Son reunites mother and father after twenty-one years
Christmas
after Christmas, while growing up in Roosendaal, Holland, Frank Ofman watched
the heartwarming and inspiring American movies which portrayed the season as one
of warmth and happiness. He saw the large family, the joyous laughter, everyone
proudly watching as father made that first slice of Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas
hamit was idyllic.
And it was the exact reverse of his own life.
Frank lived in a home devoid of everything those movies represented. There
was little family life. The father he had never known was dead. His mother, though
she loved her son, was constantly ill, nearly dying twice, and lived with a man
who abused her. And Frank had learned to hide his feelings.
Yet it was his mother's revelation to him at the age of 13 which set him on
a path that would change everything.
"What would you do," she asked him one day out of the blue, "if
I told you your father was still alive?"
Aghast at his mother's question, Frank could only stare speechlessly as she
haltingly explained.
"We were young," she said, "We got together, but he had to leave
to America. We wanted to have kids. I sent photos to him when you were born...."
Something had happened those many years ago and despite the original intention,
Frank's father never returned to his first love in Holland, or to the son that
she bore him. And they lost contact over time.
Widowed from another marriage, his mother had spent the past decade of her
life with this abusive boyfriendand the misery of her past.
What hit Frank the deepest was her obvious suffering.
"She would sit in front of the television and cry for no reason,"
Frank said, "I wanted to change that."
He vowed that he would find the solution. He decided to go to college and learn
enough to travel to America for an internship. Then, he would find his father
and somehow set things straight.
"The adventure really started when I first heard about Dianetics
in college," Frank relates. "I was 21. A friend had the book and I told
him I wanted to read it. I read the first pages, where L. Ron Hubbard says, 'You
are beginning an adventure. Treat it as an adventure. And may you never be the
same again.' I thought it was very profound."
With these words as inspiration, he moved to America and began the search for
his father with little more than a name and old photographs.
In Boston, he began months of fruitless calls, tore through lists of names,
checked with the local police department, and visited all the addresses he was
referred to. Call after call. House after house. Dead end after dead end.
But just as he was about to give it all up, Frank again found Dianetics
as his beacon.
On Newbury Street one afternoon, he met a man from the local Hubbard
Dianetics Foundation.
"I connected him with the book I had read in college," Frank said,
"At the time, I wasn't happy. And somehow I knew Dianetics could change
that."
Frank enrolled on courses at the Foundation to help improve relationships
and to overcome the ups and downs of life that plagued him, while also receiving
several hours of Dianetics counseling.
It was after one of those Dianetics sessions that Frank realized he had found
the answer to his problems.
"After that session, my life completely changed," Frank says. "I
became certain that I could now control my life. And after that session, I knew
I would find my father and put together the family I had always wanted."
Things did changeand soon.
"One day, shortly after that session, a man called me and said 'I can
tell you where your father is.'"
It was in fact his uncle, his father's brother, and he offered to pick up Frank
and take him to his grandmother's house to meet the family.
The resulting reunion was much larger than any he had seen in the American
movies he had watched so longingly in Holland. Although his father was in New
Hampshire on a job, Frank found himself in the midst of a huge familyhis
grandmother, 48 cousins and 10 aunts and uncles, who each accepted him into the
family with open arms.
Reaching
his father by phone, Frank stated simply, "This is your son." And his
father rushed back to meet him.
"All I had was a photo of him 20 years ago," Frank said, "I
could see it was him, but older. He gave me a hug. There was instant reality there
and no doubt that I was his son. I looked just like him in his younger photos."
It was the end of the search, but the beginning of a new adventure.
Together they called Frank's mother in Holland, and together they paid her
airfare to come to America. She arrived in Boston in time for the holidays.
Frank could tell that his parents still felt strongly about each other, but
they had both been through failed relationships and felt they could not get back
together. But this is where Frank put his knowledge of Dianetics to work.
Using what he had learned at the Hubbard Dianetics Foundation, he helped them
to understand what had happened and to recognize that a happy life together was
still possible.
"That year I got to have my first Thanksgiving dinner with my new family
in America," Frank said. "It was the realization of that dream in Holland."
But Frank's application of Dianetics didn't stop there.
With his new knowledge of how to handle relationships with other people, Frank
taught his mother what to do to safely get out of the abusive relationship in
Holland.
Then, qualified as a Hubbard Book Auditor by reading and successfully using
Dianetics, Frank applied these principles to her ailing health and addressed
the spiritual problems that were at the root of her illness.
After one two-hour session, the trauma that had been the real cause of her
chronic illness was resolved. And the illness that had brought her near death
twice never recurred.
His mother returned to Holland, ended her relationship, sold the house and
returned to America to get marriedfor the first timeto Frank's father.
Frank proudly gave his mother away at the wedding.
While on course at the Dianetics Foundation, Frank ended his own troubled relationship,
found the woman he really loved, and married her.
And today?
Both Frank's and his parents' marriages are stronger than ever. He has the
family he always dreamed of. And plenty of Christmases and Thanksgivings to share
with them all.
And, says Frank gratefully, "It all started with Dianetics."
For
more information on Dianetics or to order your copy of Dianetics.
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