Advice from a dead guy.

The following is an excerpt from my father’s journal that he wrote on April 18th, 2009. He passed away a little over a year later from colon cancer on October 8th, 2010. Today, May 24th, 2020 would have been his 61st birthday. He left this world too soon and I miss him everyday. 

“Recent self-reflection has revealed to me that I have spent my life doing what others want me to do, fulfilling (or avoiding) others’ expectations.  Cancer has given me the chance to be free from that, in large part, but at a price, physical suffering and the constant awareness of the nearness of the end of my life.  And, even though the cancer has brought a decent income in the form of disability insurance, I still feel the weight of other’s expectations. My wife, my children, my friends, they all want me to be well.  I will disappoint them if I don’t make it.  But living because others expect it of me is not enough.

The funny thing is, that now that I have time to do what I want, and sometimes the physical ability, I have gotten stuck.  What should I do if I have nothing that I have to do?  Since I’ve always done what I have to do, I do nothing because that’s what I have to do right now.  What I need to find is what is right for me.”

I inherited my father’s laptop after he passed, as I was just about to start college. Everything was left on the hard drive including his passages, poems, and journal entries. I can still picture him being propped up in his bed by a large amount of pillows, his glasses tipped to the very edge of his rather large nose (I can say this because I have the same one) as he typed away. At this point, his body was starting to fail him. My father, the man who had beat cancer once and seemed invincible, now had very little energy to leave his bed. So, a man who loved to hear himself speak (I inherited this trait obviously) decided to document his experience not knowing what a gift it would be after he had passed. This is what I love most about my father, when life handed him lemons, he used it to get his medical marijuana card. In other words, he was a man that actively decided to see the glass as half full. 

It is coming up on the ten-year anniversary of his passing and there has been a tremendous amount of ups and downs. But one thing remains the same, I live each and every day to honor him, his wisdom, and his indisputable authenticity. The example that he set for me before and after his passing has a lot to do with how I choose to live my life now. I am sharing my father’s words with you because I think that they are a gift that can be used in many different ways but for this post I am using them as a way to show what happens when we spend our lives disconnected from our purpose and ourselves in the “service” of others.

“Recent self-reflection has revealed to me that I have spent my life doing what others want me to do, fulfilling (or avoiding) others’ expectations.” 

Let those words sink in for a second. This is coming from a man who knows that his days are numbered and wants to make the best of the time he has left. He is in a space where he has no choice but to take an honest look at what has led him to his sickness. I think it will be useful to give you a bit of a backstory on my father so that you can see the steps leading up to this journal entry. 

If you were to read my father’s obituary, it would say something like this: John Siddeek was born on May 24th, 1959 in Breckinridge, CO to his parents Maria and Satee. He was a lawyer and received his law degree from NYU in 1991. In 1986, he got married and  eventually had two children. John spent his free time coaching youth soccer, hiking 14ners, and telling inappropriate jokes (I added that last one in). John played competitive chess. He was named Colorado state champion twice and earned his Master’s rating. John directed the Western Slop Mock Trial for ten years, as he was passionate about mentoring youth. He was an active part of his community and donated his time to volunteering with Habitat for Humanity.

This gives you a glimpse into what the outside world states is important to know about my father’s life after he passed. Yes, all of this is relevant and touches on some of the many reasons why I love him so very much. However, none of this touches on how the details of his life were often controlled by outside forces and expectations. My dad, like all humans that inhabit this planet, experienced trauma. Some of it was direct while some of it was inherited from prior generations. If you’re not familiar with transgenerational trauma, it is a therapeutic concept that states we are each born into a family system that holds certain expectations. These expectations are shaped by the experiences of prior generations and this includes trauma. Therefore, we may not experience the trauma directly but we experience the adaptions that the family system has made to the trauma. My personal opinion takes in one step further in that I believe we can inherit the energy of the trauma if it is not healed but I will digress for now. 

My grandmother, Maria, was a first generation German immigrant who escaped to the United States with her family from Nazi persecution. My grandfather, Satee (we called him Sid), was a prisoner of war from Iraq. Both of my father’s parents were immigrants from foreign countries thus creating a childhood home shaped by assimilation (first layer of trauma). For those not familiar, assimilation is the experience that immigrants face when moving to a foreign country. They can choose to take on the culture of their new home, they can keep the culture of their homeland, or they can create a combination of the two. Assimilation can often be seen as a source of survival. This process can be highly traumatic and the impact will often trickle down into future generations.

My grandfather, Sid, who I can honestly say I know very little about, did not stick around to raise my father. The time that was spent under Sid’s care was abusive. My father never spoke directly on his experience, but I know that it was a vile combination of emotional and physical abuse (second layer of trauma). My grandmother, who I also cannot claim to know as she died before I was born, took on the responsibility of raising my father on her own (third layer of trauma). 

My father often fondly recalled the village of family members that stepped in to help support my grandmother as she strived to find balance in working as an educator and raising the smartass that was my father. My father spent his childhood surrounded by his grandparents, aunts/uncles, and his cousins. He often spoke with warmth when naming these family members and the memories they shared. I, like my father, hold so much love for his family. There are many members that I was unable to meet but feel a deep connection to, including my grandmother. I often feel her presence and know that she has watched over me throughout my life. There is so much love that he held for her but I often wonder if my father chose to life his live for his mother and her lineage of expectations, rather than himself. 

