A Fatherless Daughter
When you’re born into this world, you enter the unknown of your reality. You don’t ever imagine not having a mom, dad, family, food, toys, money, etc. Unfortunately, for some of us, we sadly come to this reality at a very young stage of life. Come and enter my world of growing up fatherless.
Now when I say fatherless, It’s not in the full sense of the word. My dad was around but never in a father form. Growing up, most of my memories were with my mom, grandmothers, aunts and uncles. My dad is a faded glance in my memory. I would see him for a few minutes and just like that he was gone, and there was no telling if or when I will see him again that day or ever. As a kid, it never dawned on me the importance of parents, I just knew they were there to help us with day-to-day things. I was still surrounded by love; being the youngest I got most if not all the attention (at that time). My family was tight-knit and didn’t mind taking over the responsibilities of watching the kids in the family. I also enjoyed spending time with my cousins as we all were around the same age and enjoyed many of the same things.
Growing into my adulthood, I entered a lot of dead-end relationships, also relationships I didn’t have the capacity of understanding due to the lack of love my dad showed my mom. I remember him always coming home drunk and being belligerent. Leaving half drank beer cans on the coffee table for my sister and me to go sneak a taste of it, and remembering the face of disgust when we tasted it. To this day, I can’t stand the taste of beer, but ironically I loved to smell it on men’s breaths because my dad would always try to talk and kiss us with the stench of beer on his breath. I thought that was the smell of love, so I sought that out in men. He would send us to the stove at a very young age to light his cigarettes, another opportunity for us to sneak in a puff or two, once my grandmother caught wind of this, she gave him one good tongue lashing and he never did it again. My adolescence stage was the most difficult for me, moving blindly and not understanding what and how to love myself or what love was supposed to feel like. Now some of you are probably thinking how could you have known at such a young stage of life? but for me, knowing what I know now about love, I spread myself a bit too thin in the men’s department and accepted physical and mental abuse from men because I just didn’t know any better, and that’s kinda what I grew up seeing at home.
When I think of the word father, the words protector, security, strong, wise, and loving come to mind. My father wasn’t any of this for me, my sisters, or my mom. His fist on her body was supposed to be soft kisses that reassures her, his harsh words were supposed to be his warm embrace around her waist and shoulders. His absence was supposed to be our role model to mold us and teach us to set standards for how a man was supposed to treat his princesses. Luckily my mom woke up and moved us from Charleston S.C. to New York City. She knew keeping us there probably wouldn’t be beneficial for her or to our mental growth as women. Nonetheless, it still took a toll on us, especially when my mom found our stepdad and remarried. He was no better than my father, he was African and we really couldn’t relate to each other due to the cultural difference and the fact that he does not have children of his own. This put a wedge between us, and it was hard for him to break the ice with us, and it is still that way to this day. My mom, on the other hand, thrived in this relationship, she was happier and more vibrant with him than with my dad.
Now as a full-grown woman, I can say, I still struggle a bit in the love department because of my lack of trust, and not letting people (especially men) see my vulnerable side. I guess people would call this “Daddy Issues”. This ultimately made it hard to stimulate any long-term relationships in my past. Now that I’m coming more and more into my purpose of who I’m destined to be, I find myself loving the person I’m becoming, getting more in touch with the spiritual world, and just being grateful for life and all of its lessons. I’m also going through my healing process from the damage that was caused by being a fatherless daughter. Growing up I’ve heard some pretty wild stories about my dad, and some I bear witness to. Overall, I can’t put too much of the blame on my dad, he was just doing his best with what knowledge he had at that time. He wasn’t a bad person deep down inside. I have a few good memories of my dad, which isn’t a lot but at least I could say that, for some, it’s zero.
If you are a woman like me who shares a similar story such as mines, just know you are not alone. There are many of us trying to find answers to questions we just might never get. Many of us are single and/or have children; what we try our hardest NOT to do is pass these generational curses down to our children, but for some of us, it’s inevitable. The advice I would leave you with is this:
>Take time to HEAL! (This process has no timestamp it’s your process, take as much time as you need. There’s also nothing wrong with seeking help from a medical professional).
>Focus on a lot of SELf-CARE! ( This can be a weekly trip to the gym, doing yoga, treating yourself to something nice, taking long baths, taking on a new hobby, taking naps, or just being social).
>Get INTUNED with yourself ( Getting to know who you are is important, we can sometimes allow negative energy to latch onto us which can in turn lower our vibrations. Meditation can help keep you aligned with your authentic self).
>Change your MINDSET! (We live in a world where we are constantly surrounded by negativity whether it’s on the news, jobs, home, family etc. Again we can sometimes allow those parasites to influence our behaviors, so thinking and surrounding yourself with positive situations will help broaden your mindset more productively).
These are just a few things that have helped me along my journey, I hope I’ve been insightful and I hope that through reading this, women as well as men can better understand the trauma behind fatherless children whether male or female.
Pattie
