What a piece of story-telling. See also (from recent readings:)
1. "Grief is an expression of [often fierce, even enraged] love,".. see Hamlet, in his (generally schmaltz-ified) soliloquy, or 'old news' from Gaza/Palestine as well as Russian Colonialism, both over the last 90 years (+) and counting ...
2. "The only verb that does not die is 'to be'," see "things in nature merely grow," (from Yiyun Li, 2025).
3. Eleanor Anstruther's 'Postcards' (+), particularly her writings about her mother, not to mention the ('impure') Gypsy Queen in her ancestry ...
There’s nothing more important. I was just talking to my son, Liam, about this last night. He’s 27 now. Can you imagine, Chrysm? 27. He’s beautiful. I told him about all the research about how differently boys are raised than girls. He’s grateful he was held and nurtured.
This is such a beautiful essay. I’ve had a similar experience of all-encompassing love and a similar visitation from my mother, so this absolutely tracks. It’s all love. Thank you for your vulnerable, lovely writing.
Beautiful Susan. So good. I had such a visitation from my mother - a year prior to her death (she had dementia) - and let me know she was free and how her love would remain with me and it was -a great gift. When her body died I knew she’d already ascended. I experienced a holy instant with my dad when I was in my thirties. Sitting across from him time fell away and I recognized I no longer needed him to hate myself with. That release freed me from seeking that father love I never received in other places and men. My father sent me a message from the grave by disinheriting me. When he saw he had no power to shame me and had to carry his own shame his hatred and contempt increased to no avail. I would love a visitation from the soul I know he is…or perhaps it takes a while even on the other side. I know healing comes with death - I look forward to experiencing his. 💕
I'll tell you one of the parts I cut. I sat with a psychic in a conference room in a bank. That's jarring, right? There were about 30 people asking questions about loved ones who had died. No way I was going to ask. When we reached the end of the night, she looked right at me and said: Any more questions?
I nodded and gulped: What happens to suicides?
She closed her eyes and said that my father was an extremely violent man. He hadn't been able to contact me for the last fifteen years because he was wrapped in a kind of suspended animation while healing beings sang over him. She said he would visit me around Christmas time, and then he would go back into healing mode for another fifteen years or so.
This meeting was in October before the Christmas he came to me in the car.
Maybe your dad is being sung to. I love that image to this day.
That’s the most accurate description and story about patriarchy and shame I’ve read. Patriarchy in my lifetime has usually been projection coming from men that have been shamed. Thanks for post. Great writing
Thanks, Bad. It means a lot to me. Also, I want to show that patriarchy comes through mothers, wives, and daughters too. My grandmother, for example, listening to the male doctor expert rather than her own heart. The viscious shame inflicted by my mother. It's in everything, everywhere, all at once. We must stop inflicting mindless harm on one another. Before you can solve a problem, you have to be able to see it.
I just found this here. Heartbreaking beautiful, rich and full. I'll read this again too. I Love"woo woo new age wingnut who sees ghosts everywhere!" So fascinating to heat your true rich story rather than the one I was told...More soon! I'm with you completely and I'm sorry for what you've been through. I just subscribed to Modern Mythology.
Holy cow, I had no idea who I was talking to until I saw Roger had subscribed. I just loved your writing. I’m very glad to meet you again. I’d love to hear, someday, the story you were told. I’m sure I have gaps.
Thanks. I've added you to my contacts. You might want to delete this post, or at least the phone number. IDK. Probably just me not trusting SM all that much. I'm going to retire from teaching tomorrow. I'll have time and time and time after that.
As a “woo-woo new age wingnut who sees ghosts everywhere” 🤣 i am obsessed with this post. Thank you for writing it. Nothing is black and white and you bravely told this story so perfectly. And I loved hearing about his visitations. Magnificent job. 🩶
Hmmm. I wonder why I didn’t think of you when I wrote that line? If I had, I might have cut it so I wouldn’t offend. You are my favorite new age wingnut who sees ghosts everywhere. Thank you so much. If I was going to quietly beg anyone to read it, that would have been you.
