Healing wounds: exploring the hyphen in son-father relations as an adult child of an alcoholic

ABSTRACT

In this autoethnography I explore the impact of my father’s alcohol dependency on my relationship with him and implications for my own recovery from alcohol-related harm. Sketching, layering and poetic interludes help to move around the hyphenated space of son-father relations showing the wounds associated with his alcohol ab/use. The writing shows how I internalised and embodied other family members’ shame, compounding my detachment and father hunger. It also shows how “energy of the wound” fuelled positive adaptations, learning to be “with” my adult-child-of-an-alcoholic-ness. I hope the writing helps both writer and readers make things better by offering new vistas on hardship, loss, adapting and healing. Connecting with clinical audiences, potential implications for effective counselling are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Father-son relations
• hyphen space
• alcohol dependency
• adult children of alcoholics
• wounds
• healing

My aim in this autoethnography is to explore the impact of my father’s alcohol dependency on my relationship with him and potential implications for my own recovery from alcohol-related harm and other indiscretions associated with his addiction. Writing of hardship experienced both individually and within the family as conveyed from the vantage point of an adult seeking connection with other adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs), I draw attention to relational spaces of alcohol ab/use by interrogating the stories and artefacts that I have come to associate with his alcoholic life through “hyphenated encounters” (Wyatt, 2019, p. 43) with objects, words/voices and affectivities.

Pirkanen (2015) wrote, “Sometimes, fathers’ and sons’ lives go in parallel directions and sometimes they grow more distant from or closer to each other, or they collide” (p. 399 my emphasis). This invites a number of questions. For example, where is the site or space of this “collision” and how might it be construed? What is it exactly (i.e. materially speaking) that “collides” when fathers’ and sons’ lives grow distant, closer or collide? How are the effects/affects experienced at the site(s) of collision then and now, with which outcomes for men’s mental health and well-being? These, and many other questions, considered throughout this inquiry have guided the writing in this paper.

Through autoethnographic sketching (Gloviczki, 2016) and layering (Rath, 2012) and, with the use of poetic interludes (Lahman et al., 2010) as my preferred medium of healing, I move around the hyphenated spaces of son-father-death-vice-alcohol-ACOA-family-my son-shame, using the concept of “writing as collision” to cast fresh light on experiences of being a child of an alcoholic (COA). Observing triggered memories and noting what I come into contact with as I move around the hyphen in my son-father relationship, I assemble representations of that which collides bringing together echoes of personal and collective experiences of alcohol-related harm. Using “repetition” (Adams, 2015) wherever possible to create a “beat” (Douglas, 2017), rhythmic echoes of his dependency express emotional responses to his alcoholic life, evoking the hardship experienced within the family. Epiphanic moments emerge within this story where I share “intimate details of the battle and what it took and feels like to survive” (Berry, 2022, p. 34) my son-father relationship. By sharing this story, I hope it “helps” others (Wyatt, 2022, p. 83).

Traversing the pages I observe collisions with death, loss, a vise, a tea cosy, miniature (5cl) bottles of spirits, a letter, a bank statement and a bottle of piss. I also re-live encounters with affective intensities of frustration, anger, loss of trust, disbelief, humiliation, hatred, retribution/revenge, and guilt but primarily shame. Since other family members, myself included, tried to “shame” my father into sobriety, I realise that their voices/actions/thinking-feeling and my conscientious mental role-playing had gripped certain parts of my life in a stranglehold, shaping my son-father relationship and constituting, in part, my adult child-of-an-alcoholic-ness.

In an attempt to trace what I am becoming, sketching subjectivities (Gannon, 2013) and alternative possibilities, the writing shows how I internalised and embodied their shame, compounding my own sense of detachment and father hunger. I want to unshame the shaming myself and other family members put on my dad, affording the opportunity to re-shape the past that the past never knew so the shame others experienced within the family, ceases to be my own. Since “[S]hame can be a gateway to the new” (Murray, 2022, p. 498), like a “probiotic” for living with being a child-of-an-alcoholic-ness, by writing from a place of shame I want to “smudge” it to discharge the toxins making space for “good bacteria to burst forth” (Murray, 2022, p. 501). It also shows that my father’s death doesn’t end the relationship I have with him or his problem drinking, it merely twists and de-forms it, so “To untwist or unknot a relationship, we have to alter the shape of it; re-form it” (Osvath & Bochner, 2022, p. 396). In search of healing, I need to learn to “let things be” (Tamas, 2022, p. 281), “let go” of their shame and live better with my own, fashioning a new way of living with healthy/healthier living voices. This writing, then, is a recovery information with healing in all its “Incompletion” (Osvath & Bochner, 2022, p. 399).

