Explosive Rage & Father Wounds — Finding Freedom & Healing | Bob Kroll
He Drove 18 Hours to Face His Past, & Forgave the Man Who Hurt Him
After decades of anger and trauma, a Wisconsin father says one decision changed his life, his family, and the legacy he would pass on.
A Breaking Point on the Road to Florida
MARIANNA, Fla. — The flight was canceled. Thousands were grounded across the eastern United States. Most people would have stayed home.
Bob Kroll got in his car and drove 18 hours.
“I was just devastated,” he recalled. “I was really looking forward to this retreat… especially for men who had difficult relationships with their father.”
He arrived minutes before the event began.
At the time, Kroll was carrying something he could finally name: a “father wound,” a term he had only recently encountered in a book. It described a pattern he recognized instantly—abuse, resentment, distance, and a slow fracture between father and son.
“This is the story of my life,” he said.
A Childhood Marked by Violence
Kroll grew up in central Wisconsin, the oldest of nine children on a struggling dairy farm. His parents drank heavily. Arguments were constant.
“There were times when my hair was pulled so violently it felt like my scalp was coming off,” he said.
The damage ran deeper than physical pain.
“When it came from my dad, that was devastating… what he said or did to me colored my young life.”
He described watching his siblings suffer as a second layer of trauma. Rage built through his teenage years.
“I wanted him out of my life,” he said. “I even say… I wanted to kill my father.”
At the same time, he wrestled with a contradiction: he wanted to honor his father, as his faith required, yet felt repulsed by him.
The Same Damage Returns
Years later, Kroll saw the same damage emerging in his own home.
“I was having explosive episodes of anger towards my own wife and my own children,” he said.
He described losing control in moments of rage.
“My emotions would take over… I can’t even speak,” he said.
Then came a moment he calls unmistakable. He hugged his teenage son and noticed something chilling.
“His hands were the same way as mine… he was hugging me with fists.”
The gesture meant distance, resistance—an echo of his own childhood. “I was wounding him in the same ways that my father had wounded me.”
The Make-or-Break Moment
At the Florida retreat, Kroll sat with a therapist who asked a direct question:
“Bob, do you want to forgive your father?”
His answer came quickly. “Yes, absolutely.”
What followed, he said, was immediate and overwhelming.
“I forgave my father from the depths of my heart. And it changed my life.”
Kroll describes forgiveness as a turning point, one that dismantled what he calls a “wall” around his heart.
“When we refuse to forgive… it just puts us in a cage,” he said.
Once that barrier fell, he said, everything shifted—his marriage, his parenting, even how he expressed affection.
“I would kneel down by their bedside… ‘I’m so glad you were born. I’m so proud of who you are.’”
A Letter Years in the Making
After returning home, Kroll wrote a three-and-a-half-page letter to his father. “I told him all the things… the pain that I went through,” he said.
He ended it with a simple line: “Dad… I forgive you.”
Months later, they spoke.
His father, then in his late 60s, responded with remorse. “I am so sorry… I wish I could have been a better father,” Kroll recalled him saying.
From there, something unexpected happened.
They began talking regularly. The relationship, once fractured, slowly rebuilt.
“Now I consider my father one of my best friends,” Kroll said.
Healing Across Generations
Kroll believes the damage in his family stretched back multiple generations—patterns of abuse, addiction, and emotional distance passed down.
“Wounded people wound people,” he said. “But healed people heal people.”
He sees his own story as a turning point in that chain.
His sons, now adults, are married or active in their faith, something he attributes in part to the changes that followed his own healing.
“It’s so beautiful to see this,” he said.
When Reconciliation Isn’t Possible
Kroll acknowledges that many people cannot repair relationships with their fathers—because of distance, death, or continued harm.
In those cases, he frames forgiveness differently.
“The attempt at forgiveness can be a one-way street,” he said. It does not require a conversation. It begins internally.
“If we tell God, ‘I forgive this person,’… that’s where it takes place.”
A Mission to Reach Other Men
Today, Kroll speaks to men and women about what he calls the most common hidden wound.
He focuses especially on men, whom he believes are often resistant to addressing emotional pain.
“So often, us men… we don’t want to talk about our emotions,” he said.
His goal is direct: break the cycle.
“I want to be a hero for these men… so that they can be heroes to their children.”