Perspective: My father was an abusive alcoholic. Here’s why I decided to forgive him.
From left, Jill Suttie’s father, Richard, her mother, Rosemary, Jill , and her sisters, Jennifer and Janet, taken in her childhood home in Richmond, Calif., in 1959. By Jill Suttie May 15 at 8:00 AM When you grow up in a home with an alcoholic, you learn quickly how to stay invisible.
I tried to tune him out. I looked for parental figures in teachers, friends’ parents, my pastor at church. But it’s nearly impossible to not absorb your parents’ view of you. If they say something’s wrong with you, you assume there is. Then my father’s drinking escalated. After 42 years of marriage, he angrily divorced my mother, blaming her for his problems. Though it was an outcome I’d always wanted, it took me by surprise. I’d always thought my mother would leave him. Still, their divorce allowed me to spend time less time with my dad. Then something shifted.In 1990, I met and married my husband. When we had our first child, I began to feel a little empathy for my father.
The therapist helped my father understand his depression and encouraged him to stop drinking. This was not something he wanted to do. He especially didn’t want to go to AA meetings, where people talked about God. But he went anyway and found support, eventually starting to realize the costs of alcoholism on his relationships.
Jill Suttie with her father, Richard, and her son, Michael, in her father’s living room in Petaluma, Calif., in 1996. He also told me stories about his own life. As a child, he’d never felt love from his parents. He did poorly in school, probably because he couldn’t sit still and concentrate, for which he was often punished. Once, when he was very young, he got hold of some matches and accidentally started a fire at his house. His mother beat him.
These stories let me see a part of him outside his disease. He wasn’t a good dad, but he made sure we were cared for by working at a job he hated. He didn’t express love, but he’d had no good role models.
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