This writing project is born of a desire to help both the writer and readers by connecting with other ACOAs to offer new vistas on hardship, loss and recovery. I seek connection through this story and hope it provides “equipment for living” (Adams, 2008), offering a voice and an arm around the shoulders of those who might sometimes be struggling to persevere, saying “You are not alone. We are in this together” (Herrmann, 2014, p. 330). Such kinship and knowing that I am not alone offers comfort (Berry, 2022). Additionally, writing to connect and bring this story to the wider community of people who have survived parental alcohol abuse, I also seek connection with clinical audiences and practitioners professionally involved in helping sons come to terms with their fathers’ alcohol abuse.

Triggering memories

When my dad died and the time came to empty the family home, among his possessions I wanted to keep was an industrial vise. During childhood, it was fixed to a bench in the shed and I remember seeing him use it for odd jobs about the house and occasionally, I got to play with it. Back then, as I do now (August 2021), I dream of one day owning a workshop like his. When I do, I will install the vise, using it to hold my own items for repair. Maybe my son will see me use it and want to play with it too. Maybe I will tell him this story. Hence the hyphenated spaces of son-father-death-vise-my son.

The vise symbolises my dad’s life of work. A manual worker, he handled vises all his life. It also symbolises my experience of many years of his fathering: his firm, robust, steely presence, practical usefulness, ability to hold things together in place (and “provide”) despite his flaws. When I was reacquainted with the vise, however, following years of neglect, it was in much need of restoration. With the shed having long been dismantled, it had been left out in the garden to rust. I found it seized, jaws wide open. Useless.

Consuming death

In 2017, calling on the blacksmithery services of Henderson Fabrications UK Ltd, I hand-delivered the vise in St Andrews (Scotland) to be restored before flying to Urbana-Champaign (Illinois, USA) to present a paper at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI). During a writing retreat with friends in Chicago immediately after the conference, Henderson sent me a message stating, “Vise now working. It has been repaired in the past. It is now ready for collection”. He also sent me a before/after photograph. The “before” photograph was a close-up highlighting previous repair work. Henderson’s words “now working … repaired in the past” struck a chord, setting thoughts in motion about what it might have taken to repair the damage associated with his other vice: alcohol dependency. Hence, hyphenated spaces of son-father-alcohol.

***

As I write, two spellings/meanings of the word “vis/c/e” come to mind. The Cambridge Dictionary defines … 

1. vise:  … a tool with two parts that can be moved together by tightening a screw so that an object can be held firmly between them while it is being worked on

and

1. vice: a moral fault or weakness in someone’s character.

Vis/c/e-father-fathering-death. A blemish, a defect, a taint. Something more-than “son-father-alcohol”. Beyond him, me, and “beyond behaviour, beyond us. Something more-than. Always more” (Wyatt, 2019, p. 50). Absence. Loss. Wound(ed). Repair. Damage-repair.

***

Visevice

Seized tight and

washed out, from

lack of

care,

use and

attention.

Jaws locked, no

sound. No

telling.

Unavailable.

Seized.

Distanced.

Cold.

Failure to

variably adjust.

Good for

nothing.

Useless if

siezed.

Can hold

nothing.

Broken.

Under

ongoing

repair.

In recovery.

***

Layering: Like the vise, once seized, now restored, I feel compelled to zoom in on the cracks in our son-father relationship, to repair the damage left by his problem-drinking. I wonder what a full, or partial, restoration might involve. I wonder how it might feel and what the joys of the resulting relationship may be. I also wonder about the breaks in his relationship with other family members and alcohol-related harm they endured. And I wonder how, if at all, my son-father relationship is interconnected with my understanding of how family members related to his substance ab/use. Hence, hyphenated spaces of son-father-alcohol-family.

***

So began my writing-as-inquiry, a process of hyphenated encounters and I started seeking opportunity, with Wyatt (2019), to “Pause. Those three stars there, the dinkus, forming the line above, indicate as much, giving permission. A chance to look up, look out. Look around … ” (p. 43). I want to develop a fuller understanding of how my fathers’ alcohol dependency has negatively impacted me and my family, including how the intersections of alcohol-related harm and relating with others are experienced within my adult–child-of-an-alcoholic-ness.

Additionally, writing into these encounters, as Murray (2022) notes, more than purely poison/venom, writing from shame in all its rawness can lead to writing that “throbs with power and vivacity” (p. 501). Beyond writing to hurt others or producing writing that can be read as being a “revenge piece”, inspired by Murray’s (2022) puryfying “detoxography”, I want this writing to create “future-oriented affectivities”, to allow smoke to swirl in the spaces between the words, and to be a “smudge piece” that “picks up any lingering toxins in a room and carries them away through the open windows” (p. 500).

In the “me-not-the-first-and-won’t-be-the-last-ness” (Murray, 2022, p. 493 my emphasis) of my adult–child-of-an-alcoholic-ness, through thinking about alcohol-related harm I collide with different ordinary objects, lives, events, voices, memories, and affectivities. In the hyphen space of son-father relations, these are my stories of that which collides.

***

A tea cosy, frustration and shame in son-father hyphen space

Weekdays,

getting up for school.

