FamilyLife Today®

Kia Stephens: I’m sitting across from him and that’s when it hit me. You don’t know this person. You don’t know what to talk about. You don’t know how to get the conversation going. This is not going to be an 80s TV sitcom.

That’s when it hit me there. I’m a dreamer. So I dream it up in my head. I just expect it to manifest until I’m sitting right there in reality and I’m like, “Oh, it’s not going to be like that.”

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: All right, so we’re going to talk about a critical topic today.

Ann Wilson: I think it is, too. I think everybody at some point could resonate with this.

Dave Wilson: I’m not sure we’ve ever talked specifically about this one. I can remember the first time I heard this phrase, “father wound.” I think late 20s. I had no idea I had one, never even thought about it. I was reading Robert Lewis’s book, Raising a Modern-Day Knight, and he used that term. As soon as I read those two words together, I knew immediately it was like, “I have that.” I don’t even know what it is; I know I have it.

So we’ve got Kia Stephens in the studio today. Kia, welcome. First time ever on FamilyLife Today, right? Welcome.

Kia Stephens: Yes, thank you for having me. Dave and Ann, it’s a pleasure to be with you.

Ann Wilson: We’re really glad you’re here. Your book, Overcoming Father Wounds, and I like too the subtitle, Exchanging Your Pain for God’s Perfect Love. So many of us just hearing that, overcoming father wounds. I don’t think I knew I had a father wound, but I did. As Dave started working on his and talking about it, and we went to seminary and we got into some counseling classes of how to counsel.

Dave Wilson: We thought we were going to learn how to counsel others. Then we realized we’ve got to dig into our own stuff.

Ann Wilson: And that’s when I started to see like, “Whoa, I’ve got a bunch of wounds.” But for you to write about it, that’s something that has resonated with your heart. Kia, tell us what you do. I know you’re with Entrusted Women. What is that?

Kia Stephens: I started off wanting to write a book. I really have wanted to write this book since I was in high school. I felt like the Lord—it’s actually 26 years that the Lord gave me this impression on my heart because I knew there was a neediness on the inside of me. I couldn’t unpack what that was.

Literally when I was in college, I started working on this book off and on. I graduated, got married, and I discovered a conference for women writers. I was going to take this book there and I was going to get discovered. I was going to be famous. Let’s all have a good laugh.

I was teaching at the time, an elementary school teacher, that’s what my trade is. So I had my little book baby on an external hard drive. I was in the classroom having a meeting with a superior. I go to move my computer from the teacher desk to a student desk and my little external hard drive with my little book baby was on there. When I transferred that laptop over to the student desk, the external hard drive slipped out the USB, fell onto the floor. I had dropped it many times before, but that time I realized I lost everything.

I literally went into a little depression. But that was God’s sovereignty. It set me on a path to start blogging. It was really great because it gave me an opportunity to engage with the women that I believed I was called to reach.

Then I got sidetracked with Entrusted Women. You mentioned that where I saw a lack of minority representation in the Christian writing and speaking world. I would go to these writing conferences and there would be like 10 people there. So I said, “What is a way that I could reach this demographic that’s not being reached and share the information so that more people can get an opportunity to publish a book?”

So that was a sidetrack, but it was the very thing that God used to open the door for me to get a book deal. I speak on that subject and then outside of that, I run around like a chicken with her head cut off because I have teenagers. Married for 20 years, praise the Lord.

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Dave Wilson: How did this story come? Obviously, it’s a very specific topic which, as you hear it and read it, I think a lot of us go, “Oh boy, didn’t even know I had this, but I think it impacts a lot of people.” So what’s your story?

Kia Stephens: My parents got married with little knowledge of each other. My mom was the daughter of a Baptist pastor who was a great man, really well-known in the community, but he was not an affectionate father. I think it starts there, right? Because to say it started with me would be a fallacy; we need to see how did we get here.

My mom had the notion that you get married and it’s just a fairy tale and it just works out. So she met my father, who was actually her waiter on a cruise ship. She went with some of her girlfriends and my father, he’s still a good-looking man. He was even more good-looking then. He’s Haitian, so he has an accent, he speaks many languages, he knows about food, he’s a chef. He was really a charmer and my mother was naive.

