Welded Whole: Finding Peace in Sparks and Steel

I didn’t have a relationship with my father. Not a real one. Not the kind you read about or hope for. What I had was a tangle—a complicated, aching non-relationship. Throughout my life, I heard things about him, saw things that no child should witness, things that planted seeds of confusion and pain. He was accused of horrors. He committed some. I watched him live in ways that broke moral lines, sometimes violently so. And yet…

And yet.

There are memories. Slivers of light in the dark. I remember being a little girl and riding along with him to his friend’s welding shop. That place was chaos—filthy, noisy, smelling like burnt metal and old grease. But to me, it was magic.

Watching those men weld was like seeing fireworks up close. The flying sparks didn’t scare me—they thrilled me. The way the metal bent to heat and pressure? That felt like the universe opening up in front of me, like I could reshape the hardest parts of life if only I had the right fire in my hands. One day, he even let me weld something. That day, I was alight with wonder. That day, I felt powerful.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was having a carport installed over my driveway. When the crew arrived, I was surprised by the enormous steel posts—much larger than I expected. Strong. Square. Industrial. They started welding the crossbeams across the top, working well into the evening. And as the sun began to disappear, the sparks started flying again.

And something in me remembered.

That child inside, the one who marveled at flame and steel, came forward. And as I watched those welders work into the dark, I didn’t just feel nostalgia—I felt peace. I felt joy. I felt... safe. Not because someone was protecting me. But because something inside me was finally repairing itself.

That night, I slept for eight hours straight. For the first time in years. Deep, healing sleep. And when I woke up, I knew something had shifted. I was more—more peaceful, more relaxed, more whole. And the rage, the slow-burning fury that had been a part of me for so long I forgot it wasn’t me, was gone.

Gone.

And its leaving didn’t leave a hole.

Its leaving made me whole.

So was my dad a good man? Sometimes, probably not. But also—sometimes, probably yes. He never hugged me. He never told me he loved me. But I must have loved him—or the things I saw, the things I heard, would not have hurt me so much.

And now, the parts of me that were waiting—aching—for his love... have been welded together by my own.

Being loved is not the measure of who we are.
Loving—that is the measure.
Loving is the forge where we become who we are meant to be.
It’s what makes us more.
It’s what makes us whole.