The families that we are born into often have unspoken expectations of its members. The family system will run “smoothly” unless its members move outside of these expectations (I put smoothly in quotes because this can mean the family system smoothly operates on dysfunction). My grandmother came from a wealthy and pristine lineage of doctors. My great-grandfather, Karl, was a neuroscientist that made great strides in the German medical community until the Nazi reign. His wife Katherine was also a doctor. They were practicing Catholics but had Jewish ancestry, which made them a target. Karl, was taken to a concentration camp for speaking out against the Nazi’s. Luckily, he was a man of many connections and was able to escape. Karl’s education and experience as a doctor was what allowed him to secure a job in the United States. Karl packed up his family and moved to Denver, Colorado. This move triggered the assimilation progress within the family.

My grandmother was raised in the United States and as I mentioned, went on to become an educator. She raised my father in a house full of books and rich educational experiences. He often told me how my grandmother loved to give him homework to complete after he would come home from a long day at school. This was the norm in his childhood home. While this can be viewed as a positive experience, I think that this was where my father first received his conditioning on living through other’s expectations. I can speak on this as I have experienced this first hand in my relationship with him. It was without question that I would go on to get higher education (I realize that this is a privilege and it is one I am thankful to have the opportunity for). I worked very hard in school and I often thought it was because I was naturally “driven”. While this may be true, I think I was more worried about living up the to expectations set for me. I did not want to disappoint my father because of my love for him. I think that this was the same for my father when it came to his mother.

There is an unspoken expectation of getting an education in my father’s side of the family because it was my great grandfather’s education that saved him and his family. After enduring this trauma, it is my belief that the family system associated education with survival. I again want to emphasize that this is not good or bad, but it created an unspoken expectation that in order to create harmony within the family system, its members will become educated.  My dad went on to be a highly successful lawyer, which fit the mold of the system.

I genuinely believe that my dad enjoyed his work and I know he loved his family but he also took on the responsibility of being the family provider, which is a huge amount of responsibility. As I write this and recall his role in our family, his words linger in my head “ I have spent my life doing what others want me to do, fulfilling (or avoiding) others’ expectations. This is a man who worked so hard to get his degree and being a lawyer seemed to suit him. Yet, as his life was drawing to a close, all he could speak on was living his life for others. Dad, I can’t help but wonder if there was there something else you would have wanted to spend your life doing? 

“Cancer has given me the chance to be free from that, in large part, but at a price, physical suffering and the constant awareness of the nearness of the end of my life.”

Stories like my father’s are not uncommon (if you are interested on how other’s expectations create sickness read “Dying to be me by Anita Moorjani”). Earlier, I listed some of the layers of trauma that my father experienced in his lifetime and some that was handed down to him. It is my impression that my father, as wise as he was, did not take the time to fully process his trauma. The years of abuse he experienced by his own father and the weight of family expectations created a breeding ground for the cancerous tumors that would eventually form and take his life. 

After my father passed, I became obsessed with health. If someone, who I labeled as invincible, died at such a young age, what was stopping me from following the same path? I became obsessed with eating “healthy” and molding my body into society’s standards of health. I was experiencing severe gut issues and I was anxious all the time. I was spending massive amounts of money getting allergy tests and was convinced that if I could just find my perfect diet then I would have the perfect body and therefore become the perfect picture of health. This was an alienating experience and it impacted many facets of my life. This now brings me to my true purpose of this post, which is how ignoring the mind body connection can create physical symptoms. While I do not claim to know the biology behind cancer (please remember I am not a doctor), I do believe that when we don’t address our mental health, it will manifest in our physical health. Our body is asking us to slow down so that we can process what is happening. It is our body’s way of saying “hey wake the eff up!”. 

“Since I’ve always done what I have to do, I do nothing because that’s what I have to do right now.  What I need to find is what is right for me.”

I have since learned that what I was experiencing with my gut issues and anxiety was the suppression of my authentic self and the lingering grief that was occupying my body after my dad’s passing. During this time, I did not know what my direction in life was and I was refusing to process my trauma and grief. I had recently moved to Denver and left the town I grew up in. I grew up in a pretty conservative town with Christian values. I want to emphasize that there is nothing wrong with these beliefs or values. BUT THEY ARE NOT ME. I spent my younger years trying to fit the mold of what my hometown had taught me to believe was the only way to live. So when I moved away, I like my father, was carrying the weight of other’s expectations on how I should live. It was not until October 8th, 2019 that I realized what aspect of myself that I have been suppressing my entire life.

I have always been a believer in psychics and consider myself with one foot in the “woo” and one foot out of the “woo”. In other words, I think I have a nice balance of being “woo woo” but also sometimes I think “you want me to do WHAT?!” while in a Kundalini yoga class. It was on the nine-year anniversary of my father’s passing that I decided to see a psychic medium to speak to my father. It would be the first time I had directly spoken to him since his passing (although he has been communicating with me in other ways).  I came into this meeting with the weight of other’s expectations. I know it’s silly but I kept thinking what if people from my hometown knew I was going to a psychic to talk to my dead dad? At the time, all I could see was the career path of getting my master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy. My future aligned with my family lineage and it would be deemed acceptable by those who grew up with me. This all shifted once I left the reading.

