Sometimes Daddies Cry...a Divorced Dads Forum.

Battle Scars and Loneliness at the Holidays.

2018-11-17T17:42:00.001-06:00

He sits alone in church, feeling every eye on him and hearing the whispers. He knows what people think. Somehow, they always think it was the man’s fault. He must have cheated. He must have been abusive. He must drink or gamble or maybe he can’t hold a job.

The truth is that she just wanted something else. Something new. Someone with more money and a better sense of fashion. So…she left. Oh, she claimed he was this or he was that, but ultimately, in a no-fault-divorce world, she was just creating a diversion. A puff or two of smoke to turn a few friends in her favor and make sure she got primary custody.

Her heart wasn’t broken by this, so she assumes his won’t be either. But it is, and she resents him for that. “Why can’t he just get on with life? Why does he miss the kids so much? Why does he act so hurt that she’s dating already?” She spits these questions out at him sometimes when she sees the loneliness in his eyes and it bites at her conscience. Or what little remains of it.

He sits in church alone. Sometimes, he glances to his right and remembers when she used to be sitting there with him. And their little girl. Like a family. Like it was supposed to be. He hears the whispers of the Enemy of his soul… “Look at you. You’re a failure. Your wife isn’t here anymore. Your child isn’t here. This is where families come, and you don’t even have one now.” He says these last words with a hiss. The legendary split tongue cutting its way into his heart. He brushes back a few tears and tries to hold his head high. He’d hoped he’d at least still belong here, in this place of sanctuary but he doesn’t feel very welcomed anymore. In fact, he doesn’t feel anything. He feels invisible.

Ever since she left, people have been awkward, and they avoid him altogether. They don’t know what to say so they say nothing. The silence seems, to him, to be a guilty verdict. By saying nothing, they say “Yeah…we kind of side with her on this…” at least that’s how it feels to him. Because nobody will say anything.

People are always telling him they are praying for him. People like to say that. Especially when they don’t know what else to say. Oddly…nobody ever stops and prays for him then. They just continue to remind him that when he is all alone, and when he could use an arm around his shoulder but never feels one, and when he wonders how he is going to be a decent dad to a little girl, and when his heart aches so much he thinks it might give out, and when he feels as if he is fading into nothingness…those times when he could use a prayer, “oh don’t worry, we’re praying, brother. You’ll never hear it or feel the comfort of it but take our word for it. We’re praying.”

He wonders why they wonder why he stops coming. Why he stopped going out to dinner with the group after church on Sunday morning. Why he doesn’t return phone calls anymore. What did they think he’d do?” He asks himself. The loneliness is consuming sometimes, and he could use a friend. But they act like he is radioactive. Like they might get some of this one them. So, they steer clear, and he gives them a wider berth.

The holidays are the toughest. The holidays and his daughter’s birthday. Christmas is supposed to be for families. It has always been for families. Thanksgiving too. Family, smiles, traditions, joy. It’s not supposed to be an alternating schedule of sorrow and happiness. One year you get to have Christmas like an almost-normal family. The other you get to sleep in, not wanting to get out of bed because your daughter isn’t there and you don’t have any real reason to get up. Christmas on any other day but Christmas is anticlimactic. But you soldier on.

I could say he gets used to this, but in reality, it’s just that his scars grow thicker and his emotions lie buried beneath and ever-increasing layer of numbness. Trust? Trust whom? He trusted once. Trusted so much that he made a vow. For life. Look how that worked out. Look at this life he has. Love? It’s hard to believe in something again when it has wounded you so deeply.

Years pass, and he finally arrives at something like normalcy again. He is, in many ways, his old self again. But in many ways, in crucial, core-of-the-man ways he is not. He is still a romantic, but it’s measured now and quickly caught when it begins to show its face. He used to truly love the company of other people. Now he prefers his solitude. In fact, being around people for too long makes him nervous and uncomfortable. He is nothing like he used to be, but people expect him to be like he used to be, and they wind up disappointed.

What did you expect? You watched as his soul was torn out and you offered no relief. You expected him to handle it the way you think you’ll handle it if it ever happens to you. Only it never has happened to you. And you don’t really know how you’d handle it.

He is broken, this man who sits alone. He is scarred over and unfeeling in the places where he ought to be feeling the most at this stage of life.

