Most of us have that one wound we most struggle to see, to understand.

It follows us all our life; festering, bleeding, unrelenting, not wanting to heal. Sometimes it will disappear for a while, only to resurface when we least expect—in our relationships with lovers, with loved ones. It appears almost always when we feel it’s finally gone.

I am referring to the wound of all wounds: scars we received from our parents.

For me, it was a father wound.

I do not know another human being in my circle who has done as much soul searching as I have. For four years I searched for answers, ripped open all my wounds only to heal them this time with truth. Day after day, night after night, I let go of old patterns, fears and beliefs that kept me chained to illusions. I successfully created a new life that was made up of just the truth and I.

Yet sometimes, unexpectedly, a deep melancholy engulfed me.

After my successful spiritual transformation I felt ready to partner and rise in love again. In simple English, I was ready to date and meet someone special. My friends were ecstatic and heaved a sigh of relief. They were tired of my self-imposed celibate and spiritual life style over the last two years. Some of them would laugh and say, “You just need to get laid!”

I thought that as soon as I put myself out there, I would find that special man. After all, I had done so much healing and worked so hard to be that vehicle and epitome of love!

Sadly, my experience was the opposite, and for months I was confused and wondered what was wrong—what more do I have to do?

The dark cloud set in as usual, without warning. I decided to walk home to clear this energy. I felt lower than ever.

Loneliness pierced through every inch of my body. I walked feeling like an empty shell, weightless, carried forward by the wind of suffering, struggle and disappointment.

I had heard for the hundredth time from a woman friend of mine what a disaster I was in relationships, and how I did not know how to keep a man. I sat there and listened to her tell me how I must learn to be more feminine, softer, more giving, more receiving and to be the kind of a woman a man desires, or else.

Sadly, this hit home. I did not agree with her summation of my life or me. Yet something she said hurt me deeply. It wasn’t her, her words or this moment. It was much deeper and from much longer ago than that day—I had felt this feeling before.

I was five when I received my father wound.

Everything I learnt from life, from spiritual teachers and books pointed to the truth that all I had experienced was for a reason. The people who have come into my life to deliver and participate in these experiences are souls with whom I had an agreement to learn a lesson from.

I believed this, and so I walked the lonely road confused, asking myself why I chose this lesson, and if I did choose this then why have I not learned from it yet? Why does it haunt me still?

I felt drawn to throw myself at oncoming traffic. Life itself felt pointless. Even my soul had betrayed me! I was at the bottom of the pit. It was black, and I felt the end had come.

My soul stirred in this moment, and that was when the little one took out her book and started to write a letter.

Dear Daddy,

You are the angel who came down from heaven to love me, nurture me and to keep me safe. You were sent here to teach me how to receive love, how to give love. You were sent to set an example of what I should look for in a man when I become big and tall. You were asked to remind me that I was special and one of a kind.

Daddy, why then did you hurt me and leave me?

How did you forget what you were here to do?

Look at me now, daddy, your little one. I walk the road ready to die. I am lonely and I hurt and I am told I have no hope. Is this true? Is this what you wanted to teach me? Is this what you wanted me to learn?

I have no one to ask for help anymore. I have cried out to god everyday. He has no mercy and he cannot hear my cries. So today I ask you my dearest daddy, please help me.

Help me so that I can trust a man, help me so that I may receive affection, help me so that I may believe that I am special and worthy of love. Help me so that I may one day become a woman, wife, mother and grandmother.

There is no else I can turn to, except you. It all started with you. It’s time you help me end this with you.

This open letter and cry for help from my inner child to my father, who was also the bearer of my life’s deepest wound and greatest lesson, finally helped me end the agony I thought I was doomed to for a life time.

That night I cried heavy tears and slept a deep sleep with dream after dreams. My soul, my body and my mind finally let go. My heart became empty and light. I finally made peace with every man in my life. “I am sorry,” I said to each one of them. You are not my father, you are angels he sent to care for me, love me and heal my wounds from the tough lessons he taught me.

Only he could teach me so well that “I am loved always,” that “I am worthy always.”

My message to you, my dear readers, is this:

No matter how dedicated we are to healing and loving ourselves, there is no freedom until we go to the very core and heart of our pain. Feeling the original and first source of our pain is not easy, but it is the only way to be free of the gates and walls we have around our hearts. When the first gate, the first wall crumbles, everything else falls down.

It took me nearly four years to get here and to become ready for this moment.

I had practiced forgiveness in the past from a place of urgency to be rid of my “issues.” It was not always from a place of humility and innocence.

I realized humbly that I cannot choose this moment, the moment chooses me. All I had to do was to love myself every day until a deep trust was established within.

Your moment will come when you are ready to drop into that innocence—when you were five or six or 10. She will only come out when she knows she is loved and safe with you, the Woman. She will only come when she knows you are a Woman who can rise up to this pain.

When she arrives, she will know what do: a letter, a conversation, a prayer. She knows, and she will do it.

Love, give and receive yourself. Ready yourself for her arrival.

She is just around the corner, and she is waiting to be free.

Author: Deepthi Amin 

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Wesley Eller/Flickr