I understand. One of the first pieces I ever wrote was about my complicated relationship with my father. And how I have to remind myself that other people have perfectly lovely men as their fathers. They LOVE their fathers. They are LOVED in return. Their life is not some kind of twisted chess game to their male parent. And others - like ours - are simply sperm donors. I used to beg my sisters to tell me I was adopted or that my mother had an affair & some place out there was a man with whom I shared DNA who was NOT the man I called, "Dad."

That decision was amazing & powerful. In Mary Oliver's The Journey - there is a line Dunelair quoted - sometimes we have to save the only life we can. And we do that by walking away. <3