On the outside he looks the same, but inside, where the wounds live, he is twisted and garish, like some invisible Quasimodo, hiding in the cathedral of his own heart, deaf, and brutish, and only feeling the love of his bells. Inanimate objects who stole his hearing but soothed his heart. Sometimes, he looks at the people around him…the ones who smile and wave but step up their pace and politely escape his hardened sorrow. And like Quasimodo, gazing upon a gargoyle as he hangs on for dear life, he whispers, “Why was I not made of stone, as thee.”

She Still Needs Her Dad...

2017-10-19T06:10:00.002-05:00

My daughter was sick last night.

She woke me at 2 A.M. needing her dad. She has been trying a new medication and it made her terribly nauseated. She’s nineteen. She knows how to take care of herself when something like this happens. But she still needed her dad to get her downstairs to the couch, get her some water, and feel her forehead with the back of his hand. She needed to be reminded that she isn’t alone.

In truth…I needed this too.

We’ve been here in Lynchburg for three and a half years now. That’s the longest uninterrupted period of living in the same house that we’ve had since she was born. Her mom left when Daisy was only eighteen months old. From that point on, it was once a week and every other weekend and two months in the summer. Even the two months were broken up with her mom having my visitation schedule.

I never fully felt like a dad. I felt like my entire fatherhood was broken into bits and pieces, like Morse code. Dot, dot, dot…dash, dash, dash…dot, dot, dot. The thirteen years between our divorce and her moving here with me felt like I was lost at sea, trying desperately to swim against the tide, struggling beneath the waves and only catching a gasping breath whenever she was with me and I could breathe. As soon as I’d take her back to her mom’s, I’d disappear under the turbulent waters again. Drowning. Sinking.

I came across a picture on Facebook yesterday. It popped up on that “Your memories From ____ Years Ago” thing. It was my daughter back home at St. Anthony’s Italian Festival. She was nine years old, smiling brightly, clutching a stuffed penguin she’d won at some midway game and waiting to get on the Ferris Wheel with me.

Smiling.

My daughter doesn’t smile much now. She stopped smiling and being a bubbly, outgoing, happy kid when her mom’s second husband took off his mask of decency and showed the monster he really is. From age twelve, until we escaped Nashville and moved here to Lynchburg when she was sixteen, she endured mental and physical abuse enough to drive that bubbly, smiling girl into hiding. He wore her down with every kind of cruelty. He killed her pet. He destroyed her property, including things I gave her on birthdays and holidays. Things shared between a daddy and his little girl. Notes I would include in birthday cards. He would “edit” them and mark them up. He intruded on my fatherhood every chance he got. He stopped short of sexual assault –or he’d be a missing person on the back of a milk carton right now—but everything else was on the table in his sick mind.

Her mom did nothing to stop this. She was too concerned with her own life. She often sided with her husband, against our daughter, in order to keep the peace. She essentially sacrificed Daisy’s well-being, for her own.

It finally got bad enough and I took a job in Virginia and she left with me. She escaped the remnants of her childhood.

This was not the life I wanted for my child. Or for me. I wanted a happy home and a house and peace. I wanted my daughter to be healthy and happy and to reach her potential. I wanted to be the best dad anyone ever had, and to experience fatherhood from the adult side and hopefully make up for how fatherhood looked from the child’s view that I had when I was her age. Instead I got sawdust fatherhood. The fragments that remain after the whole has been cut into pieces, again and again until nothing remains but the shavings and dust that stand as evidence that there really was something there once.

All of which brings me to last night. There are a lot of men who would be upset over losing a half night’s sleep with a sick nineteen-year-old child. “I have to work in the morning.” “I get up at 4:45 am!” “You’re an adult, you can take care of yourself.”

And she can.

But there were so many times over those thirteen years, when she was sick, and hurting, and often in real danger, and I couldn’t help her. My fragmented time with her leaves me aching for those days when she was that smiling little nine-year-old girl in the photo. Times when I would have loved nothing more than to have carried her downstairs to the couch, felt her forehead with the back of my hand, and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

But I had to settle for phone calls and five days a month.

So, I don’t mind when she needs me now. I don’t rue the lost sleep or the groggy feeling when the alarm went off this morning at 4:45 and I was seriously thinking of taking a sick day. This would have been my life a dozen years ago, and instead it’s my life now. I’m okay with that. It’s what dads do. Good ones anyway.