 During the session my father came through as kind and sarcastic as I expected him to. My grandmother, Maria, came through as well. I learned a lot about his trauma and more about why his cancer manifested in the way that it did. A lot of this is what I have touched on in this piece. It was a healing experience to learn that he was okay and that him and I are very strongly connected, much like he is with his mother. At the end of the session, the medium paused and said “I have to tell you…you’re highly psychic”. My ears started wringing and it felt like she was speaking in slow motion. The little voice in my head stood up and started shouting “YES THANK YOU FOR SEEING ME”. 

I left the session in shock. It took me a while to relay this message to the people in my life. In fact, I remember thinking “you can’t tell anyone about this, this needs to be a secret you carry”. There are still some that I haven’t spoken directly with this about. If that’s you, know that it’s nothing personal. It’s just a very vulnerable conversation to have and I still have a lot to learn about this. I know that reading other’s energy comes very natural to me, it always has (hence why I love doing tarot readings). I know that I can channel my father (and other’s who have passed over).. I have been channeling him this entire time while I am writing.. (he was the one who wanted me to make a comment on his nose not me). But there is so much I don’t know about my abilities and it feels scary to speak so openly on it. I am amazed as I am typing this that I’m sharing it on my blog. But it ties into what my father was speaking on. If I do not live my life sharing my abilities as my true self, then I am setting myself up for the same fate that he had. I was terrified of telling people about what I can do because the town I grew up in had different expectations for me. I am terrified of how my abilities will impact my career as a therapist. It’s even led me to question if I should finish my degree at all. But I have realized I can live for others and their expectation at my own expense or I can stand up, be myself, and leave those expectations and fear behind. This has left me with a deeper sense of purpose and a drive to shatter stigma on the divide between science and spirituality. There is a place for both. As I said, one foot in the woo and one foot out. 

As for my anxiety and gut issues.. well they really are starting to dissipate. I know that if I am feeling anxious then I am suppressing my emotions and it often times has to do with my grief of losing my father. I know that if I am experiencing stomach issues it’s because I am taking on the emotions and experiences of others and I need to clear my energy. The physical symptoms I was experiencing were begging me to wake up, accept myself, and stop living for others. It’s not to say that I am in perfect health and that I will never experience this stuff again, it is inevitable I will. But now I am giving myself permission to listen to what my mind, my body, and my spirit are communicating with me. I know that this is what my father wants for me and why he wants me to share his words with others. 

As I write this, my father’s story has become my own just like his parents became his story. I have inherited his lineage and my children will do the same. I share his words with you in hopes that it will help inspire you to live the life you want to so that you can share this with future generations. I understand that it is not easy to upheave your entire life and start new. That is not practical. But I encourage you to listen to the messages that your body is communicating with you. I encourage you to evaluate how previous generations in your family might be impacting you now (ask your therapist to do a genogram with you). That little voice in your head, your gut intuition, they are there for a reason. I wasn’t listening to my intuition until someone pointed it out to me and now I can’t stop listening. 

We are each born with gifts to share with the world. We each have a purpose in this life but sometimes our experiences and other’s expectations can stray us from this. If you are unhappy or if you feel like you are not living the life you truly want I encourage you to evaluate. I encourage you to think about if you were faced with a life threatening illness would the life you are currently living be the source of it? I hope that my father’s words will inspire you to advocate for what you truly want so that you do not end up leaving this world in the manner that he did. 

“And, even though the cancer has brought a decent income in the form of disability insurance, I still feel the weight of other’s expectations. My wife, my children, my friends, they all want me to be well.  I will disappoint them if I don’t make it.  But living because others expect it of me is not enough.”

Unfortunately for my father, his realization on the weight of other’s expectations was too late to save him. I hate this. I wrestle with this everyday. Cancer took away the one person in this world that truly saw and loved me. Cancer took away my role model, my best friend, my guiding light, and my sense of security. But like my father, I am choosing to see the glass as half full. My father’s story is a blessing for the living because it can be used to show other’s what happens when we live for other’s expectations over our own. It can be used to show what happens when we disconnect our mind from our body. I am choosing to live my life free of other’s expectations for the BOTH of us. I am choosing to heal his, mine, and the generational trauma that I have inherited. I am choosing to listen to how my mind is impacting my physical state. This is why I wholeheartedly believe in living a holistic lifestyle. This is why I believe in healing modalities such mediation, physical movement, therapy, and Human Design. I believe in anything that lets us shed other’s expectations because my father is proof that when we do not take care of each facet of our being, we end up sick. 

The good news is that we are still alive and have a choice on how we live this life before we leave it. Don’t let the weight of others suck up the magic that is inside of you. Live your life for you.

Dad, thank you for allowing me to share your words. Happy Birthday. I miss you. I love you infinitely.

Be MindFULL and see you again soon. 

Xoxo, Jesse