Dad is home from nights

p-o-p–p-i-n-g again

Thick-cut marmalade on toast and tea, setting me up

for the day.

Dad is home from nights

(thanks Dad!) but he is

p-o-p–p-i-n-g again

Knitted cottage goes

around the

kitchen table … 

slurp and slide.

Dad is home from nights

p-o-p–p-i-n-g again

“Do you think I am

blind?”

“stupid?”

“ … don’t know what you are doing?”

Dad is home from nights

p-o-p–p-i-n-g again

On a backslide, there is no

tea just

booze.

I am in the living room

you are in the kitchen, popping on a

cottage tea cosy.

Dad is home from nights

p-o-p–p-i-n-g again

***

Layering: c.1989. I time morning runs so I arrive home soon after my dad gets back from night-shift. I do this so he can see me panting, beaming, bursting with life. Running as far and as fast I can, I hope he might somehow be inspired to live better. I hate seeing him drink in the morning and wish he could just be “normal”, like other dads. I feel sorry for him and find efforts to hide his glass irritating. Ashamed of his morning drinking, I don’t tell anybody (why would you?!) and keep it secret within the family.

He is not good at showing his affection and I regularly feel as though I am letting him down. I am unsure if I am good enough and I don’t know if he thinks of me. I feel guilty and ashamed for wishing that I had another dad.

There is only one cure: more running.

***

Go running

before seeing him

pissed

before I go

to school,

speechless.

In the “not yet of never-quite knowing” (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010, p. 9), what to

say or, even if it’s worth

saying anything at all … 

Go running.

***

Layering: Energising my morning runs, attempting to shame him into living differently, more healthily; I also tried running him into health during my thirties where I tried to swim-bike-run as fast and as far as I could, hoping that the better I am, the more he might notice me and the more positive my influence on him might be. In looking at me, I hoped he would strive to see (and to live) a better reflection (or version) of himself. And with just the right amount of effort and success, if I could make him proud enough, then maybe, just maybe, I thought, perhaps his pride in me would be enough to make him tame his drinking. I hoped he would be moved by my swimming-biking-running.

Emotional longing for a different, more “normal” dad was circulating within our son-father relationship and I think he sensed that his drinking was met with frustration, shame and embarrassment. Then at 18 years of age, along came a resolute loss of trust and hope. Mirroring my feeling that somehow I was a constant “let down” for him, he completely let me down. I started hating him, not only his drinking.

***

Miniature bottles and loss of trust in son-father-alcohol hyphenated spaces

I started collecting miniature bottles of spirits when I was about 16 years old. Initiated by my dad, those close to me would often add to the collection by bringing back a bottle from their travels. In the Summer of 1998, I left for university returning home to spend Christmas with my family. Upon entering my bedroom I found that almost every bottle had vanished.

***

What drives a man to rob from his son?

Presented across a

mahogany backboard with

three pine shelves

cross-lapped,

made as part of a school woodwork project,

hanging on the bedroom wall.

Bottles gone.

Damage has been done.

Harmed, broken and hurt in the past,

we know what that means.

P-o-p–p-i-n-g again.

He is backsliding.

In desperate need.

Physically and

emotionally distant.

P-o-p–p-i-n-g again.

No,

he didn’t apologise.

No,

he didn’t replace every one.

How do you, as a dad, come back from that?

He doesn’t love me.

If he did,

he wouldn’t take from me.

He doesn’t care.

If he did,

he would say something, try something, anything … 

Losing complete trust, losing hope.

But “things do not have to be the way they are” (Probyn, 2010, p. 75).

Why don’t I confront his drinking?

Will it only shame and hurt him even more if

I say something about how much he has hurt me?

Ill at ease.

Sick of his illness.

I am dis-eased with his dis-ease.

I hate him and his drinking.

How can I correct things?

I wish he was dead.

How do you, as a son, come back from that?

Guilty enough, maybe he wants to

forget p-o-p–p-i-n-g again, guzzling

his shame and

my miniatures.

Shamed.

Seized.

Diseased.

What drives a man to pilfer from his son’s own bedroom?

Disease.

He has a disease.

He can’t

help it.

Diseased

***

Layering: I began appreciating that he was in the grip of alcohol dependency. A few years later he told me that, “ … in a moment of desperation with no drink left in the house, it was his only option so he demolished the lot in one go”. Desperate times, drastic measures. But no man sets out on his journey into fatherhood wanting to hurt his son. I realised he had a disease and his drinking was out of control. He was out of control and it was controlling him.

***

A letter, anger and hatred in the hyphenated spaces of son-father-alcohol-family

Following Muncey’s (2010) advice on how to create an autoethnography, I am kneeling down, trawling through a box of memories kept at the bottom of a wardrobe in the study, looking for photographs to help transport me back in time, evoking memories of places, feelings and events to kick-start the writing process. It is 2nd February 2015 and I am writing a paper to present at my first visit to ICQI (later published, see Clarke, 2017).

