Heartbroken on this Father’s Day
It’s Father’s Day and I woke up sifting through the clutter in my mind and the pieces of my heart to find my wholeness. For 54 years, growing up fatherless meant Father’s Day’s always went unnoticed having been preempted by Mother’s Day. This year, I’m no longer fatherless but I’m definitely heart broken and now, on this day meant to celebrate father’s everywhere, I’m sharing my heartbreak.
Wow. It’s been six months and this is the first time I have strung those words together. Finding my father has proven to be heartbreaking. But, I’m sharing my story because if anyone reading this is searching for a birth parent, for whatever reason, don’t give up hope. While the story may not end the way you want, the lesson, the miracle, and the transformation is in the journey.
Stay with me for a moment, I need to first help you see how I got here.
I’m adopted. My mother was my everything. She adopted me as a single parent, making history as one of the first Black women to adopt as a single parent in Los Angeles in 1967. My adoption was never a secret. A truth shared with the assistance of P.D. Eastman’s “Are You My Mother?” when I was in fourth grade. Momma helped me understand that while she wasn’t my “real” mother, she was my mother of “choice” and I was going to be the most important person in her life. She kept her word.
Momma always wanted me to meet my birth family. Never with any pressure. A casual mention here and there. I promised I’d do it when I turned 18, then rejected the idea because I didn’t want to be rejected. After awhile we stopped talking about it and I stopped thinking about it. I figured I had time. Then in 1996, Momma was gone.
I’ve been walking around with a hole in my heart ever since. It’s been patched over the years. I did the work to keep it that way. Therapy. Workshops. Books. Reflection. Honest sharing. Vulnerability. Trust. Self-love. I did the work so that I could thrive in the world as a motherless child. A parentless child. I was thriving. Now, my heart only aches on Mother’s Day, Momma’s birthday, and Thanksgiving (the anniversary of her death). I was thriving. Until now.
Long story short, last year I finally met my birth family. My birth mother passed in 1997. My birth father lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. I flew out to meet him on June 17, 2021. We cobbled together some semblance of a relationship, albeit a slightly unbalanced one. I’d decided to do all the heavy lifting because I’d done my work. I wanted to accommodate for the heartbreak he must have felt all these years after losing his firstborn and only daughter (he had five boys after me). I wanted to assuage his pain for not being able to raise me. I wanted him to know that I didn’t blame him or have any anger or resentment toward him for giving me up for adoption. I was just so happy to know him that I wanted us to pick up right where we were.
That proved to be easier said than done.
We managed to stay in touch for six months. The last time I saw him was in December, 2021. I’d been on a month long cross country road trip from California to Georgia. On my way back home, I stopped in Little Rock to have dinner with him. At then end of the evening, after the laughter and sharing of life experiences died down, he walked me to my car, hugged me, and said, “I love you.” I didn’t hesitate to say, “I love you, too” because I’d been feeling it since I heard his voice for the very first time. I didn’t want to scare him off with the ease I have in sharing my affection. So, I waited for him to say it first. And he did.
And I haven’t heard from him since.
I’d experienced a lover saying, “I love you” too fast and then running for the hills. But they usually came back after a few days. This was a different kind of hurt. One that my brain took six months to register and process. Now, in all fairness, he did send me a “Merry, Merry Christmas” and “😃😃 New Year…” text, but I’m not counting those. He promised to CALL me on Christmas and I stupidly sat by the phone waiting for it to ring with all the emotions and anticipation of a five-year-old.
Today, I realize I’ve been stuck in that moment for the last six months. My inability to fully function, to thrive, is because I’ve been pushing down the feelings that came with that moment. Instead, I put on a “happy” face but behind closed doors I ate my emotions. Binge watched television. Neglected myself and my home. Gained 10 pounds. Lost sight of my self love. Why? Because I didn’t know what else to do because I didn’t know what I was feeling.
All I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to blame myself for being so trusting. I didn’t want to blame myself for believing that my father would be able to pick up right where we are just because I could. Just because it was something I so desperately wanted and didn’t realize I needed until I was standing in it. This explains why I made excuses for him. And why I reasoned. I didn’t want to make him wrong for still being in his pain. As a result, I got stuck in his past, his guilt, and his baggage and before I knew it his pain became my pain.
Then, this morning, Divine Love reminded me that it was time to move to the other side of it. That’s the only way I can explain it. Just before I woke up this morning the last six months replayed in my head and heart in a flash, like God was pressing the rewind button of my life. Slowing down long enough for me to feel and recognize the pain I’d been carrying. Now I know that this Father’s Day isn’t about honoring someone who can’t be who I want or need him to be. Today is about honoring myself and learning a most valuable lesson.
I found my life’s purpose a few years ago: to be, spread, and teach love in the world. I believed that in order to do that authentically, I had to always be happy. I had to find happiness and love in every moment. So, no matter what happened, I sought to find the good or better said, pushed the bad away. But, now I know I was wrong.
To maintain love and happiness in our lives, we have to accept that we need both the positive and negative emotions we experience to help us maintain living in our purpose. It’s easy to live in one’s purpose when everything is awesome. But, we didn’t come here for things to be easy all the time. The transformation and growth comes when we figure out how to stay in our purpose when thing’s aren’t so awesome.
Today, on what is usually my Self Love Sunday, I learned that self-love is staying present so that when the negative emotions show up, we don’t get stuck there. “Trying to stay happy” isn’t being present. Allowing ourselves to feel and really get centered from moment to moment is happiness in action. It’s being able to recognize our feelings and, as the Serenity Prayer goes, “accept the things we cannot change, have the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Acceptance, courage, and wisdom was the gift I received on this Father’s Day and I am grateful for the lesson.
Happy Father’s Day.
