For me to move forward in my life I had to learn to forgive. Holding on to anger from the harm done to me impacted how I have lived my life. As I have said in many of these stories, I wasn’t always the best person. I have broken many hearts by my actions. It became important to me to discover why I was becoming the person I did not want to be and be the person my mother raised me to be. If you could see my life on film from birth till now by all accounts, I had a good life. I had an amazing mother and two brothers, and we lived a life full of struggles, but we lived in a home full of love. There is one person in this blog you have never heard me speak about and that is my biological father whom I was named after. Today I want to talk about the moment I chose to forgive him. It became an important turning point in my life and a chance for me to leave that dark angry part of me behind.
My father left when I was five. It is like a faded photograph in my mind, but I was there when my mother asked him to leave, and she told me he wasn’t coming back. It was the last time I saw him. At five you can’t really understand those things, so I can’t remember if it affected me. What I do know is this, my mother raised us, and we never felt we lacked anything because we didn’t have a father. My mother never spoke ill of him, not once that I can remember. When I saw families where they had both parents in the home, I never felt we were missing anything and again it was because of my mother. What I did not realize is that within me I have a growing anger that came from feeling abandoned. I didn’t know it then, but it would affect how I interacted with people for much of my life. It was something that I had to work through if I wanted to survive.
I am going to tell you that the choices I made in my life are on me. I will not blame my biological father for my poor choices. It was all me, but I had to learn to forgive him so that I could begin to forgive myself. I spent much of my teens and twenties suffering from depression. I didn’t want to live, and I made choices to try and make that possible. I didn’t care about myself or anyone else. I was a great actor, but I just didn’t care. That no care attitude was reflected in my life choices.
It was a long journey for me to get to today. Therapy, support and love from my family and my children. My children saved me and to be honest I wasn’t always the best father, but they loved me unconditionally and they broke through that wall. But it was at that moment in 2020 that I made the choice to tell my father I forgive you. I couldn’t do it in person because he died in 2012. But I said it alone while driving in my car, and it was the most freeing thing I have ever done. I was able to finally let go of that anger and try to become a better version of me.
My biological father had a family and I hope his kids got the best version of him. I have no regrets because I had the best version of a mother and two young brothers. The lesson I learned in my dignity journey is the power of asking for and granting forgiveness. We are not excusing the act, but we are freeing ourselves from the anger that comes with carrying that burden. I have been on my journey to ask for forgiveness from those I have harmed. Some have given it some have not but for me it becomes important to face those demons and own my dignity violations so that I can end the cycle and be the man my mother raised and my family needs.
Charles Redd RN
Dignity Freedom Fighter
Dignity Freedom Fighter 