Dear Estranged Parents: Please Stop Contacting Your Children
You may mean well, but you are invalidating the pain of your child.
Ever since I received a letter from my father, I haven’t been the same.
I was starting to move on with my life. The part of me that’s still a little girl who desperately wants her daddy to change was getting smaller by the day. I was realising I was a grown woman who deserved better than being repeatedly let down and gaslit when she tried to express her pain.
When I received the letter, I couldn’t understand why I felt hopeful. “Don’t be stupid,” I scolded myself. “You’re going to get hurt. Laura, why are you opening it?! Laura, stop!” But the little girl in me missed her daddy too much.
The letter was exactly what adult me expected. Full of soundbites and phrases you would find in a greetings card. None of it felt genuine and an alarming amount of it was exclusively about him, despite the fact it was a letter for me. Still, child me tried to find reasons to write back and I had to do everyone in my power to stop her. Because truthfully, adult me wanted the apologies to be sincere too,
“He said sorry a few times”
“Yes but it’s clearly not genuine”
