As Father’s Day approaches, we’re invited into the full field of that experience: the warmth, the ache, the longing, the gratitude. For some, this day brings smiles and stories. For others, silence and grief. And for many, it’s a mix of both. This is a reflection for all of us, for those held, and those who had to hold themselves. For the fathers who showed up, and those still learning how.
Father’s Day always arrives with memories and echoes. Some are warm. Some are hollow. Some ache.
For me, one of the clearest echoes came when I was five, I have a memory: We were supposed to go somewhere, and I didn’t want to go, so I stood in front of the mirror brushing my hair, brushing, full of frustration I threw the comb, the mirror shattered.
I froze with fear. I was terrified of how my mother would respond, so I ran straight into my dad’’s arms. He didn’t understand what was happening, but it didn’t matter, he held me. My mom immediately came in, visibly upset, so he asked what had happened.
I remember the accusatory tone in my mom’s voice but dad didn’t let her touch me. He protected me, but I felt not just a protection from her, but from the world. I felt: “Nothing can touch me. My father is here”
Looking back now, as a mother myself, I can see things I couldn’t have known or even realized. The custom made mirror would have been expensive, not to mention the clean up! I would have been upset too! My mother was expressing the exhaustion, the weight of responsibility, and pressures I had no way of understanding. But as a child, I didn’t see any of that. I just knew I was scared, and wanted to feel safe.
That memory of safety lives in my body, and I am so grateful for being able to experience that sense of safety in my childhood because of my dad.I think it has had an effect on how I show up with my own son, my life and how I show up in the therapy room. But I know not everyone has a memory like that.
In my work ,especially through Inner Immersion, I’ve sat with people whose fathers never protected, never soothed, never held. Some were absent. Some were violent. Some were both.
Many were present in body, but not in spirit , men who learned to provide, but not to connect. Society trained them to be the roof, the walls to protect, but not to participate, never to enter the room.
They didn’t build the joy and missed the emotional connection that would have filled them with energy, the energy that comes from laughter, from play, from knowing your child’s heart. Because of that, many fathers lose something they don’t even know they’re missing until it’s too late.
Instead, many are left with burnout, distance, and confusion.
This is why we must tell both truths:
Yes, there are fathers who shielded, who stood steady, who gave us a sense of being held. And yes, there are fathers who fractured something essential, leaving behind confusion, pain, self-blame, and silence.
We can’t write about fatherhood without honoring the entire field. That means honoring the humanity of those who shaped us, while remembering that everything we need to live a balanced life already lives within us.
Fatherhood isn’t a static role. It’s a relationship, one that continues to evolve long after childhood ends.
In Inner Immersion sessions, I’ve watched men sob for the first time, the ache they buried finally surfaced, sons mourn the father they almost had, and grown daughters finally release the weight of being unprotected.
I see young men today, trying to become the fathers they never saw, who are breaking molds in real time, men reparenting themselves as they try to raise their children with more presence than they ever received.
The work isn’t about rewinding the past; it’s about meeting the imprint the past left inside us, then choosing what to do next.
Healing asks for presence, not perfection.
That also goes to the fathers who once caused harm, who now face their pain, their regret, and are choosing to do the work of repair.
We are all part of this story. We don’t have to be perfect to have a positive impact. We don’t have to get it all right to change the story.
We are invited to be present with a willingness to begin to make space for the complexity: the beauty and the ache, the memories we treasure, and the ones we wish we didn’t carry.
To be present means also to let the feeling move, whether that’s breathwork, Inner Immersion, a walk by the lake, or a shaky conversation you’ve postponed for years…movement turns static pain into change..
I think that is what we are ultimately learning to do at the inner immersion process, through breath, story, stillness, and soul, is to return to the part of ourselves that has always known how to hold.
To integrate the part that says: Nothing can touch me. I am here.
In my experience, that’s what we offer through Inner Immersion’s process of touching our innermost selves it opens the space where they can remember who they are, is not about being rescued, but the remembering of who we are, when we are rooted in truth, and connected to the deeper presence within us.
Because it is important to have spaces where there’s room for healing.
Where there’s room for men to cry, for women to grieve what was missing.
For sons to ask, and for fathers to answer.
This is how cycles shift, not with grand gestures. But with presence, with truth., and the willingness to feel.
Iveth Zwyssig
