Reclamation of a boyhood lost

I'm currently reading The Way of the Wild Heart by John Eldredge. In this book, Eldredge explains that the masculine journey includes six stages, and that a man is to live through each stage completely, from Boyhood to Cowboy to Warrior to Lover to King to Sage. What frequently happens is that the Boyhood stage is cut short because of some tragic event, and that makes it difficult for the man to fully experience the other stages.

I know that my Boyhood stage was cut short by my parents' divorce when I was 4 years old. That event definitely had a huge negative impact on my childhood and on my marriage.

In The Way of the Wild Heart, Eldredge comments on p. 62-63 that God will do what it takes to show us that He is our real father:

He might haunt you through a story far too similiar to your own, a story that somehow tells you about yourself. That happened for a friend named Paul who came to one of our retreats, when he watched a scene we showed from Good Will Hunting. In truth, Paul was about to bail out of the event. It was stirring too much in him, and he wanted out. He was headed for the back door when the clip came on where Will is finally facing the wound of being physically abused by his foster father, and Paul sat down on the steps and began to weep. For that was his story, too. The Father had captured him, brought his wounded heart up from the depths of his soul, so that he might grieve and also that he might open this place in his heart to God.

Eldredge notes that Paul became a Christian that day. It is important for us to reclaim our lost boyhood, find our true father, and work through our issues in order to get on with our lives.