God, our parents, and the Great Unraveling
Tuesday, April 01, 2025 | By: Kimberly Dam
Hello love. Earlier today, I had a moment — not just a little emotional flutter, but a full-on tidal wave of energy surging through my body. The kind we typically slap labels on like “anger” or “sadness”. I had just finished yoga, and was driving home when this wave came up and said, “Oh hey, we’re doing this now.”
So I did what I’ve spent years learning to do — I allowed myself to feel it, observing it ebb and flow for a while. But when I pulled into my driveway and felt that sacred cue of safety in my body... the floodgates opened.
Sobs. Frustration. Mind chatter firing off like popcorn. I was in pain.
And to my surprise (or maybe not?), I was directing all of it at God. (As if God could ever be the true source of my pain. 😏)
Now, this wasn’t my first time throwing expletives at the Divine. 😂 But those had been tame in comparison — except for one time, about six months ago, after a tough financial blow, I found myself in a similar storm. At first, again, I thought I was angry with God. Then I decided maybe I was angry with me. (Classic.) But later — after another round of surrender, another dance with my grief — the truth got real loud:
I wasn’t mad at God. I wasn’t even mad at me.
I was mad at my dad.
I was grieving his absence — his lack of protection, guidance, and presence in my life. And without realizing it, I had projected all of that onto the one I’ve spent years trying to trust: God.
(Side note: The phrase "trying to trust" is inaccurate as it denotes separation.)
That realization cracked open something deep. Because of course I projected my father onto God. Our parents are the first “gods” we experience. They create us. Nurture us (or don’t). Teach us what love feels like — or how to chase it.
Meaning... if you were conditioned to seek approval, love, or safety from a parent who was inconsistent, unavailable, or checked out... you probably learned to seek God the same way — outside yourself, hoping for a sign, a rescue, or at the very least, a warm pat on the head for doing life “right.” (This is also the common approach within religion, mirroring separation, rather than union.)
But here’s where it gets even juicier: I thought this was only specific to the dynamic I had with my dad. Plot twist: it wasn’t. Today’s emotional wave showed me I had projected the dynamic I had with my mom onto God, too.
I’ve been walking a devoted path with God since 2008 — and here I am in 2025, still peeling back layers of conditioning. Still discovering how my inner child shaped my spiritual adulting, even with the best intentions.
Let me break it down for you:
- Rising to God’s callings — even when terrified or wildly unprepared — mirrored the dynamic I had with my mom: the good girl, the responsible one, the one who “just figures it out."
- Feeling abandoned, unsupported, unseen? That was my dad: the longing for safety, protection, and guidance — the invisible hand I always hoped would catch me, but never did.
So, by now you might be wondering, “Wait... did you discover this before... in romantic relationships, friendships, business partnerships too?” — uh, yes. Welcome to the perfectness of our reality.
But here’s the thing: like many, my first exposure to therapy was through psychoanalysis (CBT) — which, bless it, provided me with a foundational understanding of what unfolded in my life and contemplations on why. But it also prioritized the intellectualization of my pain, instead of actually feeling it. I got really good at analyzing my emotions instead of actually being in my body with them, deepening dissociation.
Translation: I carried deep emotional tension for years — even in moments of joy or peace — without realizing I was still dissociated. I looked “healed” on paper, but my body was holding stories that my mind couldn’t rewrite.
Everything started to shift when I stopped trying to figure it all out, and started feeling it all the way through. Not just the big emotions like grief or rage, but the quieter ones too — the little flutters of discomfort, the subtle contractions in my chest.
Because here’s the universal truth:
🌀 Unfelt trauma doesn’t disappear. It contributes to your frequency.
If you don’t feel it, you carry it. And that frequency attracts experiences that mirror it — not because the Universe is cruel, but because it’s genius. It keeps handing you opportunities to heal, to rewire, to remember who you really are.
And yet — most of us try to heal with the same mind that created the wound in the first place. No shame, just facts.
But love, the mind can’t liberate what the body still holds hostage.
True healing is not another mental loop, it’s not another cognitive breakthrough — it’s an embodied unraveling. It’s immersing in your pain, feeling the ache, the rage, the yearning, and saying: I’m not running anymore.
So now, I want to invite you into something — not as a mental exercise, but as a felt experience.
✨ The next time you feel distant from God — like you’re praying but no one’s listening, like you’re being tested, like you’ve been left to figure it all out on your own — pause.
✨ Feel into your body.
✨ Where is that sensation sitting? Is it heaviness? Numbness? A quiet ache?
✨ Lean into it. Surrender to it. Merge fully with the sensation. Not to fix it — but to feel it.
Because chances are, that moment of disconnection is echoing an old wound — one that isn’t asking to be analyzed, but to be held. To be felt.
This is how we rewire.
Not by thinking our way through it.
But by meeting the body where it’s at.
By merging with the part of us that still believes we’ve been left behind.
God is not separate from your inner child. Not separate from your nervous system. Not separate from your pain. Not separate from any part of you.
It is you.
Not just a spark.
But the totality.
Offering infinite reflections — all with one purpose.
To call you back to your true essence.
The invitation?
Stop searching.
Start remembering.
Pray into the body.
Be with the Divine already alive within you — raw, radiant, real.
You don’t need to be fixed.
You need to be felt.
And beloved — you are already whole.
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If this stirred something in you, I’d love to hear how it’s landing — feel free to comment below or send a little note to kimberlydam@gmail.com. And if you’re ready to deepen your devotional healing, The Inheritance is calling.
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