No Regrets!

I went in search of my biological father when I was 19 years old. I can remember the first day I drove 2 hours to his state to visit him. Boy was I nervous. I was met by a man who appeared happy to see me, but in so many ways he was very distant and allusive. Looking at him was like looking in a mirror, because I looked so much like him. It was a pleasant visit, not emotional, but pleasant.

We continued to write each other and occasionally visit sometimes. Our phone conversations lasted perhaps 3-5 minutes max. We had a distant relationship, not very close at all. My father was incapable of connecting with anyone, especially a daughter he never knew. I learned to love my father from where he was, but it just became too painful to be around him. Not because I hated or disliked him, it was just very difficult to get to know him. The subtle rejection was just too much. He would never write to me, only send me a few dollars here and there. The money was fine, but I needed his words. I wanted to hear him tell me what I meant to him, I wanted to have great conversation with the man I wanted to know so badly. But we never became the father and daughter I had imagined we could have been.

After my painful divorce, I reached out to my dad for some support and found none. Not because he didn’t want to, he just couldn't. He was not mentally or emotionally available to anyone. We drifted even farther apart. It was this year when I felt an urgent need to seek him out again. I had lost touch and didn’t know where to find him. When I finally located him, I was met with resistance from his family members who thought that I wanted something from my dad. My dad is now mentally ill and unable to care for himself now. I have been met by his family with hostility now I am being blamed for not coming around all those years. I cannot possibly understand how I am now the blame for my dad's own doing. I initiated all of our connections. I reached out to him, never he to me.

The story gets better. Now, his family is now requesting that I prove that I am his daughter. After all of these years, (47), paternity was never an issue. This is all coming down to my father's estate and his family thinks I want it. Yet, they don't understand that all I ever wanted from my dad, I will never get now. It is not his estate, it was him, it was his love.

I love my dad and I want to believe that somewhere in his ill mind he loves me too. For me that will have to be enough. I cannot and will not bring the past into the presence, but I will not create a presence that becomes painful or stressful. I will not allow his family to taint or mess with what I was able to create with my dad. Even if it was on a very small level, it was huge to me. I learned my dad had his own issues. Whatever they were, I was not the cause of them, but I understand them. I cannot change the past, but I can sure create a peaceful present. I lost my dad a long time ago and I had a small window to find him and love him. I am grateful for that opportunity. I celebrate the times we had together and the brief encounters. They will forever remain precious in my heart. For now I have peace and joy in knowing that the only thing I owed my dad was my love and forgiveness. Today he has both!

Share Your Heart Secrets!

It has been said that "healing comes from sharing our wounds." I have found this to be true for myself. Through telling my stories of pain, abandonment and rejection, I found my way back home. I found so many other women who shared similar stories and it is through the sharing, the healing of old wounds were discoverd. We share our Heart Secrets, the lessons we've learned from the stories we dared to share.

I want to challenge you as a Fatherless Daughter to tell the truth. You have nothing to be ashame of, absolutely nothing. You are loved by a God, a Father who loves you unconditionally. Join me and others as we rise up and share our stories of pain, forgiveness and restoration with the world in order to heal the world.

No longer have your cry lost in the dark. Step into the light of God's love, and always remember to tell the truth, your truth..which is what really matters. Yes it does!!

One Love,
Angela Carr Patterson

A Fatherless Daughter's Lost Cry in the Dark....My Heart Secret (Final Part)

While not having a father can be harmful to women, there are certainly many other reasons why we as women do not love ourselves. It matters not how you arrived at this desolate place, but rather how you move through it and on to your own Love Story.

I have come to tell the truth which has freed me to love. In my E-book, "The Revival of a Love Story", I share the lessons learned and concepts that I have come to embrace concerning love over the years. And there is "The Papilio Effect Concept" that I teach which is the very foundation for my Love Story Experience.

My story does not have a fairy tale ending in which I find my father and we have a great loving relationship. In fact, it is just the opposite. I do not have a wonderful relationship with my father and perhaps never will, because he is still unavailable, but what I do have is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a powerful thing, a liberator of the soul!! I have a loving step-father who has consistently been there for me in every capacity possible. I am now married to a wonderful new husband and living a life full of love, peace and joy. You see folks, I found love... inside myself and it was there all along. At times I am still challenged by my old limiting beliefs, but when that happens I simply shift my thoughts and remind myself to love again!! Oh my what an amazing journey this has become.

It is my hope that our “Fatherless Daughter Initiative” will become a place of inspiration, celebration and transformation as we examine the truths about Fatherless Daughters. It is our hope that we can shed light and give insight to an issue that is taking this nation by storm, yet continues to remain ignored.

We want to encourage fathers and their daughters to share their Heart Secrets, dare them to tell the truth, to forgive and maybe even heal. This could actually open their lives to amazing new possibilities. We must do this for all the women, for the men who could not or did not love them and for my daughter. I believe love is who you are and not what you do. Not only is it possible to create your own love story, it is also inevitable!

One Love,

Angela Carr Patterson

A Fatherless Daughter's Lost Cry in the Dark....My Heart Secret (Part 2)

I learned early, that if I were going to make it in life, I had to do it myself. I didn't grow up with a father to protect me, to provide or even to love me. He and my mom split while she was pregnant with me and later divorced. My Heart Secret was to never allow anyone to know how not having a father in my life made me feel less than human. I felt as if I did not belong anywhere. I was always afraid of being found out, of being rejected, not liked or even accepted. I carried this wound like a woman carrying a baby, yet I could never give birth to it; I could never release it.

As I began to come to terms with the impact of how not having my dad in my life had affected me, the process of healing began. I now understood my desperate need to be loved, to be re-assured, and my fear of abandonment. I also understood why I could not actually fully connect with my mates or have a deep intimate and lasting relationship. Finally, I understood why I could not find true love. I did not recognize it.

I really did not know how love looked. How could I? I never saw love demonstrated to my mother by my father nor was it ever shown to me by my father. Then I went to church and the minister told me that God was my Father. However, I had difficulty receiving love from a God I could not see, feel or hear, as it reminded me of my father.

Now, here I was divorced, just like my mother, my grandmother and now my daughter would have to live without her father. We were 4 generations of women who did not grow up with a father. The only common denominator for the women in my family not being able to sustain a lasting relationship was that we were all fatherless. I had to prevent my daughter from repeating the same cycle. I want to prevent all women from having to live this hell!

As I began my search for answers, I no longer saw my life through tainted lenses. Love for me became very clear. I read everything I could get my hands on about self-love, God's love. I prayed, meditated and connected to Love's Power Source. I discovered a loving Creator who would teach me about true love through my daily experiences, the people I would meet, the mistakes I would make and decisions I would face.

As the thoughts about myself began to shift from shame, guilt and pity, to awareness, love and respect, my belief system also began to change and wouldn't you believe, my love story was unfolding. However it was not with a man, but rather with myself. Loving myself would afford me the ability to truly love another from my deeper self, without fear of rejection or abandonment. So many of these lessons I have come to learn.

Soon I would discover that I was not alone on this journey. Many of my sisters, women from all walks of life, also grew up in fatherless homes or homes in which the fathers were seldom available, emotionally unavailable. As I began to do research on this subject, I also discovered this epidemic was growing out of control and no one seemed to really notice. There is so much data to support the adverse, negative effects on the lives of women who grew up without fathers. It breaks my heart to know that there are millions of women and daughters looking for love who are not finding it because they have never learned what love truly is. In every woman there is that little girl who wants to be loved, adored and protected by her daddy! It's just that simple.