I nurse her back to health daily as it is. Back to emotional health. I’ve laid the back of my hand to her forehead and felt the cold, clammy feeling of a broken spirit. I’ve comforted the tears and frustration that she’s cried over the neglect and indifference that her mom has shown, both while she was being so abused in her mom’s home, and especially since we’ve moved here. They don’t talk much. Her mom has been here once in almost four years, and that was a brief, overnight visit. Nineteen-year-old women process that as abandonment. That’s because it is abandonment. I’ve held her hand as she’s been nauseated in her soul over the childhood she lost. Over the time we missed together. I’m doing my best to nurse her back to health.

So, no…I don’t mind losing half a night of sleep to take care of my adult daughter. Because in truth, nursing her back to health is also nursing me back. Every chance I get to act like the dad I am inside, goes a long way toward healing the loss I’ve felt over the years after the divorce. And maybe, to heal the loss I felt long before that, in the deep hole that existed in my own heart, because of my own father and his abandonment.

I’ve never felt his hand on my fevered forehead. Never heard his voice speak in the soft tones that dads use when their child is sick. Never felt his fingers brush my hair aside or his lips kiss my forehead as I drifted off to sleep, comforted in my illness by the presence of a loving, caring father.

I know what it means to my daughter, because I needed it too.

I could have quit. During those hard years after our divorce when my heart broke daily because I missed my daughter so much, and those five brief days each month were not even remotely enough to assuage my pain.

I could have packed it in when I lost my career in 2008 and had to live in my car because there was no work. I could have left to find a job somewhere else and just dutifully sent money and called once a week.

But I stayed. I stayed, and kept her trust, even though I was so limited in my ability to act on that trust. I stayed. And when the time came that she could take no more and had to get away…I was still there, ready to take her out of that hell and move her to safety.

You dads who are reading this, (it’s posted on both my personal website and my divorced dads blog) I encourage you not to quit. I encourage you to look squarely at the hell you must endure, stiffen your shoulders, brush aside your tears, and stand your ground.

Take whatever your ex, her husband, and the courts throw at you and stand your ground. The day will come. The day will come when the only knight left in the kingdom who can slay the dragon that pursues your child…is you. If you aren’t there –even with battered armor and a rusty sword—the dragon wins.

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Never, never let that happen.

A Letter To My Divorce Judge...Eighteen Years Later

2017-09-16T07:49:00.000-05:00

*NOTE: The judge who heard my case, in December 1999 has long since retired. She was a multiple divorcee who really, in honesty, never should have been eligible to sit on divorce proceedings. How could she? How could someone with so glaring and obvious relational issues with men, possibly be objective? Her reputation as a man-hater was legendary. And she typically lived up to it. For years now, I've wondered what I would say to her if I ever met up with her, especially now that I am no longer under her jurisdiction and my daughter is an adult. I know a lot of men wonder the same thing. So I wrote this and I'm posting it here for other men to read, and maybe...to vicariously send to their judge. Men who read this...this woman was awful. I had an uphill battle every step of the way, but I never let her run me off. You must be bigger than the judge and the system. Bigger than the pain in your heart. In then end...you'll win.

Your Honor,

I’ve debated writing this letter. I have alternately felt that it would be useless, and then that it would do much good for others. I have no delusions that you’ll ever read it. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write it. It would be therapeutic for me at the very least, and perhaps, for other men as well.

Eighteen years ago, I walked out of your courtroom a divorced man. You certainly lived up to your reputation as a man-hater. Your despise for me –a man you’ve never met and who was the broken heart in this case- was evident. I neither cheated, nor abused. I worked hard. I was, and am, a great dad. It was my wife who decided to take a better offer, and it was my wife who walked out on me and our eighteen-month-old daughter. Yet, as you were always given to, during your thirty-five years on the bench…you awarded her primary custody. I got to see my little girl once a week and every other weekend, and for that privilege I got to pay $1000 a month.

You graciously gave me two months in the summer where you reversed custody and gave me primary visitation. I’m sure your plan was that I would grow weary of being a full-time dad in those two months and come back, begging for you to reverse the order.

But I didn’t.

I cherished those summers. I wept every night after I would take her back to her mom’s. I paced my empty home like a caged animal. I was lost. Aimless. People who saw me in those first years after my divorce said I looked like a dead man. On Monday’s, my friends could immediately tell if it had been a visitation weekend, because it took me most of the day to shake the gloom of my daughter not being there after a weekend of feeling normal.

You doled out visitation as if she were your child, not mine. You commended my little girl to a horror she didn’t deserve and a brutal, violent life she never should have witnessed.

