Today I am thinking of my Lost Daughter sisters, and all of the different ways that we experience fatherhood. For some of us, this day is mostly about the adoptive father; for others, the biological father; for others still, a different father figure, or no one at all. Some of us are in contact with the adoptive father; some of us have lost touch or have lost that father to death. Some of the biological fathers have also passed on. Some of us have met our birth fathers, and in doing so discovered parts of ourselves. Others of us do not even know the name of the man who in different circumstances might have been "Dad." Some of us know just enough to have decided that the man is someone we do not want to meet. For some the paternal line is represented by relationships with other relatives, not the man himself. Some of us are searching. Some of us have found. Some have active relationships. Some reached out and were denied. Others have walked away, ending contact.
But amid all this diversity is the the one thing we have in common. For all of us, fatherhood includes an element of absence. Each of us is defined in part by the man who wasn't there.
