For every daughter that never grew up with a father to call her, his own.

 

This was my Ma 

Young, beautiful, naive, and super insecure.

This was us

It was the early 80's and I hadn't yet started walking before he walked out on us. 

This was him

Holding me with one of his daughters swinging on the right. 

Both of us too young to know we were part of his secret world as a married man.

 

I'm about 2 or 3 here

He was long gone by this stage but I'd already started to develop a very high awareness that there was something different about me. I was always darker than the rest, my own little sis, my cousins, kids at my schools included, and for the most part, they all with the exception of my sis, had dads. 

They knew who they were whakapapa wise, they had a sense of belonging and knowing of who they were and who they came from. After 3 decades of life, I'm still working on this. Connecting to the whole other half of me.

The half that people who when they first meet me, only see. The half they see that still rejects me from belonging to them. Therefore for most of my life I've rejected it in return. Rejecting a whole half of yourself ain't healthy in no kind of way, I don't recommend it.  

My skin always darker than the rest, attracted a lot of negative attention. I wasn't ever told I was pretty so when kids called me ugly names, I believed them and I blamed him because I knew I got my looks from him. He who never raised me, he who left me and he who was never around to teach me that I wasn't only beautiful but that I was also MORe than my looks and that I was also enough and am enough. 

I used to hate him for being absent throughout my entire childhood while he had all the opportunities in the world to reach out to me as I grew up just 1 suburb away from him and his family in our small city. I hated the ugly names mostly arsehole Pakeha and Maori kids alike would call me. I realized my features and skin color they'd pick on, are those that I'd inherited from my heritage which came from him. I didn't have him around me to protect me or build me up and be strong against those who would go out of their way to break me down. 

I used to hate her too (his wife) for always glaring down on me with steel dagger stab you in the heart looks anytime she saw me around town, she took her resentment for her wayward husband out on me, an innocent child. The final straw was when she took that same approach toward my children. 

I was in my late 20's and had two children at that stage. I'd recently forgiven him for all my hurt and pain I'd carried since I was a child. I'd turned to my heavenly father and prayed on it for weeks or months even. I released all that ugly resentment that kept me poisoned for all those years and I felt AMAZING.

I had a first-time visit with him at my house with my family present and we bonded,. He prayed over us, that was special and healing. 

Not long after this visit, I took my babies for a walk into town. One in the stroller, the other happily holding my hand walking alongside me and we entered the festival of cultures.  The whole festival was set up as a grid of many white tents, one after the other representing a different country, a different way of life, and welcoming all those who sought to learn & connect. 

A party vibe of celebration, hospitality, togetherness, kotahitanga, laughter, live music, cultural dance, korero, and scents of yummy kai from all around the world filled the atmosphere.  

The one tent in the whole place that we should've felt the most welcome or at least sense of belonging was the one repp'n for Tonga. I looked up to see him standing outside of it so I immediately started walking toward it with a smile, a wave and making eye contact with him and telling my babies who I saw, reminding them it's their biological grandfather who we just saw the other week. I had the happy feeling you get when you see family in a huge crowd of strangers. 

In an instant that all changed though, as I happily walked my kids toward him, his face didn't return my smile, his faced instead turned to his left to which I then noticed his wife. The look on her face said it all..... DON'T YOU DARE COME OVER HERE!!! 

I felt like I'd been punched in the face along with my kids and I was shattered that I'd allowed myself to put us all in that vulnerable situation in the first place. As a mother it's my job to protect my children from such things. Things that had hurt the shit out of me growing up. I made a quick detour through the happy celebration grid of other people's cultures tents feeling stomped on and completely alone among hundreds of happy festival goers. I swept my babies through as fast as I could and headed straight over to my safe zone, the library.  

I set my babies up with activities and could not stop the flood of tears for anything as I sat there on my phone being consoled by a dear cousin who knows all about my journey. My tears streamed for me and for my babies who at the end of the day thankfully had no clue why their mother was so upset. 

Whanau is everything to me, my babies are my true taonga in the whole world, and here was a man who should've and who we needed to have our backs in that moment. When a man has children and mokopuna the very basics of his job is to protect, love, and lead them. He gave none of that.  

Here's what I'm at peace with now; he's not a bad man. He was a selfish married man who made a choice to cheat on his wife. His wife who I can say is not a bad person either in fact, I admire her for what she did and has done for herself and her family in all that she set out to do and did accomplish.  Between his choice to cheat, my Mothers choice to enable him, and the consequences she suffered as a lonely single mother along with his wife's scorned woman resentment and unforgiveness, I know better now.

It was NEVER mine to carry. 

I let their shit go and I forgive them for putting it on me, their choices and consequences are not and never were mine to carry. I am enough with or without their acceptance of me and my beautiful precious babies. 

if you are a daughter or a son who has ever felt unwanted, worthless to your absent parent or not meant to be here, know this GOD don't make mistakes. If you made it here, YOU are here for a reason. It's you're job to figure out what your special divine purpose is here. 

The way in which we came into this world was not ours to control. 

The way in which we choose to lead, live, love, grow, and give to ourselves and others to make a difference in the world for the rest of our lives is ours to decide.

 I thank him, I thank my Ma and I thank his wife for the lessons I received from their choices and actions. The lessons that once tortured me eventually led me to create my own remedy and break the cycle for my precious babies. 

As a young woman with plenty of daddy issues to work through and meeting plenty of duds and learning my own lessons in life and love along the way, I made the firm choice to change for the better to create that remedy. I set my standards so dam HIGH that by the time I met him shortly after I turned 21, I just knew he (my loverman) here was the one when I met him. 

The ONE that would eventually deserve my precious trust and the one that would be EVERYTHING for my future babies that I needed but never had. 

Presence, Unconditional Love, Trust, Secure, Fun, Hero, Someone who believes in you, Protector 

Thank you for stopping by, if you need any support on your journey, hit me up, I'm here for you. 

Share this with someone you care about. 

I see you, you are never alone XO 

Erena 

Nurture her - Real Talk stories that matter 

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