My ex-wife remarried after about four years and the man she married was an animal. My daughter suffered so much emotional trauma under his hand that she has PTSD symptoms now. Together, they dragged me into your court every few months to put me through the ringer of additional child support. I was a straight commissioned employee and if I had one good year, you demanded that I pay an exorbitant amount whether the next year was as productive or not.

When I would speak in my defense, you literally called me a liar without any facts to contradict me. When I explained that I was 100% commission, you said I was lying and you “simply could not believe I got no base salary,” even though I supported it with countless documentation. You refused to hear my petitions for additional visitation because of my concerns for my daughter’s safety.

My daughter was forced to live with a man who drank, abused drugs, was physically violent and psychologically cruel. This man even went so far as to kill my daughter’s pet once. He damaged so many of her personal belongings that she started storing everything she owned in my shed. He would find birthday cards I sent her and deface them. He interfered with my visitation constantly and yet, when this was brought up in court, you gave her mother a verbal slap on the wrist and let it continue.

She witnessed this man beating her mother numerous times. She lived with the fear that she’d be next, and sometimes she was. When every fiber in my being screamed out to just handle him myself, my common sense told me not to, because then my daughter would have no defender. So, I would rescue her from that hell, only to have to return her to it. Time and again you did nothing.

It finally reached it’s zenith when she was 16, and we moved here to Virginia. She has been in counseling for a long time and will be for years to come. She still lives in fear. She still gets panicked whenever there is loud yelling, or she witnesses physical violence. Anything that reminds her of her mother’s home, causes her to almost shut down.

Her mother’s home.

The home you decided was the better alternative.

The hell you condemned her to.

I want you to know what it’s like to be a dad who loves his daughter and see the damage done because of your rulings. To watch her literally shake in fear because she saw two people fighting like her mom and second husband used to fight.

I want you to know how my heart is ripped in two when I ask her if she’s heard from her mom and she says “No” with resignation because it’s been over a month. I want you to know how my heart aches when I look at my precious daughter, my only child, and see so much potential and so much talent, and such a loving, tender, heart and know how damaged she is already, at nineteen.

I wish I could transfer all my grief and sorrow and pain onto you. I wish that, somehow, you could feel my hurt instead of me. I don’t deserve this…you do. You blithely rendered thousands of rulings like mine over your career and glibly destroyed thousands of dad’s lives and the lives of their children, because of your arrogance and your hatred for men. NO multiple-divorcee should ever sit on the bench in a divorce court. Not ever.

You are long since retired. You’ve walked away from the battlefield you created and settled into the family business, and you’re living the life of ease and comfort while men like me are left to clean up the disaster zone you left behind.

I hope someday your conscience awakens from it’s slumber and you begin to feel the effects of the career you had on the bench. I hope that someday you start losing sleep as I did for so many years. I hope your soul is vexed and your spirit broken until you repent somehow for what you’ve wrought on good men who merely wanted to be dads.

A lesser man would hate you. I don’t hate you…I don’t think enough of you to hate you. But I don’t pity you either, although I should. I should pity a woman whose life was so consumed by her personal grudges against men that she used her position of power to extract her personal vengeance from every man she came across. You can’t possibly be happy. You can’t possibly be satisfied. You can’t possibly look back and think of any good that you did.

My Faith got me through the long, grueling years under your jurisdiction. It’s my faith that commends me to civility in this letter. I refuse to give in to bitterness, because that would only extend every ruling you made in my life while you could.

My daughter wound up with me. She survived your jurisdiction, as I did. You didn’t break me or run me off to abandon my daughter out of shear frustration. I won. I endured and resisted the urge to leave and escape the pain your rulings caused me. I stayed. I was there when my daughter needed me and in the end…she chose the better parent. You lost. You didn’t break me. I remained and became living proof that your sad, pathetic view of men is twisted and skewed.

I met lots of dads in the years I lived in N____ who had been victims of your court. They all told the same story. Many of them were consumed with hatred toward you. They wished you evil and harm and talked openly of what they might do if they only could. I know they were only talking…only speaking from pain. I never became that man. I never vented my spleen with bile about your jurisdiction. I refused. I knew that I would only make my own pain worse, meanwhile you would carry on with life as merrily as before, unaware and unconcerned about the harm you’d been doing.

So, I waited until this morning. I’ve thought about what I would say to you if I had a conversation and you had no power or authority to extract revenge after I spoke. I thought about what I wanted to say and what I needed to say and what I should say.

Then I realized that it wouldn’t make any difference. Your heart is too hard and your soul entirely without compassion to even flinch if I were to have said all this to your face.