So glad you didn’t cut it!! You could never offend me. I embrace the wing-nut full heartedly but I totally get it that the woo woo isn’t for everyone. And I definitely toe the line of taking it too far. What an awesome thing to say, too, that you would have wanted me to read it. Given how special and important and gorgeous this post is, I am tremendously honored. What an amazing compliment you’ve given me. Similar to what Jay said, your ability to pull together the messiness of his terror, abuse, along with his humanity, his loving spirit, his history and the overarching themes of shame and toxic masculinity… it is truly outstanding work.
Susan, it’s really too bad that we could not have talked about this in high school because more than a few of us were experiencing and living the same horrors in one degree or another. It is truly wonderful when we have that otherworldly experience and I firmly believe it serves us well as we remain here on earth. 👍🏼
I would absolutely love that. I recently had a similar conversation with Gale Cote. She’s down to party, too, as we oldsters do. When I visit Allen, I’ll let you all know and we’ll set something up.
Phew. I get that. I was too busy trying to look cool, just enough, to be accepted, though I knew I wasn't cool enough. That doesn't create any space for honesty. I wasn't strong enough to be honest. Plus, I was afraid being honest would land me in foster care or something worse. The something worse happened anyway. I had a death wish for a long time. Now, though, I live in joy almost all the time. Even when my heart is melting, joy is the background.
I just want to add, Roy, that this catharsis is not strange at all. It happens for me, everytime I let people see my art. There is something about publishing it that does that. It takes courage.
That's so cool. I don't want to leave ruins behind me either. And I love that image of dancing in the dark like a sea angel. That lives inside me now, like a dream image. I might want to try to paint that image. Thank you.
Paint first. Then I'll send you the link that I got the image / thought / video from. If that's presumptuous, please say so ... but I don't want to interrupt your hand/s. It's another whole world of tangential images / memes / spin offs ... (you get the picture/s ..., no?)
Wow, Susan. Thank you so much. I got to know another woman, another family, who (silently) went through that same (damn) cascade of 'doors.' You write like an angel.
Thank you, Roy. I'm sorry you had that experience. There are so many of us, but mostly, we are silent. I'm for breaking that vow. We had family meetings. "What happens in the family, stays in the family." Well, I broke with that because I was too young to give informed consent. I kid, but I do think opening up about this is important in stopping it. Also, how do we support one another if we don't know who we all are?
this is not an easy question for me to answer ... I try to 'talk to my ghosts' and the distant ones are easy / er. but sometimes the ghosts are just tooooo close (and that's not a matter of clock-time) - they are still part of 'me.' mmmmm .... I'm, in principle, for 'breaking that vow' too ...
On a different note:
(from Die Towerberg se Dans - the Dance of the Mountain of Spells)
Oh god, that’s beautiful. Trust your own knowing. Don’t open to anything that doesn’t feel safe. Painful and safe are not the same thing. Only you know what’s best.
The original video of the 'Sea Angel' is part of the BBC Series, Planet Earth III, Series 1:1 Coasts, from about 15 minutes into the programme. The still pic doesn't seem to copy here, my apologies.
(If you send me an email address, I can send you a still pic. My email is roytwilliams@gmail.com. Otherwise, use your imagination.)
Wow. I found it on YouTube and watched the whole clip. Fascinating. An angel with devil horns feeding on sea butterflies. Extraordinary. And I thought I'd seen all the Planet Earth docs. I haven't seen that one.
Wow, Susan, this was beautiful, raw, wrenching, so damn smart, too, when you pull back to our societal ‘manosphere’ delusions. You in that car crying as your father visited you, and again, in that stranger’s arms. I won’t soon forget those scenes now etched in my mind. Like yours, my dad was a complicated man who dared not show emotion and whose drinking often unleashed a vicious meanness that led to verbal not physical abuse. He had abusive fathers and stepfathers. He too swam in those waters of shame. Yet I’ve no doubt how much he loved me, and my two siblings and mother. I think when we can make peace with all our ghosts, especially those closest to us, true healing can occur. A big hug to you! I can only imagine what writing this cost you.
