"Dad, wherever you are, you are gone but you will never be forgotten." ~ Conrad Hall
Good morning; afternoon; and evening friends and fans! Namasté. 🧘🏽♀️ Father's Day is a complicated milestone for many of us. For decades, the holiday has held up a mirror to a void in my life, forcing me to confront a relationship that was defined more by silence than by presence.
I didn't meet my biological father, Dionisio, until August of 1993. I was ten years old, standing in the middle of my sister's Sweet Sixteen, meeting a man who should have been there all along. From that moment on, he was in and out of my life like a ghost.
During junior high, I remember standing in the card aisle, carefully picking out birthday cards to send to him. I wanted to connect. I wanted a dad. But the mailbox remained empty on my own birthdays. He never sent a single card. People often underestimate how deeply that specific rejection cuts. A text message is easy, but there is a distinct comfort in knowing someone took the time to walk into a store, look through a rack, and choose a card just for you. I never got that from him, though I still hold onto the few Christmas cards he did send, tangible proof that he existed in my world, however briefly.
By 2011, the silence won. We lost touch. Three years later, in 2014, he passed away from a brain aneurysm.
When he died, the tears I shed weren't born of traditional grief. They were fueled by a volatile mix of anger, rejection, and abandonment. Now, with the perspective of time, a quiet regret creeps in. I sometimes wish I had reached out during those final three years. I wish I had more photographs to look back on. I find myself trapped in those painful, familiar questions that children of absent parents know all too well: If I had been born a boy, would he have stayed? Was I just not enough?
The trauma of his absence ran so deep that I decided early on I never wanted to be a mother. I was terrified of passing that generational pain down to a child. But life rarely follows our scripts. At age 26, a horrific assault resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.
Today, I am the mother of a wonderful son who is on the autism spectrum. He is verbal, functional, and the center of my world. Yet, history has a cruel way of echoing. Watching my son grow up without a father figure is a unique, sharp pain. It is the exact reality I fought so hard to avoid repeating.
This Father's Day, I am choosing to be honest about where I am. I am not completely from Dionisio's absence, either before or after his death. It is going to take a long time to sort through the layers of what was, what wasn't, and what could have been.
To anyone else navigating a complicated, painful, or empty Father's Day: your anger is valid. Your regret is valid. You are allowed to mourn the father had while fiercely protecting the child you are raising alone. Healing doesn't have a deadline.
Blessed be,
Jennifer