He’s several years her junior and they struck up a relationship. When the ship docked and he had free time, he went with them and they kind of fell in love. They kept this relationship going until his tenure on the ship ended, and then he moved to the states and they got married in the living room of my grandparents’ home.

Ann Wilson: So your grandfather married them probably, the pastor?

Kia Stephens: I don’t know if he married them, but I know that my grandfather had reservations. So now you have this relationship that’s really set up to fail from the very beginning. And it did. It spontaneously combusted and my parents had a tumultuous end. I was three. I thought I was a baby, but I was actually three.

Ann Wilson: Any siblings?

Kia Stephens: No siblings. I say one is enough. My early memories of my father are at visitation centers. I remember there being cubicles that I would go in and we would have a time limit. I’d spend time with him and then we’d leave.

I have one remembrance of going to his apartment complex and there was another woman there. I remember being in the kitchen looking at them, but I wasn’t really paid attention to. Then outside of that, I have more recollection of him leaving gifts on the front porch of my grandparents’ home, which I appreciate because I know that that is more than some people received. I do have one memory of him taking me to get a bicycle.

That was the extent of my relationship with my father growing up, which I was okay with. You don’t really know that something is dysfunctional or not the way God intended until you see it up close.

Ann Wilson: That was your normal.

Kia Stephens: That was my normal. So when I went to college, I remember being in a dorm room of a friend and I asked her about this bookshelf that she had in there. I said, “Where’d you get that from?” And she said, “Oh, I made it with my dad.” It was like a ton of bricks because she was saying in that one statement, “I have a relationship with my father and this is what we did together.”

And I hadn’t done anything with my dad. For whatever reason, it brought to the surface a lot of emotion and pain that I had surrounding my relationship with my father. I remember just doing my best to not show that I was emotionally shaken up by that and get to my dorm room and just sob.

Ann Wilson: What do you think it is that you were feeling that made you just break down?

Kia Stephens: Jealousy, loss. Grief is like that; it comes in waves. I wouldn’t have been able to have the language to say I was grieving, but I was grieving what she had that I didn’t have. I wanted that and simultaneously knew it was probably going to be impossible for me to get it. So then that’s a little bit of acceptance, right? Where you have to accept the things you cannot change.

Dave Wilson: What’d you end up doing with that? Did you tell anybody or was it just you kept it inside?

Kia Stephens: I went to someone who was like a mentor for me and told her. Little did I know she also had a situation with her biological father. So it was so comforting and then she rolls out for me this prescription. I’ll call it a prescription. I’m kind of a prescription girl. I want you to tell me what to do so I can fix this. And if you fix it like this, then I should be able to fix my situation in the exact same way that you did.

Ann Wilson: And it probably won’t take long either.

Kia Stephens: No, you just add water and stir and voila. I wrote this letter to my dad detailing all of the events that I could remember that he missed, from kindergarten on up to high school. I want you to be in my life. I want us to start from where we are right now.

Ann Wilson: When you wrote it and sealed it and sent it, what was your hope?

Kia Stephens: My hope was that he was going to write me back and all of a sudden, we’re going to have an 80s TV sitcom relationship, right? The Huxtables. I’m a child of the 80s and I don’t know who didn’t grow up in the 80s on *The Cosby Show*, *Family Ties*, *Family Matters*, *Growing Pains*.

We see these ideal families and we see the relationship and the father’s comedic and he’s funny and he’s present all the time. He works occasionally and we live in a really expensive brownstone in New York. But our father is always there; he just occasionally delivers a baby. That’s what I was thinking, that we were going to have that type of chemistry.

I remember he did write me back, but I was always the initiator. I was always initiating.

Ann Wilson: Well, what did he say when he wrote you back?

Kia Stephens: I don’t remember much. I remember him saying, “I love you.” I remember him saying, “I love you.” I remember that his handwriting was hard for me to decipher. I mentioned he’s Haitian and he kind of writes like part Creole, part English, part “I can’t read your handwriting.” So I made out what I could.