It never bothered you then, what you were doing to families, so why would it bother you now?

So, I wrote this article for me…not for you. For me, and for all the men like me who’s dream of fatherhood was broken and reshaped into something twisted and clownish. Men whose hearts never quite recovered during those long years of unequal visitation and prejudicial treatment. Those dads who had less, because so much of their money was going toward child support while so little of time was granted for their fatherhood. Men like me…condemned to weep every other Sunday night after the long ride home from our ex-wife’s house, looking over at an empty car-seat. Men like me who pulled up in the driveway of our own houses and sat in our cars for long stretches, not wanting to go inside and hear the deafening silence of a house without the sound of our child’s voice. A sound that had been filled those halls only hours before. This is for them. This is for me.

This is as vivid a description as I could give, to the life you condemned me to when you made that ruling in December, 1999.

I survived you. My daughter survived you. In my mind…I won. You spent your entire professional career dissolving families. You profited –you and the despicable attorneys who picked at the carcasses of families for every possible penny- from marriages ending.

I don’t know how much my legal fees contributed to your lifestyle, but I hope you enjoy it. I hope you got my money’s worth.

My daughter is 19, she lives with me, she’s getting better, and I survived you. I won.

This case is finally closed.

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Staying Even When You Want To Leave

2017-07-19T05:41:00.001-05:00

It's 6:30 AM on July 19, 2017.

I'm sitting in my kitchen, getting ready to go to work.

I've been contemplating this return to writing here on my blog. I haven't written nearly as much as I used to and almost nothing in recent years. So much has happened. I considered, at one point, deleting this blog. I thought maybe it had run it's course. But every day I get hits. 20, 30, 50...

Every day, a large number of dads stumble across this page in their sorrow and sadness and find some measure of peace.

There is a pattern. I get the heaviest traffic on Sunday nights and Mondays. I know exactly why. That's the day most of us take our kids back to their mother's and we are alone again. Mondays are the first day we wake up without them after a weekend visit. The pain is crushing.

I lived that way for 15 years. My daughter was only 18 months old when we divorced and I spent her entire childhood, rebounding from the pain of every-other-weekend fatherhood.

I watched as her life disintegrated because of her mother's second marriage. I rescued her many times from the clutches of the animal her mom was married to.

In 2008 I lost my career and then my home when the economy collapsed. Because her life was in such turmoil, I could not leave to find work. I had to stay in Nashville. So I stayed. That meat living in my car. I was homeless for 6 years, until 2014 when I was hired by my alma mater and my daughter moved here with me.

A lot of damage was done. She went from age ten to age 16 without her dad having a place to live. We lost our weekends together. I saw her during the week, and I'd pick her up on a Saturday to spend a few hours, but it wasn't the same. It hurt like nothing I can describe. But I stayed.

I stayed and I endured that horror because she needed me.

I know there are a lot of guys reading this who are in the same boat. I know there are others who could not handle the disappointment and chose to leave. I know there are some reading this article this morning who are on the brink...you are facing divorce and you think the best thing is to just walk away. There are others who are like I was...so broken and crushed that you wonder how you're going to make it through another day. The pain from missing your kids is so great and your life feels so empty without them, that you consider not living at all.

To those men I say, "Hold on." Even through tears, even through disappointment and mistreatment by your ex and by the courts and sometimes by your kids. Hold on. My daughter wasn't always aware of my sacrifices when I was making them, but she is now. Hold on.

There is hope. You can make it. There is a God in heaven who loves you. He sees your tears and feels the pain you feel. I have no secrets to how I endured six years of homelessness for the sake of my daughter except this...only my faith in Jesus Christ got me through. There were nights I considered just letting myself freeze to death. Or buying a bottle and drinking myself blind and letting myself die. But my faith sustained me. It wasn't pretty. I cried all the same tears. I suffered the same broken heart. But I did not suffer alone. Jesus walked each painful step.

Dads...do not give up. Do. Not. Give. Up. Find yourself in the faith I speak of here. Lean on the God who adores you and wants to help you through this. He loves you. He loves your children.

Trust Him to give you the strength to stay till the end.

You are loved.

You are still the daddy.

Craig

Updates...