I spot a letter addressed to my dad, from Uncle Tommy, dated 21 July 2006. The envelope also contains a photograph of the bin at the back of our family home. It is filled to the rim with empty wine boxes and plastic bottles of cider. I start reading the letter which a I poetically transcribe below:

Attacking him for his addiction and correcting alcoholism with Biblical salvation

This is the photograph of your bin the week you said

you hadn’t been drinking

you would take Margy [my mum] to the hospital so I [Tommy] didn’t have to because

you knew I had enough on my plate

Knowing you’d be in no fit state to keep to your word

you purposefully bought this drink

you drank all this rubbish

A week of many when

no-one could contact you

people were worried about you

you wouldn’t answer the phone

I went to your house on the Friday to see if you were alright

no answer

I looked through the curtains

I shouted in

but

you were drunk

you were out of it

you were motionless in the chair

I went back three times

10:30; 12:30; 3:30 to see if

you were awake

I knew

you weren’t dead because

your hands moved to different positions

All we could do was wait until

you sobered up

I was so angry with you

To think that you think more of the bottle than anyone else

I took this photograph for you

hoping that you would

open your eyes

look at this photograph

face up to the fact

you don’t really care about those you say you love when

you behave like this

Have some sort of conscience over it and

say you’re sorry

seek help or

continue to live lying to everybody and

live a miserable existence

drinking yourself to death

with no concern for the feelings of your family or

anyone else to that matter

I pray you make the right choice

Tommy

SEEK YE THE LORD

WHILE HE MAY BE FOUND

***

Layering: One thing that has always puzzled me, is why he kept the letter. How did it make him feel? How did he meet these efforts at correcting his mistakes through Biblical salvation? By leaving the letter somewhere I could easily find and read, did he feel his weaknesses were exposed and he wanted me to know that he knew how much hurt he had caused me and others? Was the fault-finding crippling and debilitating and rather than “providing traction for alliances and flourishing”, did Tommy’s critique make him feel “attacked” (Tamas, 2022, p. 279)?

Being with Tommy’s words reminds me of the hatred I felt toward my dad then, compounding the “misery” (Järvinen & Bloch, 2017) I felt for the impact his drinking had on me, my mum and the family (including the solitude, self-hate, shame, and self-harm his drinking seemed to bring on himself). The letter served to “in-form” (Murray, 2022) me that his drinking was also an outcome of volitional behaviour: he actively chose alcohol over me. Consistent with other ACOAs who regarded their parents’ alcoholism as the consequence of deliberate choices, I viewed his drinking in very “negative terms”, even feeling “deserted” (Järvinen, 2015, p. 820). By internalising the anger and venom expressed through his words, in toxic seizure and at an impasse, both my dad and my son-father relationship, I thought, were doomed to a “miserable existence”, compounding my father hunger. Hence, the hyphenated spaces of son-father-alcohol-family-hardship-misery.

Another thing I am puzzled by is this, when emptying the family home after my dad died, why did I also decide to keep the letter? How did Tommy’s thinking, lack of “sympathy-giving” (Järvinen & Bloch, 2017), perception of alcoholism and his understanding of my dad’s addiction impact how I saw my experiences of hardship both then and now? What am I seeking here? Am I now fault-finding, reprimanding Tommy for not “Fostering the survivors’ sense of agency” because it “will be far more helpful than correcting their mistakes” (Tamas, 2022, p. 281)? Did I keep the letter because it validated my negative feelings toward my dad? And do I keep it now so I can dispose of my negative feelings, projecting them onto Tommy?

There is a sense of “cannot have-ness” (Berry, 2022) about answers to some of these questions and the letter is but one of “thousands of bits all whizzing around” (Probyn, 2010, p. 77). For the moment, for now though, I want to lurk (Wyatt, 2017) with the wounds … “I want to just dwell. To sit in the moment of pain” (Sutton, 2017, p. 459) and aspire to “ … self-acceptance, to solidarity with the broken, crazy people that we study from a distance … ” (Tamas, 2016, p. 121). I want to practice “acceptance of things as they are” (Tamas, 2022, p. 285).

More pain and loss of control.

***

A bank statement and deceit in the hyphenated spaces of son-father-alcohol

As sole administrator of his estate, it falls to me to close his bank account and stop his Direct Debits. I present myself at his bank where I am presented with a printout of his bank statements, stating:

Bargain Booze 5 Aug 2014 £29.95

Bargain Booze 8 Aug 2014 £35.95

Bargain Booze 18 Aug 2014 £35.94

Bargain Booze 26 Aug 2014 £35.94

Bargain Booze 11 Sept 2014 £36.90

***

Layering: During Summer 2014, dad was receiving chemotherapy. I thought, and he let me think, he was not drinking. Deceived. I learned that upon returning from the hospital, instead of getting the ambulance driver to drop him off at home, he would get dropped off at the town-centre where he would buy booze before getting a taxi home, to “get out of it” and numb the pain.