But I remember when I got back home from college and we went to this Mexican restaurant—my dad loves Mexican food. I’m sitting across from him and that’s when it hit me. You don’t know this person. Having a conversation is not going to be easy. You don’t know what to talk about. You don’t know how to get the conversation going. This is not going to be an 80s TV sitcom. That’s when it hit me there.

But I’m generally—I’m always this visionary. I’m a dreamer. So I dream it up in my head. I just expect it to manifest until I’m sitting right there in reality and I’m like, “Oh, it’s not going to be like that.”

Dave Wilson: So what’d you do with that thought? Did it discourage you?

Kia Stephens: I kept trying. No, I’m a fighter. I am a fighter. So I pursued more. I gave more gifts. I didn’t have any money, but I would take some photos from my mom’s photo album. She had those—when you went to Olan Mills, and you pose and they had the little background that dropped down. I took those, which I know she probably paid a nice little penny for, and I would make gifts for my father.

I desperately wanted the 80s sitcom and I was going to do whatever I had to do to get it. And so now in my 40s, that’s why I did it. All of this time, I’ve been saying, “I just want you to love me. I just want you to see me. If I do this, will you see me? Will you meet my emotional needs? Will you be the father that I never had? Will you tell me that I’m beautiful and I’m intelligent and I’m valued and I’m wanted?”

I’m just going to do this one more thing because I just want to be loved.

Ann Wilson: We all want to be loved and seen. Especially by our dad.

Dave Wilson: That’s where it starts. And he never did?

Kia Stephens: He does in his own way. Now I think that him leaving the gifts on the front porch of my grandparents’ home, that was him trying. When he bought that bike, that was his way. My father wasn’t fathered.

Ann Wilson: That’s what I was going to say. Your dad was already handicapped coming in, as most of us are.

Kia Stephens: Yeah. And my mother wasn’t fathered in the way that would help her to choose wisely.

Dave Wilson: What did you do with the wound?

Kia Stephens: I think when you begin to identify that you have a wound, number one, you have a choice. Because I knew with this book with the title Overcoming Father Wounds, there’s going to be three types of women. One woman is going to be—and men, by the way, like Dave—that’s going to say, “Oh, I got this. I have a father wound.”

Another type would be someone who looks at the book and says, “I have it, but uh-uh. Not today, Satan. I’m not going to deal with that.”

Ann Wilson: Why do you think we do that? Why do we avoid it?

Kia Stephens: I would say fear. I use an analogy of being in the dark and there’s a rattlesnake right next to you, but you’re in the dark so you don’t know unless you hear the tail shake. But when you turn the light on, it’s like, “There’s a rattlesnake! What am I going to do?”

And you can run, you can do all these things. I think delving into your wounds is like turning the light on. You might kind of know there’s a rattlesnake in the room, but if I don’t turn the light on, I don’t know for sure and I don’t have to deal with it. Similar to your father wounds, like, “I think I might have it, but life is okay. Our marriage is—we’re okay, we’re still together. We stayed together longer than my parents did.”

Ann Wilson: Which is interesting because Dave, I would say you’re an avoider of conflict. He recognized he had a father—I’m talking for you, but I think you recognized it for sure. But it wasn’t until we got married that anger started popping up. There were consequences of it and he didn’t know where it was coming from. I didn’t know where it was coming from. And so maybe you’re in that situation you don’t want to deal with, but I would guess that you have certain consequences that are popping up.

Dave Wilson: You have a sense like you said, there’s a snake in the room. I don’t want to turn the light on because I don’t want to deal with the snake. And this snake’s not really going to bite me. It’s fine curled up in the corner. But then at some point you realize, or somebody else sees it. “Do you realize you’re really an angry person?” or you’re whatever, you’re wounded. And you’re like, “I have been bit.” And now you’re like, “I’m just denying it.”

Ann Wilson: Oh, the venom’s in you.

Dave Wilson: And it’s like, “I’m pretending I’m good. Hey look at me, I’m good, I’m successful, I’m doing this, I’m doing that.” And the whole time you’re really trying to be loved and seen by your dad. And it’s crazy to think that’s underneath it all. If you don’t deal with it, you’re going to be a sort of messed up dude. I like the snake analogy. So number one, “I got this.” Number two is, “I have it, but I don’t want to deal with it.”

