Checking In: Family and Father's Day

When I was younger, I was so envious of others who had “normal” families. I mean, what really is “normal” at this point? But back then, to me it meant “stable.” Living in the same place for a while. Growing up with neighbors as friends. Growing up with clutter because you were able to keep possessions long enough for them to accumulate. Seeing extended family enough so that they were more than faces in photographs with names scribbled on the back in permanent marker.

I experienced so much trauma growing up – financial instability, a father who was extremely abusive, a mother whose life’s calling brought along with it a lot of consequences. We moved often for as long as I can remember, and before that. From the time I was born until I turned 16, I believe I moved 22 times that I can recall. (This is part of why I like staying put.)

One of the huge negative impacts of that journey was my disconnection from family. I don’t have any connection to my father’s family because of life circumstances. Throughout all those moves, however, my mother’s family was a presence – though at times, a tenuous one for me.

In my teenage and young adult years, family faded for me. I had so much trauma I didn’t even understand how to connect with family. So it was friendships for me. Friendships and relationships.

I was always searching for something to fill the family void – or more accurately, this disconnect that existed.

I wanted so hard to not be like my father, that I think I was also rejecting family more generally. There were periods of time I would go weeks without calling my mother, because I was all over the place, literally. I would go months without talking to my sister.

Disconnection.

After a while, that impacted my relationships with my immediate family, as a husband and father. Sometimes, you spend so much time trying NOT to be something, you forget who you actually ARE.

This is a tough couple of weeks for me. With my birthday and Father’s Day sandwiched in between my friend’s death anniversary, my sister’s death anniversary and my aunt’s funeral. It’s a lot. Finding specific joy amidst general sadness is a challenge.

There were a couple of points that felt very, very dark.

But then yesterday, at my Aunt Ella’s memorial service, I had a realization. I looked around the room and I realized that indeed, I have a family. I’ve always had a family, even when I was disconnected from them, whether by trauma or by choice. On both sides of my mother’s family, I have lovely, lovely cousins galore. I have what I thought I did not have.

And I have an opportunity to help preserve and strengthen those relationships for my kids, especially with my family. My older children have good connections with their mom’s family, and I need to do a better job of helping them be connected to my relatives. Our younger children need more time with their cousins and grandparents. I need to be a better enabler of that. At the end of the day, it’s all family. Some of these losses in my family over the years have in fact created opportunities for (re)connection, and that is a positive I can carry with me.

This is more available to me than I thought. And I am grateful for the realization, however late it is coming in life, that I have a family, that I am part of a family, and that I have an opportunity to help my kids, the four humans in this image, have a stronger connection to their family than I did growing up. And to do this without a need to control their lives; just to help them feel connected. And to nurture activities, spaces and places in my own life that reinforce my connection with family, and more broadly with community.

Despite the heaviness and sadness I feel as I approach the anniversary of my sister's death, this is a new focus for me this Father’s Day. And that brings me joy.

Love you. Mean it. 🙏🏽❤️🥰