Daddy's Daughters

We underestimate the power we have when we follow our creative urges.

One writer recently told us how writing her Daddy’s Girl story inspired her to move forward in discussing unhealed wounds with her family, and she began to see a softer, more vulnerable side to the father she resented much of her life. Soon afterward, her father fell into a sudden healing crisis -- and my skin tingles to think of the miraculous timing that allows a woman to stumble upon an anthology’s call for submissions, write her story, confront her father with the demons she’d battled since girlhood, and get to know her father as an adult daughter.

This is the story I wish I could have lived with my father. I wish I had been mature enough in my early twenties to speak honestly with my father about the tumors growing in his lungs, about his thoughts on life, death, what regrets he might have had. I wish we could have talked about fears and forgiveness. I wish I could have talked to him about love, with love.

And then I realize that I am living this story. My hunger for such a father-daughter relationship fed into a creative project, which inspired another woman to embrace her father as a flawed but forgivable human being while he’s still alive. I’ve not met her, but she is my sister. My story is part of her story. Her story is part of mine.