Thank you, Amy. Sending love to you and your complicated father. I'll accept a hug from you any day, and send one winging back. I was thinking about the cost of writing about this today. I was a puddle all day yesterday, and again today as I read the notes from everyone. My heart has shifted. This wetness is a heart opening, a letting people in, a release of armoring. Having my heart meat tenderized in this way is such a blessing. Truly. The softening process is never over, at least not for me, and maybe not for as long as I walk this earth in a body. I think I'll turn that last bit into a poem. It's so alive in me today. Thank you for helping me see it.
Susan, I thank you for that hug. So glad you are feeling your heart shift, the unarmoring. The latter doesn’t make us weaker I find; it makes us stronger, more resilient and empathetic towards ourselves and others. So glad you are inspired to create a poem. 💗
Susan — your essay left me sitting very still, breathing with the weight of it.
You did not write a simple portrait; you held a human being in the fullness of his contradictions. Violent, terrified, longing, tender, trapped — and in the end, love, still trying to reach you through the wreckage. I honour the courage it takes to write from such a place of clear-seeing and unsentimental care.
What resonates most deeply for me is how you expose the architecture of shame that built the man your father became. I see this pattern, too, in the stories I carry and those I witness — not only in men, and yet always in cultures that weaponise hierarchy. You show so clearly that patriarchy does not simply privilege men — it mutilates them from infancy, trading their birthright of love for a brittle, performative strength.
And yes — I share your grief for what was not possible. For the healing your father could not choose. For the family shaped in the absence of what might have been. The two moments of visitation you describe — I do not find them sentimental. They read as embodied memory, as love released from the constraints it could never navigate while shame ruled. We who do the work of debridement know exactly why he could not cross that threshold in life. And still, we mourn what might have been.
Thank you for writing this. It will stay with me — as a map, and as a caution, and as a thread of fierce, imperfect love. We need more voices that refuse both erasure and easy forgiveness. You offered us one.
thank you for so articulately and gracefully expressing my own response to this very deeply moving piece that resonates with familiarity, heart ache and longing
So much pain. So great that healing tears are flowing. I'm sending you big hugs, Susan! What happened with your father is heartbreaking. Thank you for inviting us to bear witness. And for pointing to ways that we, as a culture, can do better. We must. I treasure your accounts of your father's visitations. So much love.
This: "Little boys are made of love." Absolutely true. And yes, the patriarchy ruins them, and adopts them as its own. This is a devastating, brilliant essay.
What a piece of story-telling. See also (from recent readings:)
1. "Grief is an expression of [often fierce, even enraged] love,".. see Hamlet, in his (generally schmaltz-ified) soliloquy, or 'old news' from Gaza/Palestine as well as Russian Colonialism, both over the last 90 years (+) and counting ...
2. "The only verb that does not die is 'to be'," see "things in nature merely grow," (from Yiyun Li, 2025).
3. Eleanor Anstruther's 'Postcards' (+), particularly her writings about her mother, not to mention the ('impure') Gypsy Queen in her ancestry ...
1. Grief is love. Liquid love. Agreed.
2. Live this. I’m a human being.
3. Will have to check this out. Thanks.
my greatest challenge in life is to keep the love in my little boys from getting crushed.
There’s nothing more important. I was just talking to my son, Liam, about this last night. He’s 27 now. Can you imagine, Chrysm? 27. He’s beautiful. I told him about all the research about how differently boys are raised than girls. He’s grateful he was held and nurtured.
This is such a beautiful essay. I’ve had a similar experience of all-encompassing love and a similar visitation from my mother, so this absolutely tracks. It’s all love. Thank you for your vulnerable, lovely writing.
Thank you for saying so. It incredible to get a visit like that. The experience is undeniable. I’m so glad you had a taste of that love.
