OMG!
I just realized that my joke that I have a lot of girl in me may be based in some social reality…
I was raised in a house full of women (a mother and two younger sisters) with a father who was raised in a house without a father (my grandfather having died when my own dad was nine). Though my father did have 3 brothers… the absence of that constant father figure meant that he was emotionally unequipped to teach his son how to ‘son’.
Meanwhile, my mother’s father was a drunk his entire life, leaving the two of us with no connective tissue and me with a sense that I was little more than a bother to his life as he went about his days with me underfoot (when and if given the chance to do even that).
And my uncles treated me with derision on the best of days. My paternal uncles simply were busy with their own lives and families, while my single maternal uncle was a cruel and inconsiderate bastard that I am not in the least bit sorry to not be in each others lives. My only emotion at his death was for my mother’s loss.
So:
1. No grandfather figure or positive role model, influence
2. Father, though wonderful, was emotionally absent
3. Uncles with either no significant influence or a negative impact
4. ALL of my positive role models during my developmental years were women
No wonder I relate so easily and quickly to women, but see men not as souls to be trusted and loved, but task masters whose only real motivator is to hand me a shovel and point me were to dig.
How must this effect my relationship with the Creator, who, while existing beyond the roles of man and woman, is at least personified as a male father. Do I frame him as having the qualities in a woman that I esteem so highly while also respecting him in the sense of a male head?