Healing the Father Wound
by Aisel Thakur
I was writing one fine day in August 2024. The summer was getting to me. So I really took a long pause away from my family to discover what was blocking me. And I discovered, I didn’t have a real dad. I mean, of course I have a dad. He died in 2011. I didn’t know him. I have much to learn about growing up with a father. And I had much to grieve about never getting the chance.
School was no help. All day we learned about God, the Father. Many people mentioned doubts about how my sister and I would be able to grasp the idea of a father if we didn’t have the experience. But often, that wasn’t the reason. The reason was that maybe I had an idealized version of a father. And so many around me tried to tell me that a dad was no picnic. That they were sometimes emotionally immature because they were stuck in a very important role.
It made no sense to me that such dichotomies exist. And then I realized that it was also how women were seen in my traditional environment that distorted my image of a man. If a man’s purpose was to take care of his family, but that made him miserable and everyone around him miserable, then is that a man, or a wounded boy? A wounded boy that maybe lost his childhood, too. Lost in the anxiety of not being, not doing, not having enough. A boy that was taught to be ‘man of the house,’ you have to have a stoic demeanor. You have to check to make sure the wife isn’t getting into any trouble. That she is kept behind closed doors, tending to family and home.
But, then a woman had no time for being a woman. So she became the wounded girl who always had to put the needs of others first. She was the one that cleaned up after everyone, had and reared children, and became useless on her period. Sounds quite distorted, right? Surely nuances exist! But here’s the caveat: Nuances only exist in healthy minds. They may still exist in unhealthy minds, but that’s not often the thoughts that break through. For some people who lived in an unsafe environment most of their lives, and their ancestors lives, it is very hard to convince them that the nuances are what make something true. Because, historically, that was not the case.
To convince someone that it’s safe now, is to show them. But safety doesn’t come from lack of fear. And what if fear was the sign of danger? And not just a scanning mechanism? What if being afraid was what made the danger less impactful? What if anticipating the worst case was the way to make the awful things that inevitably happen seem less horrific? Is that becoming an apologist? Is “well it could have been worse” better than “whew, we made it!”?
I learned something about life. The less I clung to things, the easier they came to me. The more I obsessed, the more difficult it became to let go. Addiction works the same, I believe. If a substance becomes the only thing that makes you feel like yourself, you have to examine why and not say the substance is a bad thing. The moment shame about having to use it becomes the loudest shadow in the room, it often leaves the mind blank from self reflection, giving the user a false sense of self. They may believe everything is “fine” and didn’t need to change. Or, they may think they are the devil and there was no hope for them.
I learned that clinging and obsessing are the same as putting too much meaning to things. For some people, they need it. They need a system. They need to relive it. They enjoy it. In that respect, I believe that Hashem is a powerful idea. Something that is running everything would want you to experience it. Over and over, if you like, and see where life goes! In the Buddhist/Hindu sense, I would say that Judaism teaches us about how to live a decent life in samsara /the circle of reincarnation.
In Judaism there is a concept of tchyias hamesim, when the soul will inhabit the same body again. Where the same persona awakens again to live a similar life, however based on its past self, it would be better/worse off. This is a concept of gilgulim and tikkun haolam. This basically suggests that you, as your name with your history, may relive this soul’s life many times.
So, in conjunction with the idea, I believe that if you want a life of rebirth, restructure, renewal of old concepts, please adhere to the laws of the Torah. They make good sense. Hashem is not a male or female. But the extra addition of YHWH is what made me uncomfortable. The only reason was because He was clearly a wounded boy in the way we learned it in the Torah in school. I think that even the fundamental literature was quite childish in nature, quite tribal, and when Judaism ‘grew up,’ resistance still persisted. The push and pull of human and animal makes the idea of a soul abstract and almost too holy for us to house it. That’s why purity rules became so much more important than the God in nature. The human was given precedence, however it took, even becoming blind to the byproduct of such thinking.
The concept of ‘it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be done’ became the rule until getting things done was getting easier. So now, getting things done needed to be perfect.
But, as I read through the chumash, or the Torah with commentary, I saw apologists everywhere. To me, I sat there, absorbing it, and wondering, “do I need to integrate all of this into my persona?” So for Elisheva, I did. And I hated it. I absolutely hated it. But Elisheva didn’t let me. She kept saying, “No, there’s something here. Wait.”
Well, I waited until 2024, and I had it. I told YHWH to leave. That I was afraid of him. That he was not supposed to have made it this far. That historical evidence was stronger than the storm enemy god of Ba’al. And my life… changed. My voice grew. My power expanded. And it made me sad again. That I let him go like that, with a spell, some wheat, flax and salt. And suddenly, life improved? The guilt was heavy. Not because I regretted it. Because I realized that I had this distorted image of Hashem the whole time. That when they say he has no name, but those 4 letters always stared me in the face, it was clear the book did. And then it dawned on me that maybe the book was written by people. And the sadness of the acceptance was very hard. It made me realize one thing: the Torah was ours. And only we should agree to what is written in it. And if we don’t, we cannot keep teaching it.
YHWH came back to me in a wave back in October of 2025. I knew he was back. And I asked him one thing: “Where is Asherah?” He cried. Literally. He said, “She’s fixing the world.” That’s when I knew I had no other choice but to mourn for him. He was also disconnected. YHWH to me felt like my mother growing up. Disconnected from love, knowing true love, dreaming of it. But humans thought that taking her away would make him omniscient. If the story was there initially, we cannot assume the archetype isn’t universally hurt, too. Especially in my own gilgul (soul cycle).
Tragic love stories are such. I was brought to the story of Shiva and Parvati. When she was so devoted to him, he still didn’t believe her. She proved her devotion but still, marrying him wasn’t enough to hold him back from his strong sense of justice. It was after they married that she became Kali. She told him that she didn’t really need him. But simply, she needed him to contain her. Not to lock her.
And so she had to be free.
Adishakti or the Shechinah (the supreme divine feminine) is beyond anything. Only masculine can contain her. The rib of Adam was the vessel to hold Eve. She was already there. Uncontrolled.
The reason Asherah left was not because “we only want one god, and this one is valid enough.” She left because she told everyone that they didn’t deserve her yet. The only way to find each other again is to completely detach. And Judaism didn’t teach that. Not the one I knew, anyway. So I had to do it myself. If your god is your narcissistic parent, the first step is boundaries. And enforcing those boundaries is important, even if it’s supposed to be the all-knowing god. Because God only exists in your head. Trust me, even He knows this. Even you know this.