Beautiful Susan. So good. I had such a visitation from my mother - a year prior to her death (she had dementia) - and let me know she was free and how her love would remain with me and it was -a great gift. When her body died I knew she’d already ascended. I experienced a holy instant with my dad when I was in my thirties. Sitting across from him time fell away and I recognized I no longer needed him to hate myself with. That release freed me from seeking that father love I never received in other places and men. My father sent me a message from the grave by disinheriting me. When he saw he had no power to shame me and had to carry his own shame his hatred and contempt increased to no avail. I would love a visitation from the soul I know he is…or perhaps it takes a while even on the other side. I know healing comes with death - I look forward to experiencing his. 💕
I'll tell you one of the parts I cut. I sat with a psychic in a conference room in a bank. That's jarring, right? There were about 30 people asking questions about loved ones who had died. No way I was going to ask. When we reached the end of the night, she looked right at me and said: Any more questions?
I nodded and gulped: What happens to suicides?
She closed her eyes and said that my father was an extremely violent man. He hadn't been able to contact me for the last fifteen years because he was wrapped in a kind of suspended animation while healing beings sang over him. She said he would visit me around Christmas time, and then he would go back into healing mode for another fifteen years or so.
This meeting was in October before the Christmas he came to me in the car.
Maybe your dad is being sung to. I love that image to this day.
i felt my grandfather at about the moment he died. didn't know what had happened for a couple hours. but. he was a gentle man.
That’s such a beautiful thing. He must have loved you very deeply. Magical.
Beautiful. I hope so.
My young daughter tossed and turned all night, till my mother died, downstairs. And then she turned over and went back to sleep. Peace.
That's so touching and evocative, Roy. Peace, indeed.
That’s the most accurate description and story about patriarchy and shame I’ve read. Patriarchy in my lifetime has usually been projection coming from men that have been shamed. Thanks for post. Great writing
Thanks, Bad. It means a lot to me. Also, I want to show that patriarchy comes through mothers, wives, and daughters too. My grandmother, for example, listening to the male doctor expert rather than her own heart. The viscious shame inflicted by my mother. It's in everything, everywhere, all at once. We must stop inflicting mindless harm on one another. Before you can solve a problem, you have to be able to see it.
This is awesome writing, straight from the heart. Thank you.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment. It means so much.
This
Hello Susan!
I just found this here. Heartbreaking beautiful, rich and full. I'll read this again too. I Love"woo woo new age wingnut who sees ghosts everywhere!" So fascinating to heat your true rich story rather than the one I was told...More soon! I'm with you completely and I'm sorry for what you've been through. I just subscribed to Modern Mythology.
Holy cow, I had no idea who I was talking to until I saw Roger had subscribed. I just loved your writing. I’m very glad to meet you again. I’d love to hear, someday, the story you were told. I’m sure I have gaps.
Thanks. I've added you to my contacts. You might want to delete this post, or at least the phone number. IDK. Probably just me not trusting SM all that much. I'm going to retire from teaching tomorrow. I'll have time and time and time after that.
Oh good idea about deleting the number. Congratulations! Wow! How wonderful that you’re retiring. Wonderful.
A writer with a pension…
Thank you. I just read your most recent and subscribed to you as well. Simply beautiful. Well met. I’m so glad.
As a “woo-woo new age wingnut who sees ghosts everywhere” 🤣 i am obsessed with this post. Thank you for writing it. Nothing is black and white and you bravely told this story so perfectly. And I loved hearing about his visitations. Magnificent job. 🩶
Thanks. I’m a little overwhelmed. I value your opinion so much.
Hmmm. I wonder why I didn’t think of you when I wrote that line? If I had, I might have cut it so I wouldn’t offend. You are my favorite new age wingnut who sees ghosts everywhere. Thank you so much. If I was going to quietly beg anyone to read it, that would have been you.
