I love when my friends tell me how their infant does something new or totally unexpected. I love watching videos of babies who have no idea how precious they are as they fall asleep while their parents try to get them to dance to songs. Or even simply little observations of their cognitive development. My favorite is when fathers tell me their child is their new best friend. I eat it up.

Something tragic happened to one of my closest friends, and yet even still, everything cool thing he does, he says it’s for his son. And even in private conversations, I can hear how this child who left the earth too soon has changed his life. My friend still talks Daddy to me.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by how much I enjoy Daddy talk given my field of research. I literally read and write about fathers all day long. And I find when I talk about my research, I spend a lot of time debunking this idea that fathers that aren’t married to the mother’s of their children aren’t around and that they can’t be good fathers. And I spend the most time talking about Black fathers. Man, they get a bad rap for no reason. Especially when the research shows that as nonresident fathers, they are the most likely to actually be involved with their children.

It was with this understanding that I was totally annoyed when Courtland Milloy came out his face talking about Trayvon Martin and asking where Trayvon’s father was and why his mother was the one leading the charge for justice for her son. I mean, has he watched any of the press conferences? Tracy Martin is always there next to Sybrina Fulton. I mean, Travyon was visiting his father to get his priorities back on track when he was murdered. The next week, Milloy apologized… sort of. I get it, he’s writing about what he sees, or rather what he thinks he sees.

But this selective vision is the problem.  We really have got to stop assuming fathers aren’t around. We need to stop for one second and realize that we’re surrounded by many men talking Daddy to us. We need to start listening.

e.

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited and nervous I am for June to come. I might be able to talk to, and maybe even see, my little sister again. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted a sister. So of course I ended up with three brothers. Don’t get me wrong, I adore all of my brothers, but I know there are some fundamental basics that we just don’t get about each other.

For a while I played around the with idea of starting a letters to my sister series where I just wrote her letters about life and shared life lessons that I learned the hard way. But I was concerned it would come off preachy, so I scraped the idea. Instead I just started blogging about my life, the personal stuff that I would want to share with her even though some of it embarrassing or difficult to talk about. I want to be able to talk to her about the stuff that people don’t often discuss because it is so personal. I just figured if I put myself out there to her, then she might feel comfortable enough to be open with me.

So the gig is up, a lot of my blog is for her and I hope someday she reads it. And if you’re reading now, hey Jazmine, call me already.

love,
e.

via

I’ve been reading too many articles telling me that I’m never going to get married.  I’ve been listening to too many men who say monogomy is unrealistic.  I’ve been doubting whether I’ll fall in love and questioning the necessity of marriage.  I’ve been tripping… hard.

Part of this was influenced by my own research on marriage (and reading Cherlin’s work) – it is true that Americans get married faster, get divorced faster and remarry faster than any of our western counterparts.  This is a result of competing ideologies: the very American “do you” mentality (pursuit of happiness, rugged individualism, etc) and this idea that marriage is the ideal (and perhaps only) way to raise children.  These ideologies do not work together at all, in fact, most of them time they work directly against each other.  And I was left thinking, what’s the point of getting married when there’s a 50/50 chance it will end?  I even discussed this with my mentor who told me that his marriage is a contract with God and this if he plays his wife, he’s also playing with his relationship to God.  It was the risk of messing things up with God that kept him in line.  I can admit that I never thought of marriage like that; I’m not sure that I do even now.

And I let it get totally out of hand.  Add that to some poor decision making and turning 30 next month and you have the perfect recipe for crippling self-doubt and an existential crisis.  The worst part was that I was almost willing to settle for something would never lead to happiness.  Stability, perhaps.  Children, sure.  Shiny, pretty things, definitely.   But it would just be existing, not a real life.

And just like that, I snapped out of it.   I mean when I take a step back I have to realize that there is so much more than this and I’m not going to live life like this.  Being jaded is exhausting and more than that it’s lame.  I’m a believer of love, the rainbow connection and all that jazz.  How can I not believe in love?  What in the world came over me?  That’s not me.

My future hubby is out there and he is looking for me.  He is awesome and cute and like my crafts.  He actually laughs when I tell jokes and tells really good ones himself.  He’ll want to renovate a house with me, like the simpsons and south park and will tolerate twilight.  When he goes out with his boys or has to travel for work, I will not worry because I know that he loves (and respects) me enough that he doesn’t feel the need to stick his dick into every chick that passes by.  We will be happy; we will be comfortable with each other.  We will have kids and he will be an awesome father.  He will “talk daddy” all the time and I will swoon.  We will make tons of home videos as a family and be happy and live happily ever after.  This is what I believe in.  That is the life I want to live.

