“Like the singing bird and the croaking toad. I got a name, I got a name. And I carry it with me like my daddy did.  But I’m living the dream that he kept hid.”- Jim Croce

To all the Fatherless Daughters.  To all my friends who didn’t know what it was like to have a father teach you how to ride a bike and throw a baseball and drive a car I’m truly sorry.  To all my friends who didn’t have a father there to show them what a real man is like I’m sorry.

To every girl out there who never knew what it meant to have a hard-working ethical man in your life who would do anything for you I’m sorry.

I wish I could have shared my father with the world.  I wish every girl could know what it feels like to have a real father.

Today has been nineteen years since my father died.  Yet, I do not mourn him in the way most people mourn.  I celebrate his life and I try to be someone he would be proud of because his acceptance meant everything to me.

I look at it this way: I could feel sorry for myself and feel horrible about the fact that I lost my father unexpectedly at fifty-five years of age of a massive heart attack or I can be thankful that I had him every day and every night and that he taught me what it means to be a good, honest, ethical person.  I choose the latter.

Choices

We all make choices.  We choose how we interpret life and how we value people.  We choose what is important and what is not.

Unfortunately, we do not choose our parents or our influences.  If we are lucky we have good ones and if our karmic journey gives us something else then we have to face the life we have been given.  At some point we have too choose what we do with our childhood influences and our life.

Do you feel sorry for yourself and your life?  Do you wish your parents had been different?  Do you wish you hadn’t been abused or molested or disregarded?  Wish away.  Nothing will change the past.

Take every person and every relationship and every abuse as a lesson.  What can you learn?  How did these events make you stronger?  How do you choose to interpret your life circumstances?

Wonder

You’re probably wondering what in the world this has to do with never having a father or with me losing my father.  Its simple.  Everything in life is intertwined. How we think and how we feel.  The family we were given or the family we create.  Sadness, emptiness, happiness and success.  It is all a part of you and your journey.

We control nothing other than how we move forward with what life gives us.

So, if your father was a worthless human being what are you going to do about it?  You can’t fix it.  You can’t make him attentive or make him different or make him care.  It isn’t about you.  Its about him.  Choose to rise above it and not let it ruin your life or your future relationships.  Choose not to live in fear of abandonment.

Choose to understand that people are flawed and unhealthy and imperfect.  They do the best they can.  It isn’t always enough.  But, you can’t change what they can give.  The only thing you can change is how you deal with the information.

Please don’t take this to mean it is easy. The fear of abandonment and unworthiness that stems from being discarded by a parent runs deep.  It affects the fundamentals of who you are.  However, you don’t have to let it run your life or decide your future.  Only you have control over this.

I had an amazing father and I still struggle with my relationship patterns.  But, at least I know what a good man is supposed to look like and I cling to that remembrance and I seek out that goodness.

So Many Things

There are so many things we would do differently if we could.  Hindsight is 20/20.  If I could go back I would never tell my father about my abuse.  I thought I needed it and I thought I needed to share, but looking back I realize he couldn’t handle it and from the day I told him he started slowly dying.  I know this.

But, I was in so much pain and so confused and he was the parent and I was the child and what was I supposed to do?  Looking back I realize I was selfish.  Telling him served no purpose other than making him feel like a failure and he was not the type of man to deal with failure.

We do the best we can with what we have at the time.  Think of this every time you think of your failure of a father.  It doesn’t make it okay.  It doesn’t make life different.  Perhaps it will allow you to feel some compassion for him and with that some release for yourself.

There is nothing you did wrong and nothing you could have changed to make him stay or make him be a father or make him love you more.

Why Do I Say This?

I say all of this because I was one of the few girls out of all of my friends and cousins that had a father.  I had a father on Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and my birthday.  I had a father at home for dinner every night.  I had a father who cared and who showed up and who literally died caring for his family.  I had a father who was truly a man, a provider and protector.  Every girl should know what this feels like and for those who did not have it I’m truly sorry.

Every day I wish to find a man like my father and every day I hope that my girlfriends all know how much they are loved even if their fathers weren’t there for them and even if they never felt they were enough.

I say this to tell you that YOU ARE ENOUGH.