So glad you didn’t cut it!! You could never offend me. I embrace the wing-nut full heartedly but I totally get it that the woo woo isn’t for everyone. And I definitely toe the line of taking it too far. What an awesome thing to say, too, that you would have wanted me to read it. Given how special and important and gorgeous this post is, I am tremendously honored. What an amazing compliment you’ve given me. Similar to what Jay said, your ability to pull together the messiness of his terror, abuse, along with his humanity, his loving spirit, his history and the overarching themes of shame and toxic masculinity… it is truly outstanding work.
Susan, it’s really too bad that we could not have talked about this in high school because more than a few of us were experiencing and living the same horrors in one degree or another. It is truly wonderful when we have that otherworldly experience and I firmly believe it serves us well as we remain here on earth. 👍🏼
And yes definitely let’s get together with Barb and others when you’re around this fall XXOO
I would absolutely love that. I recently had a similar conversation with Gale Cote. She’s down to party, too, as we oldsters do. When I visit Allen, I’ll let you all know and we’ll set something up.
Phew. I get that. I was too busy trying to look cool, just enough, to be accepted, though I knew I wasn't cool enough. That doesn't create any space for honesty. I wasn't strong enough to be honest. Plus, I was afraid being honest would land me in foster care or something worse. The something worse happened anyway. I had a death wish for a long time. Now, though, I live in joy almost all the time. Even when my heart is melting, joy is the background.
This seems to have got lost in the mix, so here it is again ...
Strangely, I found a lot of catharsis writing two Substack posts on Macbeth ...
And some pieces, like this one:
(From 'Homage')
Chorus
I would be happy
just to dance in the dark
like a sea angel
I do not want
to leave magnificent ruins
behind me ...
I just want to add, Roy, that this catharsis is not strange at all. It happens for me, everytime I let people see my art. There is something about publishing it that does that. It takes courage.
That's so cool. I don't want to leave ruins behind me either. And I love that image of dancing in the dark like a sea angel. That lives inside me now, like a dream image. I might want to try to paint that image. Thank you.
Paint first. Then I'll send you the link that I got the image / thought / video from. If that's presumptuous, please say so ... but I don't want to interrupt your hand/s. It's another whole world of tangential images / memes / spin offs ... (you get the picture/s ..., no?)
Yes. I’d love to see the source. Thank you.
before you decide to paint, or after. or does it not matter?
It's a Donna Haraway question, if that resonates ...
It doesn’t matter. I can’t control painting at all. What comes is what comes.
See elsewhere on your substack. Doesn't seem to cut and paste here. :(
It's a pic in Attenborough's Planet Earth III, Series 1:1 on the BBC. Might not be available in the US.
Wow, Susan. Thank you so much. I got to know another woman, another family, who (silently) went through that same (damn) cascade of 'doors.' You write like an angel.
Thank you, Roy. I'm sorry you had that experience. There are so many of us, but mostly, we are silent. I'm for breaking that vow. We had family meetings. "What happens in the family, stays in the family." Well, I broke with that because I was too young to give informed consent. I kid, but I do think opening up about this is important in stopping it. Also, how do we support one another if we don't know who we all are?
this is not an easy question for me to answer ... I try to 'talk to my ghosts' and the distant ones are easy / er. but sometimes the ghosts are just tooooo close (and that's not a matter of clock-time) - they are still part of 'me.' mmmmm .... I'm, in principle, for 'breaking that vow' too ...
On a different note:
(from Die Towerberg se Dans - the Dance of the Mountain of Spells)
sitting in full lotus
beneath the oaks
next to Bontevlei lake
one full summer’s day
I slowly lowered myself
into a headstand
then folded my lotus-legs
carefully, against me
like a clam
and relaxed.
Oh god, that’s beautiful. Trust your own knowing. Don’t open to anything that doesn’t feel safe. Painful and safe are not the same thing. Only you know what’s best.
On the Sea Angel ...
The original video of the 'Sea Angel' is part of the BBC Series, Planet Earth III, Series 1:1 Coasts, from about 15 minutes into the programme. The still pic doesn't seem to copy here, my apologies.
