I know it isn't easy for you to tell me when I've hurt you.  Maybe you feel you shouldn't have to.  But right now you do.  I need your help to get rid of the barriers between us.  You're stuck with me as a father and I'm not letting go, so the best thing you can do is help me become the best one I can.

Now, it was her time to cry.  She delivered her list.

1. One birthday you were late to pick me up, so we couldn't go to dinner and I was very disappointed.
2. You had an affair and never explained it to me.
3. You're not straight with me about money.
4. When I visit you and Ann, I feel like I'm tagging along on your night out.
5. Your guests are treated better than your own children.
6. I never had my own identity in your home.  You treated me as if I were Elisa-without-her-accomplishements.
7. You don't stand up for me.
8. Last bithday you said you wanted to buy me a ring but forgot, and then you made me feel bad when I wasn't happy with the replacement.

Ouch. I asked for it and I got it.  Some things I anticipated, but others came as a shock.  Of course I remembered the affair, but I certainly didn't remember being late and missing dinner on her birthday.  Still, both had a powerful, almost equal effect on her.  Each was proof that she wasn't important to me.  Each was another reason for her to keep her distance.

I'm sorry I haven't been in your life as much as you would have liked.  Please tell me what you would like now.

After she'd read her list, we didn't budge for 5 hours.  We talked and cried and laughed about every item on her list.  It was the longest and most honest time we'd spent together since - I don't know - maybe forever.  And the more we talked about these hurtful, secret things, the less power they had.  By the end of the day, each hurt had begun to evolve into a bond instead of a wall.  The barriers were falling.  I'm happy to report, they still are.

By the way, there's lots of room for error in this process.  As I was winding down the reading of my letter, I discovered a typo - by me, a writer - in the most important line I'd ever write:

I love you imperfectly, but I live you very much. Dad.

We laughed.  What better was to demonstrate imperfection? - something that as a father I've been demonstrating all my life.  Not that I needed to be perfect.  The problem was that the little things built up and at some point they calcified into an obstruction so big we couldn't get over it.

Neither of us wanted it that way.  Neither of us knew how to change it - until I watched some federal prison inmates come clean with their own kids.

I don't know if it was the letter, the talking or the crying.  Perhaps it was all three.  Somehow that afternoon a wonderful thing happened.  I got my daughter back .... and she got her father.

Anonymous