2/16/2023 0 Comments Passions soap opera moMy emotions were anchored to my dad’s: if he was angry, it was my fault. Through therapy (which I have been participating in off and on for five years now), I was able to understand the radical acceptance of him and most importantly, of myself.īecause of how I grew up, I never felt loved enough and always thought I had to be the best at everything to get any attention. His reasoning upon the disclosure is something I probably would not have ever understood by myself but for therapy. Not until recently, in a long-awaited conversation with him, was I able to realize none of that was an intentional attack on my person: just his way of preventing us (especially me, being the only female and all) from turning out bad. By university, my dad basically talked at, rather than to, me. It got worse: I was whisked away to boarding house when I was 10, and the physical distance in my teens mirrored the emotional gap from childhood. But even that was less damaging than the lack of play time and words of affirmation, which heightened my fear of my father into anger and then disregard. Like most men in his generation, my father’s discipline often meant corporal punishments, and I grew up with an unhealthy fear of him. Without a balanced relationship with my father, I grew up deficient in all those areas. The interaction between a father and a daughter goes a long way in shaping her life: her view of the world, her self-confidence, her emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental health. ![]() ![]() Conveniently left out of this narrative, though, is the impact of fathers, especially on their daughters. We all have gotten an earful of the critical role of mothers in nurturing children. There have been two kinds of little girls in the world – those who grew up without daddy, and those who did.īut there is a third kind, rarely named, who grew up with a father that didn’t feel like a daddy.
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