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Gina Morrone's avatar

It’s not your fault that you felt compelled to shut him out after he came back and took off again, and again! Any sane person and loving dad would do the same thing! The greatest legacy you will leave your own kids is true love, staying and protecting them from a person who, for whatever reason(a) was unable to MAKE IT RIGHT. Sometimes we just don’t have it in us to DO something to change anything. But at least you put yourself out there. I’m so sorry for your deep pain. Thank yoI for sharing the heartbreaking truth the way you do. Wishing you and Arle comfort and healing in time. ❤️‍🩹

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Sharon's avatar

I didn’t read this one right away because I knew it would be a well written description of pain, abandonment and loss and then how to reconcile who they were and who they were to you and who I pretended and wished they were. You accomplished this with beautiful words. Amazing and haunting, as your writing always is. So many of us can relate to the story of parental abandonment whether it be physical, emotional or all of the above. I look at pics of me and my sister as little kids and think ‘who are you that you could up and leave like you did (dad)?’ And then come and go and show up or not, as it pleased you? And that I’m suppose to still love you, and out of obligation and a desperate need to want them to love us, somehow we still do love them though they really don’t deserve it. When my dad died, I was his caretaker and someone said why am I doing this? My reply was well, he may have been an a-hole and if I turn my back on him now I’ll be/feel like an a-hole so now the world has two of them. Let’s just leave it at the one. It wasnt easy and I don’t regret it. When he died, I wrote two poems; one from the person who loved my dad a lot and another from the person in me that didn’t. It was almost 15 yrs ago now and those energies still run parallel, it’s just they don’t hurt as much. You’re a great dad. Unfortunately and fortunately, we learn to be better people and parents because of what we experienced. Thank you.

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