Heartfelt Letter to My Dad: The Power of Positivity and Forgiveness

Dear Reader,

What you are about to read is a heartfelt and personal letter. It touches my heart to read it and it makes me cry. I hope it brings similar emotion out in you. Congrats! You are one of the first people reading this.

A few months ago I wrote a letter to my dad outlining all the negative and positive thoughts I had about him. Here’s the list of positives I wrote in my letter. I hope you enjoy reading.

Dear Aba,

You are the most incredible father and I wouldn’t want to have any other father then the one I have. I am so incredibly lucky and fortunate to have you as my dad for many reasons.

You are one of the strongest people I know, if not the strongest person. You took three kids across the world, by yourself, and managed to raise them, mostly on your own (with help from family). You did this at twenty-seven years old! What you did is unimaginable. I am almost that age and I don’t see myself surviving that. You are like a super hero, a super dad, super human. Just the eleven hour plane flight with three kids would have been enough to kill someone. I imagine you wanted to give up fairly often and also leave us there (I am so fucking glad you didn’t). But you didn’t. You decided to do an incredibly difficult and noble thing. Many fathers leave their kids, it’s easy (I am incredibly sorry if this happened to you). You did the complete opposite. You saved us. You saved all of us from a life of even more misery and suffering. You didn’t have an easy life. You probably felt a lot of pain while you were raising us. You probably had to deal with a lot of pain and emotion from everything that happened.

You are so loving and kind. I don’t appreciate this enough. You are a truly loving and kind person with a great capacity of empathy. 

You are hardworking. You take care of the family. You try your best. You work really hard to support us to survive. 

You’ve done a lot of work to heal yourself. You're committed to self-love and growth. You are a bright light of love, compassion, empathy and understanding in this world. 

I appreciate you teaching me to love science, math, logic, philosophy, religion. I appreciate your great enthusiasm for attempting to understand the world, the unknown. I appreciate all of the conversations we’ve had about these topics. Our long discussions about life, the universe and everything, about spirituality and matters of the heart. Your enthusiasm about these topics helped me nurture and grow my own enthusiasm and enjoyment for learning about all of these topics. 

I appreciate all the support you’ve given me, financially and emotionally. For all the times you drove me to water polo practice, attended my games and cheered me on. I appreciate all of the many many times I called you on the phone for emotional support, sometimes what seemed like every day, for months. You would be there, fully loving, open, accepting and supportive to the best of your ability. I appreciate that I can talk to you about almost anything. It’s so cool I have I dad I can be completely open with. 

I love who you are and everything you’ve taught me. I am similar to you, I realize. A lot of the good parts of me are the amazing parts of you (resilient, hardworking, logical, loving, kind, empathetic). I like to think I learned and received those parts from you. You are truly incredible. I was blind to see it because I was holding on to resentment and I was hurting. 

I’m sorry for taking you for granted. For all the times I took you for granted and didn’t treat you with the same loving-kindness as you did with me. 

I have an overwhelming amount of love and appreciation for you. 

I’d be so lucky to have turned out anything similar to you.

I feel so lucky to have the best dad in the world. You are my superman, super dad, a huge role model, a leader, and an inspiration of love, strength, and kindness.

I love you so much and I am so proud to be your daughter. The ways you love and care for yourself and those around you inspire me to do the same. 

I could not ask for a better father. 

You’ve taught me to be open with emotions. How to share and show your feelings. Many people don’t get this, especially from a parent. I appreciate this side of you, so much. 

Thank you so much for all of the many ways you’ve helped me on my healing and spiritual journey. Thank you for leading the way and helping me along my path. Thank you for being loving and supportive to my needs. Thank you for being there, someone I can call, whenever, for help. Thank you for being so supportive. I wouldn’t be me without you. 

And now I am a pile of tears after reading and writing all of this. I hope you feel the same/similar type of admiration, acceptance, appreciation, and love after reading this. You deserve it. You deserve it all. You deserve an overwhelming amount of love, appreciation, and kindness. I’m sorry you had to go through everything you did. You’ve turned into a truly incredible person. I am so so lucky to be your daughter.

I can’t wait to have this “new” relationship with you. How will it be different? I see you now, fully. From all angles, the good and the bad. I forgive you for your faults. I realize your greatness and appreciate your strengths. I will no longer hold past resentment against you. It’s just not worth it!

I realize I see others in a negative light, too. I focus too much on the negative aspects of others and what I am not getting from them. This is really harmful for myself and my relationships with others. This is just the first step. There are many other letters I have to write to realize the full picture of every person I have negative feelings towards. Then choose to release resentment, forgive, and love them for exactly the way they are. 

Who is this new daughter? This new daughter is more loving and accepting. She sees the full picture. She doesn’t blame others or hold resentment for their faults. The faults of others do not affect her. She can be more loving and present with her dad. She can show her dad more appreciation and love.

I hope you like this new daughter. It is nice to meet you.

I love you, I love you, I love you. I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you. I want to give you the same overwhelming support and love you’ve shown me. 

Love. 

Your proud daughter,

Eden 

… Phew. Take a few deep breaths.

I cry every time I read that. Are you in a pile of tears too? Well, you’re not alone…

Do you practice forgiveness? Is there someone in your life you are resenting?

If so, (be honest!) I invite you to do this activity: write down all of the negative thoughts you have about them first, then write down all of the positives/appreciations about them. Because I promise you the end result will be worth it. Do it for yourself! Let that negative shit go! It’s not worth carrying around! It’s heavy, it physically hurts and it is emotionally draining. I promise you will feel 1,000 times lighter and more free. Plus you might even get an added bonus of becoming closer with the person you have negative feelings towards. Who doesn’t want more love and connection? Isn’t that why we are all here? You can still do this activity even if the person you have resentment towards is no longer in your life.

Since writing this letter I have a much better relationship with my dad. I think about him in a completely different way, in a much more positive way. My relationship with him has improved. I am free from the burden of carrying around negative thoughts about him and I get to enjoy my dad!

I hope you enjoyed reading all this and I wish you well on your journey.

Forgiveness is not easy and it sometimes takes time. Forgiveness cannot be forced.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge all of the children who have lost their fathers, fathers who have lost their children and anyone with a strained father/child relationship. I see you. This holiday might bring up some not very pleasant emotions for you. Be gentle and easy with yourself. Be accepting with yourself and how you are feeling. Let the emotions come and let yourself move through them. I’ll be sending you extra love and strength today. There is always the possibility of forgiveness. It might not happen today or tomorrow or even next year. Just know it is a possibility. More freedom and love await.