***

A bottle of piss(?) and the unimaginable in the hyphenated spaces of son-father-alcohol-family-shame

Visiting dad at home,

knocking on the door,

drunken stupors,

not knowing if

he is alive or

dead.

When I go over, and

he has not been answering his phone,

am I going to find him in a pool of blood or,

in his bed,

dead?

Regular falls,

this time it’s only a

blood soaked t-shirt,

days old – turned brown.

He opens the door, not

dead.

Bargaining with life, not

dead, in

chemo,

I thought he was off it.

But, no

taming or

bargaining here, just

BARGAIN BOOZE.

His favourites … 

“Frosty Jack”:

“smells like industrial-strength cleaner … 

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone”,

a YouTube reviewer states;¹

“many people consider it a lowly drink, something that

homeless people would drink … 

if you try to stomach it … 

you are an alcoholic … 

obviously”,

another reviewer notes²;

“ … the trampagne of ciders … … 

this is the one that gets you going in the morning”

another reviewer claims³

and

“White Ace”:

Another YouTuber observes,

“seven-point-five [percent ABV] keeps me alive” before going on to describe

“Colouration: some say it’s the colour of piss”,⁴ but

does it taste like piss too … ?

***

Suddenly a false(?!) memory flashes before me … 

***

One day my brother pissed in one of his 3L bottles of cider:

Would he be able to tell the difference?

What is the benefit of knowing the answer to that question?

Would he do that to his own dad?

Would he?

Why?

Revenge?

For what?

Can you imagine?

Oh! The shame!

Did he?

Did they?

***

Layering: Perhaps for some, these are over-shares, “exposing more than many would dare or even deem necessary” (Murray, 2022, p. 498). On the subject of ethno-ethics, Murray (2022) goes on to note, “The word taboo could be replaced with the word unthinkable or even unmentionable” (p. 503). Writing, then, from a place of “shameful taboo”, “the point of writing from the taboo … is about writing from a particular moment of becoming or in-forming” (Murray, 2022, p. 498). I sense a moment of in-forming where writing from shame is becoming a gateway to the new … 

***

The (2017) song “Sometimes” by Gerry Cinnamon and certain lines come to mind, in-forming the here and now of my adult–child-of-an-alcoholic-ness in the present:

“Sometimes, just sometimes

Maybe more than some of the time

I am on a false ego trip

Insecurity is rife

I am not the ideal person

To be lecturing on life

But if you wanna know

Some things I’ve learned about myself

Been in sticky situations

I won’t bore you with the filth”

[…]

“It’s the way the water flows”

[…]

“Yeah that’s the way the story goes”

***

Layering: I turn to these lyrics because the depth of emotion made available by portrayals of filth allows me to “grieve in different ways and continue to heal” (Berry, 2022, p. 35). Sometimes the extraordinary nature of a story is too big to tell and there is a sense of “cannot write-ness” (Berry, 2022, p. 31) regarding the details surrounding an event. Despite the “allure of stories”, some are too sad and painful to re-live, underscoring the “contingent and thus tentative nature of this labor” (Berry, 2022, p. 31). So as I proceed I practice self-care to “ … give myself a break and let myself off the hook” (Berry, 2022, p. 38) for not being able to do the writing taking me to places I do not want to go.

***

“Suddenly a memory flashes before me” (Hocker, 2010, p. 867).

***

A memory and epiphany in the hyphenated spaces of son-father-ACOA-ness

I remember a conversation with my dad in hospital where we openly discussed his life of drink. “Out” of alcoholism, “in” palliative care and into sobriety, since he did not drink during his stay in hospital, he became the dad I always wanted. He was the most gentle, sincere, talkative and open dad I ever had. His cancer saved us and re-made our relationship, giving us new life (see Clarke, 2018, may).

When I said “I used to see you as an alcoholic, but now I realise that with no medical diagnosis [of depression], you were in pain with torment and not knowing how to deal with things you were probably self-prescribing with alcohol in cycles, dips, highs and troughs … ”. He acknowledged this as a possibility, saying

Times are different now. Today, people talk about everything, but in our day, it just wasn’t like that. We weren’t as open. We just didn’t talk like you do today. But I suppose you are right. I never thought of myself as being depressed.

***

Layering: Although this does not pardon or suggest the reason for his addiction, with no family member(s) to talk with, no medical diagnosis and in the absence of any clinical intervention(s), it offers some understanding of the conditioning surrounding his alcohol ab/use. Of the “taboo on tenderness”, Murray (2022, p. 502) writes, “We, as a society, are losing our ability to be ‘with’. Reaching out could be felt like weakness, and weakness is a taboo”. Maybe his fear of showing weakness, becoming dismantled, took away his ability to allow himself to “lean on others”.