(If you send me an email address, I can send you a still pic. My email is roytwilliams@gmail.com. Otherwise, use your imagination.)
Wow. I found it on YouTube and watched the whole clip. Fascinating. An angel with devil horns feeding on sea butterflies. Extraordinary. And I thought I'd seen all the Planet Earth docs. I haven't seen that one.
see below ...
you got it! the plot thickens, and yes, it is extraordinary. I just use what is effectively a still pic to illustrate the poem.
Wow, Susan, this was beautiful, raw, wrenching, so damn smart, too, when you pull back to our societal ‘manosphere’ delusions. You in that car crying as your father visited you, and again, in that stranger’s arms. I won’t soon forget those scenes now etched in my mind. Like yours, my dad was a complicated man who dared not show emotion and whose drinking often unleashed a vicious meanness that led to verbal not physical abuse. He had abusive fathers and stepfathers. He too swam in those waters of shame. Yet I’ve no doubt how much he loved me, and my two siblings and mother. I think when we can make peace with all our ghosts, especially those closest to us, true healing can occur. A big hug to you! I can only imagine what writing this cost you.
Thank you, Amy. Sending love to you and your complicated father. I'll accept a hug from you any day, and send one winging back. I was thinking about the cost of writing about this today. I was a puddle all day yesterday, and again today as I read the notes from everyone. My heart has shifted. This wetness is a heart opening, a letting people in, a release of armoring. Having my heart meat tenderized in this way is such a blessing. Truly. The softening process is never over, at least not for me, and maybe not for as long as I walk this earth in a body. I think I'll turn that last bit into a poem. It's so alive in me today. Thank you for helping me see it.
Susan, I thank you for that hug. So glad you are feeling your heart shift, the unarmoring. The latter doesn’t make us weaker I find; it makes us stronger, more resilient and empathetic towards ourselves and others. So glad you are inspired to create a poem. 💗
Thanks Amy. You are a wonder of kindness.
Susan — your essay left me sitting very still, breathing with the weight of it.
You did not write a simple portrait; you held a human being in the fullness of his contradictions. Violent, terrified, longing, tender, trapped — and in the end, love, still trying to reach you through the wreckage. I honour the courage it takes to write from such a place of clear-seeing and unsentimental care.
What resonates most deeply for me is how you expose the architecture of shame that built the man your father became. I see this pattern, too, in the stories I carry and those I witness — not only in men, and yet always in cultures that weaponise hierarchy. You show so clearly that patriarchy does not simply privilege men — it mutilates them from infancy, trading their birthright of love for a brittle, performative strength.
And yes — I share your grief for what was not possible. For the healing your father could not choose. For the family shaped in the absence of what might have been. The two moments of visitation you describe — I do not find them sentimental. They read as embodied memory, as love released from the constraints it could never navigate while shame ruled. We who do the work of debridement know exactly why he could not cross that threshold in life. And still, we mourn what might have been.
Thank you for writing this. It will stay with me — as a map, and as a caution, and as a thread of fierce, imperfect love. We need more voices that refuse both erasure and easy forgiveness. You offered us one.
thank you for so articulately and gracefully expressing my own response to this very deeply moving piece that resonates with familiarity, heart ache and longing
Thank you form me too. That’s my experience of Jay too. Articulate and graceful.
Cynthia, I am glad my response to Susan does resonate with you. I have my own grief of that kind too.
So much pain. So great that healing tears are flowing. I'm sending you big hugs, Susan! What happened with your father is heartbreaking. Thank you for inviting us to bear witness. And for pointing to ways that we, as a culture, can do better. We must. I treasure your accounts of your father's visitations. So much love.
Thank you. All the tears are liquid love. It’s wonderful to come full circle in community.
This: "Little boys are made of love." Absolutely true. And yes, the patriarchy ruins them, and adopts them as its own. This is a devastating, brilliant essay.