2. Healing Through Loss: My Father's Unfulfilled Dreams and My Journey Forward (Vulnerable Share - Father's Day Reflection)

Raw grief collides with profound wisdom in this unscripted, intimate episode recorded on Father's Day. With tears still fresh on my cheeks, I share the complicated journey with my father who passed from cancer in 2017, and the powerful lessons his unfulfilled dreams taught me about life.

My dad's greatest regret was never making it to Australia—the dream destination he perpetually postponed while chasing financial security. When I began living adventures he had only talked about, it created a painful rift between us that took years to heal. Our final trip to Bali together, just months before his death, was bittersweet—moments of pure joy interspersed with the reality of his declining health and our strained connection.

What strikes me most now is how my father never realized that the freedom, adventure and possibility he associated with Australia were already available to him. He didn't need to physically be there to begin cultivating those emotions and building the life he wanted. Through my exploration of neuroplasticity and manifestation, I've come to understand that our dreams aren't achieved by waiting for everything to align perfectly—they're built through incremental steps that bridge our current reality with our desired future.

The most profound teaching from my father's unfulfilled dreams is that life is too short to postpone joy. We don't simply leap from here to there—we travel a path of stepping stones. What habits would your future self have? What knowledge would they possess? What environments would they create? By answering these questions and taking aligned action today, you pull your desired future closer rather than pushing it perpetually ahead. What one small step could you take today toward living your dream life, rather than waiting for permission or "enough" money to begin?

Chapters

• 0:00 Raw Emotions on Father's Day
• 2:12 My Dad's Cancer Journey
• 6:30 Our Last Trip to Bali
• 9:42 Processing Grief and Loss
• 15:20 Living Dreams Now, Not Later
• 20:47 Honoring My Father's Memory

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to the Soul Ed podcast with your host, me, emma Jones, and you may hear that my voice is a little bit croaky today. I feel like I'm definitely losing my voice a little bit, but it's also a little bit croaky because today is Father's Day and I've spent the morning, and I've spent the morning journaling with my cat on my bed and a cup of coffee in hand and tears streaming down my face, and I thought to come on here to record in this really raw energy that has no structure structure. It's not showing up wanting to be anything or to offer anything, but just to record this moment as as more of a message in memory of my dad, who passed away back in November 2017. He had prostate cancer, which then, which then traveled to his bowel, and when they went to operate to take the tumor out of his bowel, it then spread into his hip bones and so there was really nothing that they could do and six months before he passed, we took our last holiday together, which I remember was really bittersweet, because at that point, our relationship had really dissolved and weared down and we had spent many years not really being close and connected and there was a lot of resentment from him to me for the fact that he had got to this place in his life where he had realized, like he'd, he had not lived his dreams and he had almost been chasing the wrong things, which was often money and what money could bring you. He wanted to create safety for himself. You know, he that was the only way he knew how to do it. So he would work and work, and work and just never seemed to have the money for his dreams and the things that he really wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 2:33

And so, as time went on and I became older, I started having my own finances and my own ways of and means of being able to do things and travel. It really had an impact on him. There was one year where we me and my partner, my ex-partner at the time and a couple of friends had booked a trip to go traveling around Australia, and this was something that my dad had wanted to do for years and would often say you know, I'm going to take to Australia, I'm going to take to Australia, we should move to Australia, and it just never happened. And I remember in that moment, booking it and feeling so much guilt for being able to do something that he'd always wanted to do and wanting to do it with my friends and wanting to do it with my partner at the time and telling him the news that you know, I was planning to do this trip that he had dreamt of doing. It was a really hard moment and from that moment on it really affected our relationship. He was extremely hurt and upset by that and I completely understand. At the time I did understand, but it's.