Toxic entanglements with ethno-addiction

In the hotspot of the event of moving around these hyphenated spaces, how do I/we begin to digest all this?

With Murray (2022), what if we thought of culture as affective contagion and toxic entanglements? All that is propagating in the toxic miniature bottles-letter-bottle of piss entanglement is that which can “thrive in damp and stagnant conditions” (p. 501). What am I left with if I write to discharge the toxins across this “detoxography” (p. 501)?

The shame Tommy felt for my dad’s mistakes became mine as I drank in all the toxins from his writing. At the time, I was thankful for the intervention and felt confrontation was much needed. It felt like a step in the right direction, toward sobriety and repair. Or, so I thought … While I found his evaluation of alcoholism and its impact in our lives intoxicating, smoke and dust also got into my eyes.

I now recognise toxicity in his writing, propagating the taboo on tenderness. Perhaps previously sensed but left un-challenged, his thinking-writing added voice to the narrative of “bad dad”, fuelling the hatred and blame I was living at that time. It served to justify and legitimise, bolstering my sense of detachment, exonerating my feeling-thinking that he was ultimately “broken” and “beyond repair”. Without any real sense of fostering agency, I now sense an absence of tenderness, gentleness, empathy, sympathy-giving, heartfelt compassion or concern for my dad in his threatening, humiliating and absolutist writing. Written primarily from a place of “love for some particular someone”, that is with “preferential love” (Herrmann, 2022, p. 71) for his sister (my mum), his letter lacked a sense of “ … universal love for all of humankind” (Herrmann, 2022, p. 73). It also didn’t engender a generative or “possibilitarian” understanding of alcoholism, addiction, and relational repair, or husbanding and fathering to that matter.

The letter also casts dark shadows over the times where he was “out” of the fog of alcoholism. Instead of allowing things to be as they were then in the present, i.e. his temporary unreliability being part of the to-and-fro of conditions surrounding his alcohol ab/use (Järvinen, 2015), it demonstrates a lack of loving connection and fails to invite a sense of “we are in this together-ness” (Jones, 2017). If my dad gobbled up the absolutism, failing to be reminded of the many times he did not “think more of the bottle than anyone else” or that he did “show concern for the feelings of your family”, I now understand and forgive him for how hopeless and helpless he might have felt. Gripped by an uneasy vice, swamped, even drowning in bile feeling like there is no way “out”, perhaps I would have turned to drink too. Such culturally insidious beliefs need challenging and we need to speak out and back to them on behalf of people who are too ashamed, embarrassed or momentarily unable to speak for themselves.

Healing the father wound now

The present and future of my healing is now, “folded into this moment” (Wyatt, 2019, p. 44). I am 40 years young and I am father to a son who has just turned two. Miller (2013:, p. 200) observes, “Most men report that becoming a father is the single most important shaper of their lives”. Fatherhood still feels new to me, as does my adult–child-of-an-alcoholic-ness to some degree. Murray (2022:, p. 501) writes, “We don’t know this world, and there is a big space to fill”. Likewise, the “bigness” (Berry, 2022) of the hyphenated spaces of son-father-alcohol-my son feel like big spaces to fill. Since the hyphens are there “whether we choose to acknowledge them or not” and our work with the hyphens will never “arrive” but must always struggle “between” (Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2013, p. 386), the bigness is daunting at times. And as Sutton (2017:, p. 462) observes, “There’s no ending by the way – just a series of fragments that fizzle out – and the middle is a mess”.

I have tried to create order out of the mess and big-ness but this writing is not an “exorcism” and the feelings are not “problems to be solved. They need to be witnessed” (Tamas, 2016, p. 122). On this, I am practicing “allowing things to be” (Berry, 2022) and the point is to in-form a new future space of adult–child-of-an-alcoholic-ness. Seeking to assuage and mitigate the risk of either becoming an alcoholic myself, developing debilitating perfectionism or obsessive compulsion; or replacing one “hypomanic” pursuit (Comerchero, 2014, p. 73) such as endurance sport with another, such as workaholism, for example (Boje & Tyler, 2009). I need to guard against developing a vice that creates a sense of absence in my own fathering, leading to a wound for my son. Good enough, not perfect. Like my dad. How do I foster just the “right” amount of intimacy with my son?

Coming out of toxic seizure

I feel I have survived my dad’s addiction relatively unscathed. Without having developed seriously maladaptive functioning (McCoy & Dunlop, 2017), I have relatively minor symptoms. However I acknowledge that “I may have emerged with wounds that will probably take a lifetime to closely understand” (Berry, 2022, p. 34). I know that “ … the prevailing view in much of the clinical literature on COAs is that they are affected negatively by their parents’ drinking, regardless of what they are saying themselves and even in cases where they appear well-adjusted” (Järvinen, 2015, p. 822). Research shows that children of parents who abuse alcohol are prone to experience a wide range of negative outcomes during both childhood and adult life, including, but not limited to, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, low sense of belonging, substance abuse, and avoidance in romantic relationships (Kelley et al., 2011; Omkarappa & Rentala, 2019; Park & Schepp, 2017). In summary, Miller (2013:, p. 196) observes that “ … fathers who are … substance dependent … create developmental deficits for their children to overcome … ”. I would like to, however, complicate and challenge the narrow pursuit of this “dark-sided” view in research on alcohol-related harm.