Kia Stephens: I’ve had a lot of women say that actually, like, “Oh, uh-uh.” I think it’s scary. It’s just so scary to unpack what you didn’t receive and to find out, “Oh, this is why I’m like that. I’m needy. I’m desperate.”

I was desperate in my first marriage—that’s why I married him—or I was desperate in college, that’s why I dated him. Or I have trust issues. I don’t trust men. I don’t trust God. I don’t trust—it’s scary because I think we generally have a pretty inflated view of ourselves. We don’t have a sane assessment.

And so to be told not only do you not have a sane assessment, but here’s the long laundry list of everything that you are dealing with and it does tie back to your family of origin. That takes courage. That takes a willingness to dig in deep.

I remember going to a counselor. She says to me, “Have you written a forgiveness letter to your father?” I looked at her like, “Lady, first of all, he wasn’t even there. And I came to you for another issue altogether. Why are we talking about this?”

But I had access to a forgiveness letter template. And so I take this template home and I follow all the steps and write it to my dad. I realize I cannot get through this. When I got to the part where I was talking about I wanted him there—I really wanted my dad there to interrogate the dates and these relationships that I found myself in when I was middle grades and high school. Because I have regrets about that. It’s like, “Ugh, why did you do that?” I wanted him to be there to say, “No, you don’t know her value. You don’t know her worth. You can’t hold a candle to her. You should not be here.”

I wanted him to be there for that. And when I got to that part in the letter, I sobbed. I sobbed. Once I finally got through writing it, I drag this chair into my bedroom and it’s the empty chair technique that counselors use and I read the letter to my dad.

It was very cleansing for me and healing for me to do that. I can’t say that it got rid of all of the sorrow and all of the grief, but it was a huge dent in my grieving process. A lot happened there for me.

Ann Wilson: I think that’s really wise. I’m just imagining our listeners. One, some are thinking, “I do have this. I haven’t wanted to deal with it. But I could do that letter. And I could pull a chair into the room and I could read that letter to my imaginary father sitting in the chair.” I think that would do a lot of good.

Dave Wilson: I think that’s a start. Just a start because you think it’s like, “Okay, wrapped up, bow, now I can move on.” And it’s a step. I think tomorrow we’ve got to talk about what healing looks like. And I’d love to hear you talk about how did this affect your marriage.

Ann Wilson: And I think if you do the healing letter, I would read the letter but I’d also talk to your Heavenly Father. Talk to him about the truth of what you have lost and what you feel. You’re saying it to your dad, the dad that’s not sitting in the chair, but you’re reading it to him. But I think too to talk to God and to be honest with him and to say, “This is what I lost. This is what I missed. This is what I didn’t have.”

And then just sit for a minute and let him because he hears every one of those prayers. He catches every one of those tears. He knows those moments when you were four years old and your dad wasn’t there, and when you were a teenager and there was no male authority figure to look at you and say, “You are beautiful and I am here for you.” He’s always been.

Kia Stephens: I couldn’t agree with you more, Dave and Ann. I think that’s been a beautiful part of the journey learning what it looks like for God to be your father.

I grew up in the Baptist church so I’ve heard these statements of like, “God is a father to the fatherless,” and it’s kind of trite because you’ve heard it so much and it seems ambiguous and impossible to achieve. But as I’ve continued to be brutally honest with the Lord and share my thoughts and my feelings and sit in silence or just cry, mulling over scriptures that say, “I knew you in your mother’s womb. I formed you. I know how many hairs are on your head.”

Those things are very comforting for me, knowing that I can share my feelings with God. We don’t serve a God that’s static. We serve a God that’s not afraid of our emotion or intimidated by it. He’s not going to say, “You’re too emotional! What are you doing? You’re crying again about that same thing?” which is what some of us have experienced, right?

Dave Wilson: Man, what a great day with Kia Stephens talking about what a topic, overcoming father wounds. Exchanging your pain for God’s perfect love. Who doesn’t need to do that? So good, and we’re going to hear her again tomorrow. But you can get a copy of her book just by clicking the link in the show notes at FamilyLifeToday.com.

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