2017-05-10T04:25:00.000-05:00

Hi fellas,
It's been awhile since I've written anything, and even longer since I've been consistent i posting here.
I apologize. For those of you who don't know, I spent six years -from 2008 until 2014- homeless. I lost my job in the economic crash and then I lost my home. I stayed in Nashville, where we lived at the time, because I refused to give up my fatherhood. That required me to sleep in my car.
There is a lot to that story, but I won't recap all 6 years here in one post.
Suffice to say, it was hard to be regular here on this blog. I've been settled here in Virginia for three years now. Life is slowly returning to normal. My daughter is here and she's recovering from the crap her mother's second ex husband put her through. I have a good job and I'm rebuilding.
It was hard to survive all that, so you can imagine that it was hard to write very much content for this blog. But with things at least a little more "normal" now, I am determined to resume this blog and get back to helping the guys out there who have been wounded in this war.
I recently released a new book, chronicling the six years I spent homeless. It's entitled: "Nowhere to lay my Head: The True Story of a Homeless Dad." You can buy it HERE It's a very emotional read, but it encourages you not to quit.
I may resume the radio show in the future, if things shake out. In the meantime, I plan on expanding this site to include more resources for dads like us.
Never quit, men...never, ever, quit.
Craig

A Divorced Dad At Christmas: "It Wasn't Supposed to be This Way.."

2016-11-29T02:51:00.000-06:00

Hey fellas,
It's been over a year since I've posted anything new. I apologize for that.
I am going to try to be better about posting here more often. I know a lot of men come here for some guidance and friendship in what is the most miserably damning thing that can happen to a dad...the separation from our kids.
The holidays are especially hard on us and even after seventeen years, I am not yet immune to their wounding. I wrote this on Sunday, thought I'd post it today.

It’s been a long weekend and I’m tired but my mind is whirling.

It was great to get home and see family. It was great to have my daughter for Thanksgiving and see her light up at the Christmas display at Longwood Gardens. She’s had a tough year and I worried that Christmas wouldn’t hold it’s usual magic for her.

But this trip home, while always good be home with family, was hard for me as well.

Maybe it’s because I’m currently writing this new book about being homeless and it’s all right there just beneath my skin. Or maybe it’s just that so many years have gone by now that I am finally feeling some things that I should have felt years ago.

Or maybe it’s that I’m not homeless anymore and that means I’ve finally stopped living on adrenaline, and I’m feeling where I used to be numb. I don’t know.

But whatever the reason or reasons, I am in turmoil tonight. I have been all weekend.

This Thursday will be December 1. This is the 17th anniversary of my divorce.

On Thursday December 1, 1999, at about 2pm, I walked out of Fourth Circuit court in Nashville, TN into a bright, brilliant blue Winter afternoon. And I wasn’t married anymore.

I left the courthouse feeling like I didn’t even know which direction to point my car. I was utterly lost. Three years of my life had been spent being a husband and two of them as a father. It was all I wanted. I was just hitting my stride in my new career, I was learning the ropes and finally making a few dollars. Just as I was feeling like a real husband, it was over.

Seventeen years.

I spent the first three years grieving my wife. I missed her terribly. I wept almost daily. I was hollow. My eyes were empty. But eventually I moved on. I let go of her as the ideal of a wife. (Looking back, it’s amazing I grieved a second. They say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s ambivalence and I am more ambivalent toward her than any human on earth) But I grieved my marriage for four more years. I loved being married. I loved wearing a ring and having someone to come home to at night or to call with an explanation if I was going to be late. I loved having a reason to pursue success and to dream big. I loved that my daughter had a home with both parents. I loved talking about the future (on the good days) and planning for better things.

I grieved this for years after I was over my wife. I wore my wedding ring for two years after the divorce, not in some outlandish hopes she would come back, but because I liked the way it felt to wear a wedding ring.

I got past that in 2004 when I bought my second house. It was really me and it gave me something to hold to and to put my heart into and it went a long way toward helping me move on.

Then came 2008. Then came collapse, and homelessness and the rest.

During those years, the thoughts of a wife and a home were as far removed as could be from the reality I was living. I wasn’t looking, I never frequented places where I might have met someone, and even if I did, what was I going to say; “Hi, I’m homeless, but I promise I’m still a catch?” I retreated into the relative safety of the four walls of my own heart. It was lonely there but safe. I didn’t realize how lonely it was until I tried to emerge from it two and a half years ago. When I moved to Virginia and got a job and re-entered the workforce and found myself interacting with other humans on a daily basis…it took some getting used to. I had grown used to isolation. My rough edges had gotten rougher in the void of homelessness, with no one to wear them down. I was a bit out of square. It took a few months for me to regain trust in humanity and a comfort level with new faces.