I’m not going to live my life in fear of something that may or may not happen. I am choosing to think positively about the future.

So self, the next time you start tripping about love, read this and chill out.

xoxo,
e.

I’ve always try to avoid thinking of myself as having daddy issues and thinking about the ways they affect my relationships.  But I think it’s time for me to really think about what’s happening and what I can do about it. I’ve always been a huge proponent of  the “grow the fuck up and get over it” method when it comes to daddy issues, but I can’t seem to get over it and I can’t stop making the same mistakes over and over.  And I’m ashamed of that.

Last night I went out to dinner with a friend who is getting a divorce.  She said she was worried about her daughter and she said she thought of me.  That made me sad and embarrassed; it’s like the poster child of daughters without fathers. That’s not what I want to be. I never wanted that to define me.

For me, as a child of a single parent, I overcame every obstacle in front of me except for when it comes to relationships and marriage.  When I was younger, I imagined that I would meet my husband in grad school and we would get married.  By the time I was a third or fourth in my PhD program (read: now), I would be pregnant so that I would not have to miss any time once I started working.  But in reality it didn’t work out that way. And honestly you can’t plan a future that involves someone else without that someone else. And so now I’m wondering what do I plan and can I even plan it. I’m leaning towards no and that scares me.

A friend once try to understand my relationship with my father and assumed that he put me down and that is why I make these bad that relationship decisions.  But in reality, I don’t think my father has ever even scolded me and he always is bragging about how great I am. My father always tells me that he loves me and my father always is affectionate. He’s just not always around.

In my research on nonresident daughters and in the few interviews I’ve conducted, I’ve found that a lot of us would chase our fathers around when we were younger. That we would make sure he was in our lives by literally tracking him down every time he disappeared and making him come back or talk to us. And so we are now well equipped to deal with boyfriends and husbands who disappear when they want to. We are experts at chasing men around because we’ve been doing it since we were children. And I think that part, perhaps, is almost more comfortable to me at this point then healthy functioning relationship. I know what to do with the man disappears I don’t know what to do when a man is present and attentive. It freaks me out. And I know that everything I just said sounds totally crazy to people who can function in healthy relationships, which is normally people who grew up with their father’s people.

Believe me no one wants me to get over my daddy issues more than me.  I can recognize when I’m doing things that aren’t healthy.

Another thing my friend said to me about the divorce was that she was afraid that this is teaching her children not to advocate for what they want from their father, or really from anyone, because they might leave you if you do.  I had to sit and think about that for a minute because I never realized how much I believe that. It’s funny (but not really), that this situation just happened to me this weekend when I told my not-boyfriend what I wanted from him and he disappeared.  And I’m thinking about how pervasive that is in my life and how I always had a hard time verbalizing to people what I need because I was always afraid. And it makes me angry to think that fear of advocating for what I want and consequently getting what I want came from my father. It’s a tough pill to swallow. Although I know I’ll never get what I want if I don’t ask, I have had so many experiences where I don’t get anything even if I do ask. Now I’m sitting here wondering how do I change that.

My friends always say if you ask the guy for what you want him he’s not willing to give it to you to leave him. Logically I understand that.  The plan is not to stay with someone that can’t (or won’t) give you what you need, but in the end you’re alone. Where we differ is that the thought of being alone doesn’t scare them as much as it scares me.  Their logic is that there’s always someone else and so don’t worry about that.  But I also don’t have the belief that someone is right around the corner, even though in my life normally someone who has been. I guess this is the first time I’ve actually thought it about it that way (hello breakthrough).

e.

This episode wasn’t as bad as last one. I mean, I wasn’t crying day and night and I didn’t feel like throwing myself in front of the Q train this time. But this time was definitely different. This time I was tired. I was so tired I slept for 12 to 14 hours a day. In the beginning I could explain this away because I just finished another semester at school and I could tell people I was burnt out. Weeks dragged by and my routine hadn’t changed. No one seemed to notice either. I had been relying on my fear of comps and a paper deadline to provide the kick in the rear I so desperately need to motivate me to get some work done. Instead I would wake up in the afternoon, watch Grey’s Anatomy all day and think about all the work I had to do. But by the end of January I knew exactly what I was dealing with and that I wasn’t being honest with myself about my own health.

