🧵 Thursday Thread: Can We Talk About Dads?
From Ashley Biden's "Girl dad" speech to Gus Walz's tear-choked exclamation, "That's my dad!" as his father accepted the nomination for VP, "dad talk" is in the air and I'd love to hear your stories!
Last night, after Tim Walz’s speech, my son, Max, texted our family group thread to see if anyone had been watching. He was moved by the sheer emotional intensity and inspiration of Gus Walz’s reaction pride for his father.
I was moved, too—and equally so by Ashley Biden’s obvious adoration and respect for her father on Monday night. I know Ashley’s words were scripted for a televised account of an incredibly high stakes moment. Still, I texted a friend that night to say:
I want Joe to be my dad! 😭
I was joking, but I wasn’t. Listening to Ashley speak, seeing her on stage with her father, filled me with genuine longing. And now that I think of it, that sensation that was already swirling from
’s gorgeous, evocative essay about her father on Monday, “He would have liked my house.”If you’ve read my work, you know my dad was absent through most of my life—I’ve written about this over the last couple years in the essay What My Father Knew and a followup piece called The Cost. Having written so much and so specifically about father loss and its long shadow over childhood and adulthood, I won’t say a lot here other than that to clarify that my father, after this lifetime of absence, has been deliberately distant (no contact) after the publication of my memoir, The Part That Burns.
He is also old, and not well.
I find myself thinking about him a lot.
It’s confusing, and I’m mostly okay right now with sitting inside of that confusion—maybe because that’s all I can do for now. Maybe because his absence has been confusing to me since I first became aware of the dad-shaped hole in my life during childhood.
Anyway.
All this has me thinking about dads, and the role they play in our lives, including the highly gendered differences in our expectations of fathers and mothers, and of fathering and mothering. This is something
wrote incisively about in yesterday’s comments when they said:is "mothering" as a verb gendered? or does it just describe the labor of care? can fathers mother? don't we all mother ourselves and our loves? what does "fathering" mean? outside of the state of existing as a father? how does one "father" someone or oneself? why are fathers so static (father figure) while mothers are always in motion?
The truth is, I miss my father. Yes, I miss the real, flesh-and-blood person of him, neglectful and negligent as he was, because I loved him as a child, and that was real. Mostly, though, I miss the idea of him, the idea of the father I wanted and never had, and never will have: a father who would have protected me, played with me, celebrated with me, who would have helped me, taught me, cheered for me—who would have loved me, and shown that love as a verb. A father who would have been proud of me for the life I have made for myself from the wreckage of foster care, instead of being ashamed of me for telling the truth about childhood abuse and sexual abuse, and the obligation adults have to protect the children in their lives as best they can.
Father lack, loss, and legacy helped shape me into the adult woman I am today, for better and for worse. Like so many other losses, it has ultimately made me softer hearted, I think, than I might have been otherwise. It has also made me more aware of the way I experience “fathering” from other men in my life, including my husband, who is a natural caregiver.
I would love to hear your thoughts on and stories about fathers and fathering—both personal and philosophical.
All stories and thoughts welcome (with kindness and respect for others, always): the beautiful,
the heartbreaking
the inspiring
the funny
the strange
the profound
and maybe most of all, the highly particular
Finally, I want to tell you something from the very bottom of my heart:
Your stories and the pieces of yourselves that you share here sustain me, reshape me, and fill me up with light and hope for who we are and who we are becoming, not just in spite of, but because of.
I love every single story you share and the way they weave within and between each other to form a greater whole strengthened with more richness of insight, understanding, and connectedness than I ever knew was possible in a digital space.
I am so, so, grateful.
Okay, enough mushy stuff. Let’s talk dads.
Love,
Jeannine
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