Letting Him In

A Threshold Between Past and Peace

Photo by Behnam Mohsenzadeh on Unsplash

This morning, I stood in front of Unity Center for Spiritual Growth in Windham, Maine, and delivered a talk titled “Between Us and Them: Walking a Path to Oneness in a Wounded World.” In my talk, I shared a story about forgiveness, about seeing divinity in those who’ve caused us harm, and about the practice of recognizing both our shared humanity and the Divine even with people we’d rather forget.

As I wrote that talk over the past few weeks, something kept tugging at me. A presence I’d been ignoring. A spirit I’d been pushing away.

My stepfather.

I’ve written about him before. About the pool cue that flew past my twelve-year-old face. About living in constant vigilance, making myself small enough to survive his rage. I thought I’d done my work around him. I’d forgiven him years ago, or so I told myself. I’d practiced compassion, understood that hurt people hurt people, and released the grip his actions had on my present.

He died several years ago, and honestly? I felt relief. A door closing on a chapter I was grateful to leave behind.

But then he started showing up.

Not in dreams or memory. In actual spirit communication. Through other mediums first, then through my own abilities as I’ve been developing them. He kept trying to reach me, to connect, to say something. And every single time, my response was immediate:

Go away.

I don’t want to hear from you.

Leave me alone.

Even in death, I thought, he won’t respect my boundaries. Even from the other side, he’s pushing his way in where he isn’t welcome. And I told myself it was justified. This wasn’t about failing to practice what I preach. This was about boundaries. This was about self-protection.

Until I sat down to write about oneness, and realized I was staring directly at my own hypocrisy.

As I worked on my Unity talk, focusing on that other story, the safer one about my father’s death, because tragic accidents are easier to forgive than deliberate cruelty, I kept feeling his presence. Not demanding. Not aggressive. Just there. Waiting. Patient in a way he never was in life.

And I realized: I hadn’t really forgiven him at all.

I guess I’d performed forgiveness, I mean, I really thought I had forgiven him. I’d done the spiritual work on paper. I’d said the words. But the moment he tried to reach me from beyond, my reaction was visceral. You don’t get peace. You don’t deserve my attention. You can spend eternity trying to make amends, and I will spend eternity refusing to hear it.

I’d turned him into a symbol. A villain in my personal mythology. Irredeemable, beyond grace, permanently cast outside the circle of my compassion.

This was precisely what I was preparing to challenge the congregation not to do.

My inner child, understandably, did not want to let the man who created a lifetime of fear anywhere near me ever again. Not in life. Not in death. Not ever.

But as I was preparing for the talk, I was struck by this revelation: every time I told his spirit to go away, I was also telling that scared child that some wounds are too deep to heal. Some people are too broken to see as whole. Some parts of our story are too painful to transform.

I was holding onto my anger because it felt like protection. It felt righteous. It felt like the only sane response to years of abuse, to a childhood defined by fear, to the way his violence carved grooves in my nervous system that I’m still learning to smooth out.

But anger is heavy. And even though I thought I had let it all go. His presensce back in my life reminded me…I was exhausted.

So one night, instead of pushing him away, I sat in meditation and I let him in.

It wasn’t some beautiful moment of instant healing. It was messy and complicated and I felt a mixture of intense emotions that I hadn’t felt in years.

I told him everything. The fear. The anger. The way his presence in my life taught me that love and violence could exist in the same house, that safety was never guaranteed, that I had to earn my right to exist by being perfect and invisible and small.

I told him about the pool cue. About every door he slammed, every hole he punched in walls, every moment I held my breath waiting for his fist to finally find its target. I told him how his death brought relief, and how I hated myself for feeling relieved.

And then, I opened myself to his presence, to the actual soul that he was. And what came through wasn’t the rage I expected. He showed me an image of him weeping. His head in his hand, and uncontrollable tears falling. It was grief. Deep, profound grief. His grief for the man he could have been and wasn’t. For the child he’d been before his own wounds turned him into someone who hurt the people he was supposed to protect.

I saw him, maybe for the first time, not as a monster but as a profoundly wounded soul who spent his life running from his own pain by creating it in others. Who died carrying the weight of everything he’d done and couldn’t undo. Who’d been trying to reach me because he finally understood what he couldn’t see in life.

And in that seeing, something shifted.

This recognition didn’t erase what he did. It didn’t make the abuse okay. It didn’t mean I suddenly wanted him back or wished things had been different. The boundary between his pain and mine remained firm. Had to remain firm.

But I could finally see him as both human and Divine. He was deeply flawed and wounded beyond what he knew how to heal. And doing the absolute best he could with the consciousness he had, which wasn’t good enough, which caused harm, which left scars I’ll carry forever. But he was also Divine…just like you are…just like I am. And just because I didn’t want to see it, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Both things are true. Both things have to be true.

I forgave him. Not because he earned it. Not because the abuse was somehow less than it was. I forgave him because carrying that hatred was keeping me small in the exact same way his violence once did. Because every time I pushed him away, I was also pushing away my own capacity to heal fully. Because that child by the pool table deserved to finally put down that fear and know, bone deep, that he’s safe now. And because somewhere beyond his rage and selflessness was a spark of Divinity that deserved to be seen.

Next time, if or perhaps when he comes through, through another medium or in my own practice, I will no longer slam the door. I will acknowledge him. I will hold space for his remorse and his journey without letting it override my own truth.

Dad...I see you. I see the good you carried alongside the harm you caused. And I release both of us from the grip of our past.

Despite everything he put me through, I am no longer defined by what I feared.

And neither is he.

So when I stood before the Unity community this morning and talked about walking a path to oneness in a wounded world, I spoke from a place of hard-won understanding. I know what it costs to see divinity in someone who hurt you. I know how fierce boundaries and radical compassion can coexist. I know that forgiveness isn’t about them. It’s about freeing ourselves from the weight we were never meant to carry forever.

This is the work. Not pretty. Not easy. Not a one-time revelation but a practice we choose again and again.

Next week, I’ll write more about what forgiveness actually means when the person is gone, when reconciliation isn’t possible, when all you have is your own heart and the choice of what to do with it.

But today, I’m simply sharing this: I let the ghost in. And in doing so, I finally set us both free.

What about you? Are you haunted, literally or figuratively, by someone who hurt you? What would it mean to let them in, not to excuse their behavior, but to free yourself from the prison of your anger? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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