I figured I’d better start seeing a therapist before things got out of hand. At the rate I was going I was never going to graduate. So I call the university hotline to set up an intake meeting and in typical university healthcare fashion, I wasn’t able to get an appointment with a therapist for over two weeks. A lot can happen in two weeks and a lot did happen.

I had a frank discussion with my boss about the fact that I hadn’t been working for a month and that he hadn’t noticed. I told him I needed more structure, he agreed and suddenly I had concrete deadlines. I told close friends what was going on with me and asked them to hold me accountable for getting some help.  For the most part, my friends think I am too hard on myself (this is partly true) and encouraged me to continue to do these relaxing and fun time-wasters instead of getting my life back together and getting back to work.  The benefit of having a few friends with MSW’s is that they understand what I’m going through and can offer appropriate support, which was get back to your life even though you really don’t want to.

Of course by the time I actually had the appointment I was feeling much better and felt totally silly going to the doctor. It wasn’t so fun once I got in the chair and started talking. My therapist is urging me to “sit with my feelings” instead of drinking them away or my other not-so-helpful-but-totally-fun coping mechanisms. Even though I’m not a fan of this method, I am giving it a shot. I’m feeling all over the place and don’t feel in control my feelings, which is not fun but is probably healthier than what I was doing. I’m getting work done finally. I’m writing again.

This part of my PhD is incredibly isolating; I don’t have any more classes and I spend most of my time writing alone.  I also live alone as well.   The hardest part of getting better is that it’s all on me.  No one knows what I’m doing but me, no one can make me do anything but me.  I’ve gone back to the drawing board for my happiness project. Over the next year, I will need to make a few tough decisions regarding my dissertation and my future career. At this point in my PhD, everything I have left to do is not fun but I know I will be  happy when I’m done.

The only heart in this room that is holding steady is the one on my wrist. The tattoo I got for my 22nd birthday. I had drawn it on there for months before I actually got it to make sure that I really liked it there. At the tattoo parlor, the artist told me to place it a little lower because when I fold my hand down, my skin wrinkles and over time it would ruin, break essentially, my heart tattoo. So I took his advice and over this years this is the only heart that has survived.

When I was younger, I told people, confidently, that I would fill this heart in when I got married. As I get older, I just let people comment on it’s quirkiness. It’s not a uniformly shaped heart, it’s obvious that I drew it. I don’t dare talk about why I would fill it. It doesn’t seem as likely anymore, at least to me. To people who know, they all say that I will get married. That these worries are silly. They don’t get how I can’t see myself as they see me. Believe me, I wish I could.

But as I approach 30, everyone else’s worry is weighing me down. I understand it, but I don’t want to hold it along with my own worries. Right now, I want to figure out what to do with all these cracked hearts. I don’t want to throw them away, they mean something to me. The hearts are still pretty, the hearts are still hearts. My heart hasn’t cracked into a million tiny pieces. And it won’t, even though some days it feels dangerously close. And I know I need to stop pushing people away because someday they might stop pushing back to stay where they are.

Days like today feel like failures in my happiness project, but days like this are inevitable. My goal was to be happy every day, not all day every day. And my day is still young, there are actually a lot of things that I can do to bring a little happiness my way – from my guiltiest of pleasures (anything Twilight, I know, I know) to creating things I can share with my love ones (currently, I’m crocheting about 4 different cowls for Christmas presents). I’m cooking brunch, a healthy one at that, so I can smile as I scarf down all this yummy food. I can talk to my brothers, who I adore, or my mother, who I admire. Or I can work on my dissertation proposal or comps reading list, not fun activities but it feels good to get anything done on them. Or I could get back and bed and daydream, or I can keep writing.

e.

A friend summarized it best when he said “Boy, when we fail kids, we fail big time.”

What does it say about a community that cares more about football than children and their well-being? What does it say about our society? I have long felt that we don’t care enough about children and we have tons of policies that show that. We fail children all the time. And we fail them in bigger ways every year. I mean, look at the apathy shown to Wang Yue who was run over by a van (twice!) and laid bleeding in the street for over 7 minutes and later died. I know people like to think that would’t happen here, but it’s classic bystander effect in action. And I can’t help but think that a lot of these men held their tongues because they expected someone else to step up and help.

Real talk, I didn’t know who Jerry Sandusky, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz or Joe Paterno were yesterday morning. I had heard whispering about shenanigans at Penn State but didn’t pay attention until yesterday. But I spent most of the day reading and talking about the Penn State scandal and the easiest way to describe my feelings are: totally pissed off.

