un·in·ter·rupt·ed: A Letter to Her Father

Peace D,

This email is not seeking for anything but to say one thing and one thing only. I forgive you. It has taken some time but I can say with a clear and free conscious and open heart and sober mind that I forgive you.  I forgive you from feeling abandoned from you to the absence of you during my pregnancy. I forgive you for the words that were said. I forgive you for the disrespect. I forgive you for missed prenatals and missed celebrations. I forgive you for having me to figure things out on my own when I sincerely wanted your input and/or involvement. I forgive you for allowing me to have to choose to leave Boston with our baby.  I forgive you for unable to care for my emotions. I forgive you for not being there for me/us when I needed you the most. I forgive for not answering my calls. I forgive you for not being at our daughter's birth. I forgive you for disrespecting your daughter's birthday with your embarrassing statement in front of everyone that "you are only a sperm donor." I forgive you for leaving early the next day. I forgive you for having to choose families and leaving us. I forgive you for treating me like I was your enemy or thinking I wanted any way to harm you. I forgive you for always accusing me of judging you. I forgive you for never truly listening to me. I forgive you at times and now, for not checking in with your, Glorious, no matter the drama between us, as her parents. I forgive you for many of times not keeping your word. I forgive you for unable to love me or properly show me love. I forgive you that at this current time you choose not to be a father to Glorious. I forgive you for not allowing her to know her siblings. I forgive you for unable to come together to reason and come to an agreement of how we would raise our child. I forgive you for allowing me to do this on my own. I forgive you for never able to give me that security in actions that I was waiting for, for me to say "yes" to us.

And if there is anything that I may have said and done I sincerely apologize and hope one day we can have the dialogue to bring about clarity and peace.

Thursday I received clarity on a lot of things that are for my self knowledge, wisdom and practical understanding. And I can let the anger go and let you go and the ideas I hoped about and be ok with how things are; even if it never changes. I received a beautiful gift and daughter who has changed my life tremendously in an a year and 4 months. You go through things to either experience new discoveries, lesson(s) and/or blessing(s) and I can say I have gratefully gained all three and continue to. So I sincerely say thank you as well.

Peace.

For the past couple of months I have been wrestling with anxiety and worries. I have felt I couldn't breathe with all the worries consuming every fiber of my being. Worried from the day to day responsibilities of being an adult and a mother; to will I be alive in the next few minutes, next few seconds to what will my future be like. Will I always struggle. A desire to want to give up. Being angry with myself all over again. To being angry with her father. To mourning an absent dad to his daughter, to worrying about I will eventually have to die and leave her behind. Every day I woke up just wanting to stay in the comfort of my bed and not wanting to deal with the outside world including myself. To going to bed but unable to to close my eyes for anxiety plagued me every night causing me to just lay there in the middle of the night.

But one night my anxiety was so bad I was unable to sleep and was forced to pray to the Creator, pleading with tears coming down my face while laying in my bed in the middle of the night. I prayed that He would help me rest and to take my worries away. I was begging for His peace to rest upon my soul. Eventually I fell asleep and woke up to my day feeling motivated and focused as I sat at my desk. Eventually I heard my internal voice say, "She's easier." I repeated those words out loud to myself. Then the internal reasoning began and it concluded:

"She's easier. She has tolerated him since day one they met. And even though your actions have shown you love him but you wouldn't verbally accept what she has been accepting for so many years. Why do you think he held you at arms length, always afraid to let you in because you would force/challenge him in ways he is obviously not ready to meet. You challenge him. You shake something within him that makes him feel uncomfortable. I doubt that he loves her because he does but look at their history. They met each other when they were emotional not well. She allowed a lot of things. She accepted the dysfunctional behaviors.She was the easier choice since day one. He holds you in high regards to the point that you intimidate him. You not the easier choice. He was not and is not ready for your expectations of him because the idea of failing would be too great." 

At that moment I wept at my desk at work but these were happy tears. I felt free and released from the weight of all my worries and anxieties that I was wrestling with for the past few months. 

All I desired was the father and I to be civilized to one another as we try to co-parent but you can't do that if both parents are not committed. He currently lives in Boston, MA and looking to relocate to North Carolina with his other family as I live in Philadelphia, PA. Even though he doesn't really have a strong presence in her life at the current time I show her pictures of him and initiate phone calls between the two of them. I do this, so she will always know I never did anything to prevent her from having a relationship with him. And when the time comes and she desires to speak to him I will be more then open for her to reach out to him. I do fear the implications this will have on her as she gets older and the impact it will have in her identity but I must take one day at a time and just pray and love her the best way I can.

I did not write this story for you to hate him but hope you see that his actions came from his immature child mind state that never dealt with his own issues emotionally, mentally and spiritually. He came from a broken home as well, where he met his father for the first time at the age of twenty-two. He didn’t have a normal upbringing. I’m not making excuses for him. But more so realizing we must take special inventory of the state we are in individually and why we do the things we do. Family composition may not be normal but we are still able to create a safe space for the people involved and children. To make this possible as long we are willing to take responsibility for our actions and willing to do the work towards our own healing for the betterment of the structure of the family, no matter how that may look like because what is a normal family now a days. I also learned, ladies, we cannot think we can go into relationships thinking we can save someone, but most importantly we must see circumstances and people for what they are and not what we want them to be. Two sick people cannot know how to love one another. As nurturers, women have a natural tendency to nurture the best out of a person, but what if that person is not ready for that vision you see for them? Will you continue to live off a delusion or accept the situation for what it truly is and being honest with yourself?

Most of all we must be careful who we allow to plant in our gardens and plant spiritual, mental, emotional, verbal, and/or physical seeds because having to uproot those weeds is not easy. The Bible says “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life,” (Proverbs 4:23) and this rings to be so true. All intentions of a person comes from a person’s heart and when the heart is damaged it is very hard for it to come back from.

This is just the beginning for me and I am excited about others I may help by sharing my story. Part of my healing is by helping others and sharing my experience, which lessens my fears and shame little by little. I truly believe my experiences, which I take full responsibility for, were truly blessings to empower me and force me to grow. So in all that I have gone through I express gratitude because I am able to see the mercy, grace and glory in it all from start to finish and it’s far from over.

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." Lewis B. Smedes

Written on Oct. 2015