Speaker 1: 3:46

I think as you grow older, you understand things on a deeper level, and what I know now and can understand why he was in so much pain from that is that his dreams and what he wanted to do just were slipping away and his daughter was now 23 and she wanted to explore the world with her friends, and I think in that moment he felt like he had lost the window of opportunity to spend together and to explore the world together with probably the only person he would have wanted to do it with. And in response to that, he pushed me away and was very resentful and very angry and we didn't really speak to one another properly for a couple of years and then I found out that the cancer that he had, the prostate cancer had had spread and it became really aggressive and we decided to do a trip to Bali as a family and it was my partner at the time's family. My dad came with me and I had at the time a six-month-old daughter, which was my oldest now, which is Navy, and he had the option of having chemotherapy or going on this trip and he chose to go on the trip with us and I look back at the photos and I looked back just before recording this podcast and they were really happy memories. But our relationship was so detached and I didn't really know how to relate to him at this point because there had been a lot of time and separation over the last two years and his resentment meant that communication was not the best and we didn't really know how to be in each other's space. And we didn't really know how to be in each other's space and I was in some ways resentful for his response and his reaction to me trying to explore life and find my own way, my own adventures, and also resenting the fact that I felt guilt. I felt guilt for doing something that I wanted to do because my parent wanted to also do it, but I'd never had the opportunity and there was a whole heap of emotions and the Bali trip was really beautiful Bittersweet, as I said, because my dad at some points looked the happiest he has ever been for quite some time and I think being away really gave him back that freedom.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Energy, like life, is limitless and anything is possible, and that's exactly what travel does to me. As soon as I get into the airport, I have this really. I have this almost boost of life and adventure and openness, possibilities and travel, and it really does charge me up. Travel for me is huge. It's a huge part of me, and so witnessing that, but also seeing how poorly he was and how he really struggled to eat day to day, and that had a big effect on his energy levels and his social battery and his ability to kind of be involved in the family whilst we were out there and it was tough, it was really tough to watch and when we got back he really deteriorated quite fast.

Speaker 1: 7:11

He wanted to stay at home and pass away at home and we had a lot of help from a lot of nurses, which they were absolutely incredible, unbelievable, so so good, because it's a really unknown, scary place to be and cancer has no real timeline. You don't know exactly when things are going to happen. You just know they are going to happen sooner rather than you know, later rather than you thought. But the unfolding of the cancer and it taking over the body is, it doesn't have an exact, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't. You don't know exactly when that's going to happen, but when we got back from Bali, it was, it was very quick. Over the course of probably about five months, he just became weaker and bed bound and in a lot of pain, and that was hard to see, but it felt like it went by in such a flash. It felt like we that whole year I'd had my daughter, my first daughter.

Speaker 1: 8:13

I was trying to parent and navigate that whilst whilst coming to terms with losing a parent. Anyone that has gone through this. You just get by, you, you, you go into your masculine mode. You have to get stuff done. You know you have to be thinking logically. And so emotions for me, I have found really easy to shut off over my life and it is a blessing and a curse. It really is a positive and it works as a great function when I need to be strong and put the emotions on the shelf until they can be felt properly, but it was.

Speaker 1: 8:59

You know, it's Father's Day comes around every year and it's not really every day that I think about what it feels like not to have my dad in my life. But it's on those moments when you have milestones, or Father's Day comes up, or Christmas or birthdays, when you really reflect on what that means not to have that energy and that parent and that level and layer of safety in your life and there feels an emptiness in some ways and that emptiness feels like something I need to feel. It feels like an open position that I almost want to pour energy into, to experience what that position feels like to be filled again. And over the last three, four years I've really gone deep into spirituality and healing and frequency and chakras in feminine and masculine energy and through this understanding and journeying with mushrooms and really reflecting on what the masculine energy has meant for me and what it feels like not to have that masculine energy and not have that leaning or landing place that I can go to has been an interesting journey itself. I feel like, as I record this with my eyes closed, that this message may not be cohesive and I can feel my brain, trying to be of service to the listeners here and want it desperately to make sense so that I can come to you with a takeaway or a resolution or something that can help. But I think what I need right now is just a place for this to be. You know, these very valid emotions to be and not have a structure. You know, not try to be anything for anyone in this moment other than feel so.

Speaker 1: 11:07

This episode is extremely different to anything that I have done before and it's more of a very in the moment before and it's more of a very in the moment, vulnerable share that on these days when we're reminded of what we don't have, it can be really tough. The contrast to sit in and something that I have learned from watching my dad's experience through life and watching him really equate success with money and his status in life with money and the respect that he deserves from others through money. I've seen these parts in myself and I feel that recently I've been looking into what feels success to me, what feels like success to me and I think we're all so conditioned, aren't we, that you have to have the money or a level of success to me what feels like success to me, and I think we're all so conditioned, aren't we, that you have to have the money or a level of success to get the life that you truly want. And so it's that carrot that's always dangling in front of us and we're on the treadmill, but we never really get the bite of the carrot, because the seeking and the wanting of it means that it always ends up being the seeking and the wanting of it rather than living in the dream of it right now. Well, how would this relate, you know, how would this relate if somebody, for example, wanted to travel and wanted to go to a country that they cannot afford right now and that is their dream? There are ways of building habits of that person who would be in that country and seeing the version of yourself as that person in that country.

