m about to share, but this is me, how I have felt and how I came to be crying during my meditation tonight. My dad has alcohol induced acquired brain injury. That means he’s brain damaged from drinking too much alcohol. It also means that all of his decisions are ‘primal like’ or pleasure seeking. It’s not nice to be around as – quite blatantly – he’s selfish. And for the almost 2.5 years that my mother had cancer, I watched him neglect the whole situation.

Watching my mother die is difficult enough let alone watching my mother worry more about my father than herself in her dying days. The husband who had not been there for her. So I found myself blaming him for her death, knowing on a logical level that it just wasn’t true.
Fast forward a number of months and we finally get a diagnosis for dad’s brain injury. He was told not to drink again or it will worsen. Not 60 minutes after the consultation, he was asking to go to the pub. None of this is in his control. It’s the injury. Does this make it easier? Not really. Does this take the anger away? Not really. Does this mean I’ve lost my father as well? Well, yes.

So as all powerful things do, it hit me like a tonne of bricks. As I was visualising my solar plexus chakra clearing, the emotion poured out… Why can’t my father choose me? Why can’t he choose me over alcohol? My family? Why can’t he see? I KNOW why he can’t see. I KNOW why he chooses alcohol. Which brought me to: I’ve lost my father to brain damage… and he’s never coming back. He’s no longer the soft, caring, generous man who used to hold me regardless of the tears that fell from my face. He hasn’t been that man for a long time, but we were too busy helping mum that we missed that part depart in dad.

It’s funny how other people can tell you something 10 times, but until you face the fear face on, you’ll never truly absorb it. I’m grieving my father. The days he had hoped to take the grandkids fishing, the promise of showing my son what a yabby is. It will never happen. Because he’s not getting better.

My dad lost his father when he was in his early 20’s to a car accident. I’m realising now, I lost my father many years before I lost my mum. Will the anger now dissipate? Only time will tell. But every step is a step closer on a journey I am determined to complete.