Still, in all this I didn’t think about this emptiness in my heart. I think it’s because I truly didn’t feel it. If I did, I blocked it so perfectly that until this week I never suspected it at all. But I was empty. I am empty. This weekend it was in full view.

I went home again for Thanksgiving. Home. I keep using that word here but it doesn’t feel right. It is my home in the sense that I was born there and grew up there and most of the best memories of my life were created there. As a physical location it is my home and always will be. It remains dear to me, even though I doubt I could return and live there, for the sad reason that the neighborhoods have declined so badly that I could never feel safe.

But it’s not my home in the emotional sense of the word. I saw and felt that this weekend. Once again, I was part of someone else‘s holiday. Someone else's Thanksgiving table. Someone let me tag along on their traditions. I am grateful. I am thankful that I have people who love me and, even though I am not “blood,” they consider me family. And I am thankful for actual family who always holds their door open for me when I am in town.

But it wasn’t always going to be this way.

It was going to be different by now. I was going to be celebrating in my home, with my children, and my wife. We would feel the stress as we cleaned and prepared the house for guests. As Christmas music played while we cooked for an army of visitors. As we joked about each other’s parents, and while we acted like it was a huge pain, we secretly would not have it any other way, and we both knew that. Our kids would be getting excited. The tree would go up. The lights would be lit. The Christmas spirit would sweep down on us like a Nor’easter, and we’d savor every breeze.

There’d be secret shopping trips where I found just the right gifts for the woman I planned on spending every moment with until we were all out of moments. Perfect gifts that, regardless of price, told her that I had thought a lot about these items, that I really knew her, and that I’d picked just exactly these things because I knew without question that she would love them. And when she opened them, and when she saw the thought and care that went into their selection…I would be proven right. She would love them. And she would smile at me, and I would know what that smile meant… “You really do know me. You see me. You’ve been paying attention. You love me.” I would open gifts as well and they’d mean that someone really cared at Christmas. My kids, my wife, they all wanted to find something that I would really love, because they wanted to show me that what I love matters to them. That’s really why we give presents anyway.

Family would come to see us. Instead of being a vagabond at every holiday like I have been for most of my life (long before marriage and divorce) our home would be the fixed point on the compass. The place where friends and family just had to be, if only for a little while, during the Holidays. Ours was the “Christmas House” and our friends and neighbors knew it. It would be a tradition, and eventually, for those we loved, they would come to feel that “It just wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t stop to see the Daliessio’s.”

As our kids grew there would be new faces joining us. Boyfriends and girlfriends who became fiancés, then sons and daughter’s in law. The circle would grow larger and remain unbroken.

But that’s not how it turned out. This hasn’t happened for me and I doubt now that it will. I let 17 years slip by before I knew it. I don’t know why. I don’t know if she’s out there, yet to be met, or if I met her and didn’t realize it. Or is she got away, or if I’m simply not going to meet her. But I wish I had.

I am old fashioned. I am a romantic. I longed to sit in my living room with my wife, looking at the tree and all the presents in the late night quiet of Christmas Eve after the guests had left and the kids were trying hard to sleep and we had just a few minutes together alone. I wanted to surprise her with a gift that she’d wanted but thought I’d forgotten. I wanted to make memories. I wanted to be someone’s hero. I wanted to see her as we watched the kids opening presents on Christmas morning and watch her take it all in and catch her eye as she glances at me with a smile that says; “I’m so glad to be here with you. I’m glad were in this together.”

That’s what I married for. That’s what I lost seventeen years ago, this Thursday. That’s what I kept seeing this weekend as we went home.

Now here I am wondering if these scenes will ever play out anywhere but in my heart. Wondering if I will simply walk to the end of my road without anyone watching to see how I did it, to remind me if I did it well, and to be there for the reckoning.

I wanted a home full of happiness and joy and festivity. I might well have missed it. That makes me sad, because there aren’t a lot of hearts like mine left in the world. I don’t say that to boast, I just know how the world is. My romantic, old fashioned, knight-in-shining-armor belief system is antiquated. I’m a relic. But I don’t want to be. I want to matter to someone. To some one. I want to fight for her dreams, cheer for her goals, encourage her in her hardships, and lend her my strength when she feels her’s running out. I want her to look back at life and say “I could have done this without you…but I’m so thankful I didn’t have to.”

I want to go home for Christmas.

Missing your kids. Missing time. The prison of Divorce.

2015-07-19T08:47:00.001-05:00

As a rule, I dislike music videos, unless they are live concert footage. Doubtless because I am a writer and I treasure words. I prefer to form a mental image in my soul from the words I read or hear, as opposed to having a meaning provided for me.