Järvinen and Bloch (2017) observe that previous research on ACOAs can be grouped into three strands. First, the mental health consequences for growing up in families with drinking problems. Secondly, the resilience of COAs and variations in parent–child relationships and parental functioning. Thirdly, individual experiences and analysis of self-reported emotions of alcoholics’ children, “arguing against the idea of a universal, homogeneous ‘ACOA-syndrome’ among people who have grown up with alcoholic parents” (Järvinen & Bloch, 2017, p. 76). This writing picks up on this third strand, questioning the homogeneity of ACOAs’ experiences and “contributes to the sparse tradition of qualitative research addressing the varying relationships between ACOAs and their parents” (Järvinen & Bloch, 2017, p. 77).

Father wound: a generative force?

With hindsight and through this writing, I believe it was “energy of the wound” (Miller, 2013) that allowed me to successfully complete my PhD (2009), powered both the training for and completion of three Ironman events (2011, 2012, 2013) and has fueled, to a large extent, this writing and even my academic career. This belief complicates and troubles the “vulnerable vs resilient” debate regarding COAs (Sawant, 2020), shifting the focus to healthy adaptation (Järvinen & Bloch, 2017) and resiliency capacity (Park & Schepp, 2018).

Perhaps developed at an early age as a way of being “with” the horrible feelings of seeing the tea cosy on a tour around the kitchen table before I went to school; maybe I learned to “be with” with those feelings by running into them, holding them as I “stride” through life into adulthood and fatherhood. Echoing the narrative of fondness (Pirkanen, 2015), my father’s drinking was portrayed as relatively harmless in my childhood. Perhaps like Comerchero (2014) however, as an adult, maybe I “used” running, to run away from unpleasant feelings in “hypomanic defense”, a form of denial, “denying the reality that may be there” (p. 73). Maybe “The larger point here is that a father wound does not necessarily have to be a driving force of negativity in a man’s life” (Miller, 2013, p. 3). Maybe the father wound can be a generative probiotic.

Of potential interest to clinical audiences

Zooming out, making connections with those working with clients to understand loss, grief and alcohol-related harm within son-father relations, I conclude with a discussion of potential implications for effective guidance and counselling.

I do not want my autoethnography to be “passively consumed”, rather I “explicitly invite response” (Campbell, 2017, september, §39). Like Sutton (2017), “Instead of theorizing the social, I want to socialize theory” (p. 459). I want to take theory and breathe experiences into it, privileging bodily encounters and affect overthinking. I do this to breathe incidences from culture/social life into the theory so it becomes embodied, more fleshy, human, recognisable and relatable. I invite clinical audiences to “pick up the receiver” (Tamas, 2016, p. 123), to “ … engage and respond … in constructive and meaningful ways” (Adams et al., 2022, p. 7) as they help clients put things together differently.

First, of potential interest to clinical audiences is the number of possible lessons that can be learnt for understanding and coming to terms with grief, trauma and loss from the guidance on writing about it autoethnographically (e.g. Berry, 2012; 2022; Sutton, 2017; Tamas, 2009, 2016, 2022; Wyatt, 2017, 2019, 2022).

Secondly, of potential interest is to understand how “energy of the wound” driving healthy behaviours might develop into an obsessive-compulsive problem with negative outcomes for men’s mental well-being. In the context of pursuing regular physical activity to support physical health maintenance and disease prevention, when might leisure spill over into excessive physical activity, or even “exercise addiction” (Berczik et al., 2014)? We know that leisure counselling, for example, promotes exploitation of a client’s past, current or prospective leisure pursuit(s) to significantly improve mental health and well-being (Juniper, 2005; Leitner & Leitner, 2005). And as well as filling social and emotional “holes” (Atkinson, 2008, p. 171), we know that triathlon, for example, has saved lives (Axelsen, 2009). There is, however, also potential for such “selfish” pursuits to become all-consuming, causing problems within intimate relationships, which in turn has potential to negatively impact men’s mental well-being (e.g. Lamont & Kennelly, 2010). Beyond the need to understand negative consequences of parental alcohol dependency then, is the need to understand patterns of adaptation (Park & Schepp, 2017). This begs the question; how can effective counselling help client’s comfortably skate the fine line between a healthy maintenance of maximal physical and psychological well-being while managing any tendency toward obsession/perfectionism or hypomanic denial? How might counselling work to bring “into the light of awareness” (Wolynn, 2017, p. 16) unconscious patterns so clients can try to avoid repeating them?

