Your Sense of Identity and Fathers

As Father’s Day approaches, I find myself in a self reflective state of mind. This week someone challenged me to test if I have debilitating belief systems about my sense of identity and self worth. It is a question we should all explore at some point.

I ‌believe I come across as a confident person and people should not need to walk on eggshells around me. Yet several times when someone has criticised me, it has hindered my progress. I then make excuses to explain why I am not taking action in certain areas of my goals.

My mentor gave a simple test for me to explore at what point I should consider other people’s opinions. She asked me to test if my critics were taking action in areas that they were criticising myself or others in. In the same week, I got a message from one of my contacts who told me that, based on my LinkedIn content, I have a “footprint of empowerment.” 

So who is the real Kim? “A champion for those who need the courage to move forward, or the self-defeating coward who knows how to put on a good show.” Perhaps the answer is that many of us are on a journey that has a series of twists and turns and, during some seasons, our sense of self can come under attack.

Knowing who you are, what your purpose is, and what value you bring is critical. Catherine of Aragon, King Henry’s VIII’s first wife, was a woman who knew who she was and what she believed her value was. Although Henry got his marriage annulled 1533 in after appointing himself head of the Church, Catherine held strong in her sense of identity. I wonder if, during her darkest moments, like a good Catholic woman, she quoted Psalm 57:2 in her prayers, which says, “I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfils his purpose for me.” History tells us that over a nine-year period, she had six pregnancies and that only one child survived. According to the times where a queen’s primary role was to bear sons, she was a dismal failure.

When Henry VIII had Parliament annul his marriage, it legally made their daughter Mary illegitimate. During the turbulent years that followed, his first wife held true to her belief that she was the legitimate Queen of England. Catherine of Aragon’s sheer determination to hold on to this sense of identity may have alienated her ex-husband, but in due course, their child, Mary, ascended to the throne.

Sadly, Henry denied Catherine access to her daughter for many years. Mary went from being a royal legitimate child to an illegitimate one and often treated with suspicion by her father’s new wives. As a young child, I was abandoned and I can identify with Mary’s struggles and her defiant attitude when faced with the consequences of other people’s opinions and decisions.

Yet when faced with trials in life, we have two options: to use it as fuel to learn and grow or to justify poor and sometimes cruel decisions. Mary’s documented dismissal of her step mother Anne Boleyn, who usurped her mother, shows that Mary had the seed of bitterness growing in her heart. She did not take to betrayal well and when she finally got to be ruler, she acquired the terrible title of “Bloody Mary”. 

Her father Henry had turned his back on the Catholic church, who denied him an annulment to her mother. He got what he wanted, but his actions had dire consequences for their sole remaining child of his union with Catherine. I can imagine that this betrayal may have been the first bud of her religious intolerance. Her reputation came from her orders to have over 300 Protestant heretics burned at the stake during her brief reign of five years. When I calculated it, I found that it amounts to an average of around five burns every month. While burning at the stake was a typical punishment for heresy over Europe, Mary earned herself a place in Protestant “martyrologist,” John Foxe’s book “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” which had detailed accounts of every martyr who died for his or her faith under the Catholic Church.

There are countless stories of tyrants who fall from compassion to people of contempt that are linked back to alienation from a parent. It may seem like a cliche, but there is too much evidence to support the claim, and it is a topic I hint at in my first book, The Last of the Silver Wings. In the book, we get a glimpse of King Radolf’s life as a child when he lost his mother and the subsequent alienation from his father. It is a topic that rears its head in my second book. “The Fire Within the Storm”, as another of one our characters struggled with a father relationship. This does not make fathers the enemy, rather it is a reminder to encourage and help fathers to live up to their potential. Yet the reality is that many people live with the scars of absent or damaging parents. Perhaps that is where the notion of re-parenting oneself comes in and where we can get a sense of healing from connecting with a compassionate, heavenly father.

Whatever your relationship was with your primary caregiver, this article reflects what our higher purpose is and to strive with courage, become the best version of ourselves.