I read the indictment and almost couldn’t believe what I was reading. Sandusky was caught not once, but twice, in the act of raping children in the showers at Penn by two different grown men who could not get it together enough to call the police.  I can understand that both men where shaken, but what about the children?  I don’t know what I would do if I saw someone being raped in front of me but I hope that I would have enough sense to say something to stop it and then continue having sense and call the police. I’m sure I would call my mother, like then-grad student Mike McQueary, did. But I know my mother, and I know that if I had not already called the police she would talk me through it.  (But I certainly would not work for the same people who traumatized me and ignored the victims like McQueary,who is now an assistant coach for PENN. shady.)

I can understand that people may not know what to do when they know a child is being abused. The only reason why I feel confident about what I would and should do is because I was trained when I got my MSW. (go go social work!) And I realize a lot of people don’t get trained but I’m surprised most of these people in this situation aren’t mandated reporters. In fact, I can’t believe some of them aren’t.  Looking squarely at Schultz.

I also can’t help but wonder if more women had been involved in this process along the way. From what I’ve read, the only two people who have called the authorities were women – Victim 1 and Victim 6′s mom. I don’t know the gender of the official at Victim 1′s high school, but they also called the authorities and banned Sandusky from the school. While Penn State eventually banned Sandusky from bringing children from his organization to the school, there was no way to monitor it and he obviously did not follow this rule.

I can’t help but think of how many more young men he took advantage of. I was reading that child molesters are often caught 16 years after they start and charged with hurting far fewer children than they actually did.  And with all his victims being men, it’s likely that many will not come forward because of shame

I almost can’t believe this happened.  Almost. People ignore child abuse all the time. Unfortunately this is not a special or new situation. And that is the worst part.

e.

I hate the way people talk about “daddy issues.”

I think the biggest misconception about daddy issues is that people know how to deal with them. It took me easily 15 years to figure out that “dealing” with my father meant forgiving him and accepting him where he was. It took me a few more years to actually be able to do that. And I was lucky (using that term real loosely here) because my father had an excuse I could buy (addiction and PTSD) but more importantly, because he changed. (I wrote about it yesterday.)  I’m only beginning my research on adults and their fathers, but from what I’ve learned so far, this is not the way it always goes.

More often it’s a painful disaster. A few months ago I read Naked With Socks On’s piece about when he confronted his father about why he wasn’t there. His father didn’t have a good answer, he barely had an answer at all. And when that happens you are crushed. Hell, I was crushed and it didn’t happen to me. Another public example is a scene in the documentary the Prep School Negro. Andre visits his father’s house for the first time and confronts his father about what happened, where he’s been, what the deal was. To be honest, watching this scene was like watching a horror movie. I didn’t want to watch because I was scared of what the father would say.  And like NWSO’s father, this guy didn’t have an excuse and it hurt.  It was literally painful to watch.

I think the fear of these scenes becoming a reality is why I think a lot of people avoid having the conversation. What in the world do you say to a parent who wasn’t there and offers no acceptable reason? What do you do with that information? I don’t have the answers. I don’t know what I would do. And my guess is, a lot of you don’t know either.

What was the point of me writing this?  Lately, it seems that everyone fancies themselves experts on fathers and fatherless children.  And frankly most of what I’m reading comes from people who have no idea of what they are talking about.  I also have many, many thoughts on how we talk about women who grew up without their fathers, but that is another post.  I say all this to say that I hope the next time someone wants to tell people to go deal with their daddy issues, they’ll think for one second about what that really means, how much time it takes and how it feels.

To be clear, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t “deal,” I’m saying offer some compassion instead of ordering someone to do it.

peace,
e.

But it starts before I even got here. My mother and father don’t agree much on the details of how they met but from what I can gather, my mother came to California, met my father and they fell in love. Like for real love, they got engaged and bought a house. Then my father messed up big time (“groupies” according to my dad and drugs, bad combo) and my mother left him. After she had me, she moved back to Connecticut. And since my father loved both of us, he followed. Since he didn’t know anyone in CT, he couldn’t get drugs and so he got clean.

For a while we all lived together with my grandmother. My mother’s work required her to travel a lot, so I spent most of my early years with my father and my grandmother. Eventually my mom was able to spend more time in CT, enough to buy a house and we were a “regular” family. I’m not sure what happened, but my father moved out but we still hung out all the time. I was the ultimate daddy’s girl and it was awesome. He spoiled me rotten and I loved it. Whatever I wanted I got and I got used to it.

