(Gestalt Goodbyes include appreciatons, resentments, and regrets.)
Things that I appreciated about you, Daddy: your encouraging me to write creatively; your encouraging me to draw; your teaching me and coaching me to play tennis; your intelligence and lively mind; your sense of humor , and the day I left my homework at home and you chased the city bus downtown to give it to me.
Things I resented about you: your lack of work ethic; your lying in bed all the time you were home; your sense of entitlement –it seemed you thought the world owed you a lot that you really didn’t deserve; the way you treated Mother; your molesting me; your scrambling my mind with conflicting messages about sex and life; your lack of insight into your problems; your being willing to subject the family to your alcoholic lifestyle; your insising I return home when I had the chance at a much better life with my maternal grandparents; you frightening me when you straggered through the house.
NANMYKEL.COM 
Respect.
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I’ve been trying to write a letter to my father too but stuck with the good things and felt guilty that I felt sad on my own behalf and not because he’s gone. I had a thought that one isn’t really ”allowed” to have to one’s parents even if one of them was abusive. Felt free. I think I’ll do another one and be more honest this time. It’s important.
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