dad, tell me your story

Last Christmas, my brother gifted our parents one of those books where parents write down their stories, their memories, their feelings, their answers to questions they've perhaps never been asked out loud.

My father sent the book back.

My brother shared a few photos of his answers with me. I'm still not sure if he reached out because it hurt him too, or if he was truly as detached as he claimed. Either way, the answers were devastating in their emptiness.

I've written more about my father and our dynamic in my book, Connected Fates, Separate Destinies, so I won't go through all the details again here. But I want to speak to something that matters deeply, the damage done when someone becomes a parent not out of desire, but out of fear of losing the person they love.

My father did not want children. My mother did. She was the love of his life, and he would have done anything to keep her. Including having children he never wanted. And that's where the first wound began.

My mother became both mother and father to us. And when she finally asked for a divorce, my father disappeared for ten years. As if we had never existed.

One of the questions in the book was: What is your best memory as a father? His answer: None.

Another: What did fatherhood bring you? His answer: A deterioration of the marriage that led to divorce and the destruction of the family.

And when asked how he felt learning he was going to be a father: A risk taken that ended up materializing.

My brother said — this is just who he is.

And maybe. But our father also knows who we are. So why the distance? Why the silence? Why the absence?

His fear of losing the woman he loved damaged two children who never asked to be born into that fear. And yes, we can heal. We can patch the wounds. We can pour gold into the cracks, as they say in Kintsugi. But it could have been prevented. It should have been prevented.

In Family Constellations, responsibility is one of the most fundamental principles of the system. You do not have a child to keep your partner. You do not sacrifice your children on the altar of your own fears. You do not use them as a shield.

I don't have children. I have thought about it, deeply, for a long time. But I know what it means to be an unwanted child. And I refuse to bring a life into this world unless I can do it with my whole heart.

So to every inner child still carrying the weight of feeling unwanted, unloved, like a burden, lean on your adult self today.

Yesterday, I had to hold mine. I had to remind her, again and again, that nothing was wrong with her. That she was never the problem. And I will fiercely protect her, not through anger, not through fighting, but through the quiet, unshakeable knowing that his limitations were never hers to carry.

They were never yours either. 🤍

With love,
Marine Sélénée