When I was nine, my mother told me she was going to have a baby (with her husband, not my dad). That’s when my father decided to tell me that he had just had a baby with some woman I never met and that I had a six month old brother.

Somewhere along the way my dad started doing drugs again. His visits became more sporadic and when we hung out it was sometimes with real shady people and sketchy situations. I was also getting older, so I was more aware of what going on, but for the most part everything was cool.

Then my dad started going to jail. The first time was devastating. I remember hiding in the closet and crying. But after that, I began to look forward to my dad going to jail because when he was in jail he called and wrote all the time. And when he was out, he was gone.

During another stint in jail, the woman he had my brother with had a little girl. She was born addicted to crack and was placed for adoption. I only met her once, the day after she was born. And then she was gone.

Though I was getting frustrated with my father around this time, I was not done with him. I figured eventually he would clean up and get his life together. He had kids and all these mistakes had costs. But my father couldn’t clean up. My breaking point came when he missed my high school graduation. Later he told me that he was high and didn’t want to see me in that state. But I didn’t know then and that was the first time I cut him off.

Through all of this, mother has always remained calm. She never says anything negative about my father and his shenanigans. And whenever I talk crazy about his, she reminds me that he is my father. I’ve always admired this about her because if some man was driving my children crazy, it would be all over for him.

I don’t remember how, but we reconciled. I didn’t trust him and I barely liked him but I still loved him. My mother made me invite him to my college graduation. He came and was so proud you would have thought he had anything to do with my success there. It infuriated me.

The next few years were strained. I was going through my own stuff and didn’t want to deal with my father’s. I can’t remember now what happened, (I’m sure it had something to do with the truly awful man that I was dating) but I decided that I needed to deal with my father and our issues before it ruined any chance I had at obtaining and maintaining a function romantic relationship. So I wrote him a letter. It said three things: 1. You don’t know me, you haven’t made an effort, so I’m going to tell you who I am, 2. You’re either in or out. I’m not going to continue to chase you around and beg you to act like a father. You either do it on your own and leave me the hell alone and 3. You are not going to be the reason I don’t get married.

To be honest, I didn’t expect an answer. But my father, ever full of surprises, wrote me back and sent a packet of other stuff. He said he was sorry. He said he had been clean for a year and was diagnosed with PTSD. He had been in therapy and was back to drawing again. He sent me all the information he had about my sister. He sent me info about veteran benefits for children (way too late as I was 25 but it would help my brother). And he said I was right. I was finally able to forgive him.

He started to call me. If we had plans to meet, you better believe he was there. And for that I am grateful.

Our relationship now is not perfect but it’s much better. I have accepted my father for who is. I can see who he is. And I am ok with that. He’s never going to be Bill Cosby.   He’s never going to be the man to financially bail me out of situations.  But he is the man who will come down to to New York year after year and move me to different apartments, even mice filled ones that scare both of us. He’s the man that tells me I’m beautiful, smart, funny, insert positive adjective here when I need to hear it. He’s the man that helps me calm down because he’s incapable of not seeing the bright side to a situation.  He’s the man that makes me laugh.  He is my father.

e.

The second has to do with success. Last night I was watching James Cameron’s Visionaries and he was talking about how he didn’t get into movies (or any of his other endeavors) to make money and that he’d still make movies/advocate/scuba dive even if he didn’t make money. I’ve heard this over and over, especially on this network where I think people speak much more candidly. So many crazy successful (and now rich people) all say they started doing something that they love and then the money came. This isn’t surprising to me, I guess it’s that I don’t know many people in real life who are doing what they really love to do. I know a lot of people who are doing things to pay the bills or who are doing things because it’s what they’re “supposed” to do, but I know very few people who love what they do.

This is becoming increasingly important to me as I focus more on my own happiness and am approaching a time in life where I have to decide what I’m going to do next. Yes I’m going to need to make a certain amount of money to pay bills, but for the past two years I’ve been thinking of my next job only in terms of money. I’ve even said “I will do anything to make enough money to pay my student loans off.” But the more I think of having another job that I hate going to and resent, the more I know that it’s fear that has me talking crazy and that I need to take a step back and make a smart decision here. I haven’t exactly figured out what it is just yet, but I have started to change the way I think about it (which I suppose is the first step).

e.