Speaker 1: 12:46

So for my dad, he really felt that being in Australia, being away, would solve a lot of his problems. He would be happier, he would be freer, he could live off the land, he could use his skills out there they need plenty of builders he could really soak up the sunshine and be around the wildlife, and all of those feelings that he was creating and curating through this vision of Australia already existed within him. He was just using Australia, thinking that that would create the feelings that he was already able to ignite in his body before even getting or stepping foot on a plane, and it's something that I've been really no-transcript. It is to live your dream life now, because it's never over there, it is always here and you don't go from here to there. There's a journey, there's stepping stones, there's a timeline, and most people feel like that timeline only involves money. Only when I get £10,000 will I be able to move to Australia and create the life that I want. And I then have to work harder to get that, when actually the steps in between it could be as simple as getting your updated passport or making sure you have a full understanding of all of the cities that you want to go and get in a map, making sure that you have a driving license that you could drive over there, or even down to your habits.

Speaker 1: 14:35

What are you rewriting in your brain? What beliefs are you creating other than I need to work harder to make more money to afford my desire, which is over there? How can you pull that dream towards you? And this is something that I've been really thinking about and I've read it in so many books. But with these things they often resonate on a deeper level over time as our awareness grows. And reflecting today on my dad's journey in the last couple of years of our life together and feeling somewhat sad for where he found himself in his life, and thinking about my goals and my visions for the future, how can I pull those closer? By living that version of me now and then, as we like to call it, manifest that future reality when manifestation is just built on neuroscience and neuroplasticity.

Speaker 1: 15:37

If my dad were to create the habits and really put in the belief that he was going to, or already in Australia, working on everything at that point, that wasn't making him happy, that wasn't making him feel like he was living his down under life, what toxic habits did he have? He had an addiction to drugs, weed, and did he see himself smoking weed. Was that one of the traits or the habits that this future version of himself was doing in Australia? Who knows? Or was there a skill that he would need to sharpen to ensure that his working life in Oz would have been a fruitful one? Was there any new knowledge he would need? Is there any friends that he could have connected with which were Australian? Could he have printed off images of where he would stay and find the street name and the house number and the local beaches and the local cafes and restaurants and rate them? Go on to TripAdvisor and see what their rating is? Could he have worked out a plan, finance plan, for the first resistance or the first blocker or the first moment of potential possibility towards that is, money, rather than thinking of all of the other points that we could be entertaining and enjoying and getting consumed by first?

Speaker 1: 17:22

And so, from today, it's a message to myself and like reflecting that life is very short and we don't wait for things to come to us. We can be patient for them, absolutely, but if there's something that you do really, really want, what could you be doing to be living and feeling that right now? That right now, that what is one thing today that you could research or share with somebody or put a post out, as anybody lived here, moved here, done this, quit their job, has anyone started a podcast? Has anybody become a doctor from fashion?

Speaker 1: 18:02

Shared experiences shape belief, and my dad never believed he can move to Australia. His belief system had never experienced anything like that, and so the leap was too large for him just to think that money was going to bridge that gap for him. He needed to really look within and beyond and at all of the things that would tell him that he would not be able to go. Yet he still had this dream and desire, and when he realized he had maybe gone past the point of being able to fulfill his dream, he was left with a really hollow feeling of hopelessness that life had passed him by whilst he was chasing the wrong things and his daughter was now living his dreams through the life that he had created for her. But he was now left with resentment for the life that he didn't live.

Speaker 1: 19:04

And he was an incredible man. He was the most kindest, he was so kind he would give anybody his last pound and he was extremely creative. He had such a zest, such an aura that people were just drawn to him, and he had so many talents that he just didn't see within himself. And sometimes I almost wish he was still alive so I could help him understand the brain and neuroplasticity and that you can actually achieve anything that you want. But it's the way you go about it and the understanding that you have of rewiring and changing your brain to reflect the outcome that you want, rather than wait for the outcome to change your brain or your life. It doesn't work like that. It's an inside job first, and I'm sure he's looking down today as I sit here, tearful, speaking to you guys today, and he's extremely proud of everything that I have achieved and I know my daughters would have loved to witness and experience him because he was such a great, great man, so fun, so creative in his play, he had a great way with children, and I would like just to honour this episode for him, because he didn't get to live what he thought was his dream.

Speaker 1: 20:27

But I hope that he is living through me, through my experiences and my understanding, and me reaching my dreams and moving consistently towards my potential. I'm always in my potential. You know. I'm always living this potential and not waiting for the time or the day or the year and experiencing all of the feelings right now. So happy father's day to everybody who is listening to this and doesn't have their dad, their father, their stepfathers with them and finds it tough, you know, and reflects upon parts of the journey that might be sweet and or might not be, and it can be a whole mix of emotions, and I find every year is very different for me. Some are emotional and some aren't, and this one was particularly emotional for me. So I thought I'd record something very different, something very unscripted and in the moment, for the purpose of just sharing and connecting and being human. And so I will leave it there, but have a wonderful day and I will see you all soon for the next episode. Bye.