Thirdly, on the subject of experiencing becoming a father, Miller (2013:, p. 200) writes, “Most men report that becoming a father is the single most important shaper of their lives”. He goes on to observe that “very little scholarship has specifically examined how the experience of raising a son might allow fathers to come to terms with their earlier father-son wounds” (p. 201). Of particular interest is understanding how nurturing a son might allow men to reflect on past experiences with their father. How does fatherhood impact how we see the harm we endured? On this, do you have to be a father to a son to achieve these kinds of insights, to overcome a father wound? Additionally, how do relationships with other men moderate the father wound or help men to reflect on their relationship with their own son(s)? For example, how does a lack of “sympathy-giving” (Järvinen & Bloch, 2017) shape the emotional life of alcoholics’ children, potentially increasing misery?

Fourthly, elsewhere in work on policy and prevention, research has begun exploring transitions in men’s alcohol in the context of becoming a father (see Dimova et al., 2021). This invites the question that maybe scares alcoholics’ children the most: how can I recognise and/or prevent myself from being driven by a “posttraumatic repetition compulsion to self-wound” (Tamas, 2016, p. 121)? How might effective counselling recognise and work “with” such complexities?

Fifthly, in an effort to memorialise my dad and as an act of symbolic immortality, when I transacted with Henderson to curate positive memories of being in the garden shed with my dad, I consumed death (Dobscha & Podoshen, 2017). This brings us to the enterprise and “consumption” of counselling, loss and bereavement services. Since the 1970s, a whole industry has grown up around recovering from being an A/COA. Although Henderson is not a counsellor, I found trans-/inter-/intra-acting with him to be therapeutic, perhaps offering a “surrogate” for more traditional forms of bereavement counselling. Of potential interest is to understand the extent to which, if any, strategic partnering with such commercial service providers might complement or complicate more “traditional” interventions. What are the service needs of ACOAs? And could the use of perhaps other more novel, creative interventions (e.g. Letherby & Davidson, 2015) taking place outside the counselling room then be brought inside, delivering similar benefits for men’s mental health and well-being? Additionally, how might online support forums (Haverfield & Theiss, 2014) and forgiveness therapy (Osterndorf et al., 2011) contribute to healing among men at risk?

***

Future

As the event of my writing as a collision site draws to a close, what is the future of my ACOA-ness?

I am learning to live with and accept the person I am becoming. I am a slower swimmer/cyclist/runner than I would like to be. But what I am losing in terms of stopwatch time and speed, I am gaining in terms of uninhibited time within my relationships outside the one I have with my dad. With Berry (2022:, p. 36), “it is time to continue to rest and heal, and to exert my energies in other mindful ways” in other subjective space–time-matterings with my body, son and wife.

When my dad died, I gradually stopped chasing time. My relentless pursuit of physical betterment making me edgy all the time and occupying my thoughts with my next training session no longer grips me in toxic seizure. I have started separating my own identity from my father’s and I am opening up (Park & Schepp, 2017). The constant need to attach by making myself better, asking Is he proud of me? has lifted. Like Yoo (2019), “My ‘fit’ body represented my relentless quest for perfection, achievement, and attainments” (p. 194). I have now slowed down, seeking mainly “digger” time with my son together with my wife. Have I healed? Am I healing? Maybe it is “too soon to understand with much clarity the extent to which the writing … influenced my healing” (Berry, 2022, p. 39). With Pelias (2012) I realise that “What is collected now collapses into tomorrow’s past, present, and future. Archiving is never done, never complete”. But I am working on it and no doubt will be for quite some time.

***

Resisting self-doubt and excessive questioning though, taking heed of Wyatt’s (2019) advice: pause.

Maybe I’m trying too hard to know, trying too hard to be smart. Maybe I need to allow myself to become a dinkus. (Wyatt, 2019, p. 44)

***

Data availability

So as not to violate the protection of human subjects and due to the nature of this research, supporting data are not available since those featured in this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Wade Clarke

Daniel Wade Clarke is a senior lecturer in management and marketing at the University of Dundee School of Business, Scotland, UK. His scholarship centres around issues related to organisational space and place. He studies business management education and customer experience, as well as son-father relations and experiences of loss. His interests are framed by a desire to develop evocative forms of understanding through the use of imaginative-creative and expressive representations including autoethnography and research poetry.

Notes

1 “Frosty Jacks Apple Cider” 7.5% A.B.V 3 L. REVIEW from Mark’s Weekly Upload (April 2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUmk2bsltuA&t=26s [Date accessed: 22.01.2021].

2 “Frosty Jack review” by Jack Dup (no date).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csS_tDMUgfA [Date accessed: 22.01.2021].

3 “Frosty Jacks 7.5% White Cider” by sofakingdrunk66 (June 2012). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oONqj8taNBY [Date accessed: 22.01.2021].

4 “White Ace cider review” by Ace Price (November 2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHF8oV1SxE&t=91s [Date accessed: 22.01.2021].