Amazing Awareness

Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of my father’s death. You see, he died 13 years ago by ending his own life. He chose to end his life on April 4th, 1997 because...well, I don’t really know why, only he does, but it was in the middle of the trial that came about by his own children, me being one of the children, charging him with sexual abuse.

For 13 years I didn’t know how to deal with what I was feeling on the anniversaries of his death so I decided to be stoic and brave and not allow myself to feel at all. Maybe allowing myself to just feel the loss for a brief second and then I would tuck it nicely away where it belonged. I realized that I always made it about him and therefore I constantly had these conflicting feelings of how could I be feeling sad, how could I cry over his death, how could I feel such incredible loss and grief. After all, he sexually abused me for the better part of my life. Wasn’t I supposed to feel relieved? He was gone, dead, alleluia; anther “criminal, pervert” was off the streets. But it’s not that easy. But this is what I was silenced with for 13 years. I wasn’t supposed to feel the deep, deep, profound loss and grief, especially after everything that he did, that’s just not normal. Nobody understood, yet they felt they had the right to judge and place me in this prison. Nobody understands that despite what my father did, a child lost her father. After all, doesn’t every child want to have both a mother and a father? I know I sure did.

So, for 13 years I carried around these conflicting feelings until this morning - Easter Sunday. Thanks to my guides and my angels who have always been there to guide me and show me the way, I finally realized that it is no longer about my father; it never was, it was and is about me. After 13 years I am finally ready to respect and honour that part of MYSELF and finally allow MYSELF to feel the grief and mourn MY losses; to finally break free from this prison that has held me captive for way too long. Kind of symbolic, don’t you think, it being Easter Sunday, the day of resurrection. Symbolically, a resurrection happened for me and it feels great.

On April 13th, 1997 a child, albeit an adult child of 29, suffered a tremendous loss. I lost my father, Karl-Heinz Sieffert, in a most tragic way – suicide, and I never got to say good-bye.