Father's Hunger
You may not know that you too would have it
Hello everyone,
Happy 2025 to all of you! I wish you well, wherever you are.
In Vietnam, January is a strange time because it’s right after New Year and before Lunar New Year, so everyone is finishing up their current work to shut down for new year.
I am doing well, still digesting my 2025 vision, which I will share soon in another newsletter.
This week, I’m writing to share with you some reflection from a conversation with a good friend I haven’t seen in five years.
Back then, she was going through a severe depression. She left Vietnam to create a new life for herself in Paris, eventually becoming a movement therapist and social worker. Meanwhile, I stayed in Vietnam after discontinuing my PhD.
Recently, we reconnected to reflect on our journeys through young adulthood and our twenties.
She asked me a simple but powerful question about our young adulhood journey:
"What makes you angry?"
"I'm angry that I did not have a father" I said, tears swelling up in my eyes.
I realized I was touching a very important truth.
Father’s hunger
I didn't realize the impact of my father's absence (he passed when I was 3) until I truly started grieving his loss.
In March 2023, while sitting in my apartment in London soothing myself after a romantic rejection, I began for the first time actually feeling that grief in my bones.
I remember staring at the wall on a Saturday night, promising to myself “I won’t stand up until I understood what was happening”.
And I stayed up for 4 hours, staring at the wall, grieving, shrieking.
I had a glimpse of how much it had shaped me – the longing for a father figure, the desire for structure and guidance, the inevitable disappointment that no structure could save me or might limit my growth, and then the rebellion against it.
Then, I swung too far to the other side, rejecting most form of external structure and accountability, which was quite unhealthy. My relationship with guidance and structure is complicated, just like with this father figure.
It’s unsatiated hunger.
As the priest Richard Rohr says, in the absence of a father's affirmation, "every male relationship will somehow be our unmet father, for good and ill." This father wound often manifests as a transference of a man's father hunger onto other men, seeking paternal approval and nurturance in friends, coaches, teachers, bosses, and pastors. While this yearning for mentorship isn't inherently bad, it can lead to complicated relationships with guidance and structure.
Deep down, I believe we all yearn for a healthy relationship within ourselves and with the external world – the structures and direction we can lean on that we feel safe, and still allow us to grow and try on new things.
A part of us wants someone to tell us, "Hey, now you do this," and "Hey, now you do that," and to be very disciplined about it. And then another part also wants to break free from that, so that “nobody tells me what to do!”
No wonder so many people in my circles are on the entrepreneurial path, leading our own ventures, which I have been on since a while too.
Now, at 31, healing for me means creating day-to-day structures that make sense. It also means joining teams and companies that provide external structure and allow me to extend myself, contribute, and grow beyond my current impact.
It's challenging, but I know it's the next right step.
2025 feels like a year of maturing and committing to finish what I start – embracing accountability and deliverables that make sense.
This newsletter, which I'm sharing with you, is a part of that commitment.
As we begin this new year, I'd love to support you in clarifying your vision for the year ahead and beyond. Hit "reply" and let me know:
What structures or guidance do you wish you had to light the way forward?
What is one small step you could take today to begin creating that for yourself?
I’d love to hear from you.
With faith in your unfolding journey,
Khuyen