04/20/2026
6 years old me wrote this letter to my absent father who wasn’t there for me emotionally or financially. I was cleaning yesterday and found it again. For years when I would read a stack of letters I wrote to him, I would be filled with sadness, anger, and the “not enough.” My mom protecting me from a man she realized was not a good man, would tell the young me that she was mailing him letters, to help me cope with that I didn’t have a father like everyone else.
At the age of 40 I met him first time since 6 months years old. I finally realized why my mom didn’t want me to meet him, and everything now made sense. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that the tears, the sadness and the anger finally left my body, because it was never about me or even her.
You see my story isn’t different from a lot of other kids, but what I want to express is that, the feelings of wondering why my father didn’t love me or want to be with me, was one of the first major traumas my body would experience, and would continue to grow inside me. This would lead to a trajectory of decisions I made as teenager, and as a young woman which manifested into more traumas showing my body and the world I didn’t love myself either.
Trauma, leads to physical illness and while we cannot stop every trauma , we can realize where many of them stem from and start loving ourselves, even though we didn’t feel loved. Not everything is our fault, but it becomes our responsibility to fight for ourselves.
If anyone has confusion about the name on the letter. I changed my last name when I was 18 to my mother’s maiden name, because I felt that was fair to me considering his absence. Regina is my first name.
I hope you fight for yourself, because the young you, deserves it.
Francesca
