Daddy Wounds Don't Vanish — But They Do Soften

This is not a story of perfect healing — it's a story of choice.

I think it's time for you to meet my dad.

I don't have memories of him before the age of seven, but I remember that age specifically.

My mom and I had moved to Rhode Island from Aspen when I was five, to live near her family. I remember my fifth birthday — a Cabbage Patch Kid with short yellow yarn hair and a little navy blue polka dot dress. Her name is Corey. She still lies in a drawer in my office. Currently covered in drywall dust. She went with me everywhere for many years as my best friend.

Six years old? No memory. Nothing.

But seven — that's when I remember what hope felt like. Hope. Longing. That ache to see someone who was supposed to love me.

A letter came in the mail, or maybe it was a phone call — I don't remember how it happened. But at some point, my mother told me my dad was coming to see me for my birthday. The details are gone. But the feeling — that I remember. The swelling in my chest. The heaviness of missing someone you barely knew. Like my body just knew he was supposed to matter.

There was a birthday party at my aunt's. I don't know if I was polite or bratty, but I remember waiting for him. All day. I think he came toward the end. But that day, he took me to the mall — just me and him. It was awkward. I remember that.

It was that day that he bought me my very first cassette tapes:

When our brief encounter ended that afternoon, I felt that familiar ache again — with nowhere to put it. Sadness. Loss. But I played those tapes on repeat to bring me closer to him. I spent hours choreographing dances, spending time with my girls: Tiffany, Madonna, Whitney. They became my fairy godmothers.

Now I see why music is so sacred to me. Why it's always been my most loyal companion — for comfort, for rage, for release. To this day, I have songs, artists, genres that belong to certain people. Some I can't even hear without being left on the floor. Others will have me singing at the top of my lungs, releasing a caged monster.

That day with my dad gave me music. And that's enough to be grateful for. That's the whole point — finding the beauty. The ways the universe had my back, even when the humans did not.

The Girl on the Plane

The next summer, I started flying out to California to visit him. A couple of times a year. That wasn't a small trip: Providence to O'Hare to San Diego. Sometimes through Dallas. But by the summer of my eighth birthday, I was telling the flight attendants where the gates were in Chicago.

I loved flying. The headphones. The pilots' voices. It was oddly comforting, listening to calm commands as we flew through the sky like angels. And I loved doing it all alone. I felt so grown-up.

(That's a love story for another day. "Hey Siri, remind me to write about my love turned fear of flying and how I manage NOT to have panic attacks now.")

That second summer visiting him, I unknowingly flew with chickenpox. I noticed a little blister on my upper right arm on a walk down Sassafras Street. It was the look of confusion on my dad's face that still resonates with me — he probably had no clue what to do with me. The next thing I knew, I was covered. Head to toe. A girl he knew bathed me and covered me in calamine lotion while my dad was at work. My body still carries two scars from that summer: one on my arm, one on my cheek.

Two years later, my mom moved us to San Diego so her daughter could have a father.

The year after we got there, he moved to Kentucky.

I saw him every summer for a few weeks. Eventually, I moved in with him the summer before my junior year. He had just gotten remarried and had a new baby. And I desperately wanted a family.

That's when I learned the truth. About his rage. His alcoholism. I left within six months.

After that, our relationship was sporadic. Phone calls. Rare visits. He had his family. I was always on the outside — included in title, but not in feeling.

I became envious. Angry. Bitter. I appreciated the financial help at Christmas so I could play Santa for my kids. But that came from my stepmom, not him. She was the one doing the heavy lifting of love. I felt like the afterthought.

The DNA Test

Fast forward twenty years. I'm 37, maybe 38. My aunt — his sister — tells my mom I need to take a DNA test. That she's found something, and that I specifically would want to know.

I'm in the car when my mom tells me. I sit in silence, wondering. Then it hits me:

I have a sibling. That's the only answer.

I couldn't spit in that tube fast enough.

Ten weeks later: my DNA results are in. And there he is. A match. A brother. A much older brother.

So what you're telling me is — all that time I grew up alone, unprotected, unseen, unloved… I had an older brother?

Yes. I know we wouldn't have grown up together. But still. The realization shattered something deep within me. I called my aunt: "Does my dad know?"

"Yes. But he's denying it."

Of course he is.

I emailed my brother right away, praying he had longed for a baby sister the way I had longed for a family. He hadn't. Another blow.

But I learned this: my brother was adopted. His mother had gotten pregnant in San Diego, right before my dad shipped out to Vietnam. He never knew.

This knowledge ate at me for months. The rage had taken over. I was waking up fuming. And then one day — probably eight months later, after another soul-numbing day in my fancy corporate job — I pulled off the freeway, turned off the radio, and decided:

Today's the day. Today I call him. Today I finally let him have the years of abandonment that I carried.

Ring…

I unbuckled my seatbelt, got myself hyped up, and found his name in my contacts. I pressed call. And time stopped.

Like in A Christmas Carol, angels came for me. They showed me things I couldn't see before.

"Hi Pumpkin! It's so nice to hear from you!"

The moment I was ready to unload years of pain…

He's just a little boy, too. Doing the best he can. Just like I was. Just like I am. Just like you are.

Would I want my kids to hold anger toward me for my many mistakes? No. Of course not. And maybe I'll never understand all of his decisions. But I don't have to.

What I know is this: he never denied me. I'm his daughter. That's something my brother didn't get. And I believe, with everything in me, that if he had known — he wouldn't have denied him either.

That day, I embraced my dad over the phone in a way that healed us both. He sat in silence as I told him how proud I was of him. I'm sure with the knowing that he wasn't there for me. But he knew, as of that day, that I knew he tried.

He cried. He let go of a lifetime of burdens. And I did that for him. I did that for me.

I hung up that phone to enter into a new reality. One where I didn't carry the bitterness at the forefront. One where hatred didn't control every answer.

We started talking every day after work. Our conversations are mostly surface-level on my part, and that's okay. I don't need depth anymore. I need consistency. I need the knowing.

I still carry some hurt. Some neglect. The habits that are formed because of it. The rewiring of my brain that still has miles to go. But none of it is anger or resentment or judgment.

Just acceptance. Of my story. Of his. Of ours.

That call was seven years ago. And it never would've happened without my brother. Or my sister — who I'll tell you about another day.

— AudraHealing out loud, so you don't have to heal in silence.