There have been exceptions, of course, but for the most part I have simply never found music videos to be as impacting, or evocative as the songs they characterized.

Sometimes, though, a director can create a video that encapsulates the lyrics without confining the impact. When that happens the result can be breathtaking.

Such is the case with U2’s Song For Someone.

Woody Harrelson portrays a prisoner, on his release day. He plays the role so well that I wondered if Woody had ever done time. The hesitancy. The fear. The doubt. The arrival of something so longed for, and anticipated, and yet so simultaneously frightening, was played with so much emotion that I wept throughout. There are few spoken words in this video –which is likely why it works so well- and this silence draws an enormous exclamation point on the character’s pain.

This is metaphor at its best. And for me…it was a metaphor for the pain that has come from divorce.

I have been divorced for almost sixteen years. My daughter was eighteen months old when her mom dissolved our marriage. I was thirty-four when she was born and had just turned thirty-six when I was forced into the world of divorced parenting.

For me it was prison.

I remember the first week without her, calling her one night, about three days after her mom had moved them into a house she shared with a co-worker. As soon as she got on the phone and I heard her voice, I collapsed in tears in my hallway. I tried to hide the sound of my sobs. I could only tell her I loved her, over and over. I couldn’t get anything else out.

There are men’s magazines that will prepare you for a fight over custody, and child support, and the distribution of assets, but they can’t prepare you for tucking your child in by telephone. Or how sleepless you’ll be, or the empty, aching hole in your heart.

I watched Woody Harrelson pace his cell, wash his hands, and take mementos off the wall. I did those things too. I took down every picture my wife had put up, but I couldn’t take my ring off for almost three years after the divorce.

I was still a prisoner.

I watched Harrelson flipping through a worn book of poetry, and then read a letter sent to him by his daughter –apparently many years before, when she was young- and I remembered the file folders and notebooks I still have. Every drawing, every note still filed away in a box in my bedroom. Scraps and pieces of the time with her, and the larger portion of time without her.

Divorce is a prison for a dad. For a dad that cares at least. I know there are those who abandon and disappear. I can’t speak for them. But it’s not most of us. Not by a long shot, regardless what the media and the feminists would have you believe. Divorce is a prison. I was its prisoner for 16 years.

The video progresses to Harrelson shaving nervously, trying to look presentable for his release. His jailer comes. He changed from his prison blues to his civilian clothes. The long walk begins. He pauses as he passes an incoming prisoner…maybe seeing himself all those years before.

I’ve done that. I’ve comforted my friends who’ve walked this path and through my divorced dad blog I’ve offered comfort to thousands of broken, hurting dads.

And seen my younger self in every one.

He pauses again as the exit gate approaches. He breaks down in sobs. Freedom is frightening when you’ve been imprisoned for so long.

The final minutes of the video are the most painful. Woody’s daughter picks him up outside the prison and he offers an awkward hug. She shrinks back from his touch and offers a handshake instead. Harrelson understands her hesitance and hides his disappointment. After enough time, you simply accept the things that come with prison…or divorce. After enough time you learn to mask your pain and disappointment from your kids.

They drive off, exchanging small talk and pleasantries and trying to hide the obvious and enormous uncomfortable air they are both breathing. I cried again.

My daughter is seventeen now. She was so young when we divorced that she only knows single parenthood. She had two Christmases with both her parents. She had three birthdays where we were celebrating with her. Once her mom remarried, I was the odd man out. I saw her once a week and every other weekend…but I didn’t tuck her in every night. I didn’t cook her dinner or help with her homework or take the training wheels off her bike. Her mom made sure those things never happened on my weekends or my Wednesday.

Now she is an adult and she lives with me. She starts college in August, and while having her full-time is better, and some wounds are healing, there are some that have simply become callouses.

In 2008 when the world collapsed and I lost my career and then my home, she lost too. She no longer had a home to go to with her daddy. I had to give our dogs away. We had no weekend visits. I stayed when leaving would have been easier, at least financially. I slept in the back of a 1996 Yukon and did odd jobs. I worked at rebuilding my life and mainly, I stayed in hers.

I could have moved back home and worked for my cousins or moved to North Dakota and made a ton of money in the oil fields. But I know human nature. You start making money and rebuilding your life and eventually that is your life. Then you become a telephone father, calling every few weeks to check in, dutifully sending a check and seeing your kid for two weeks every summer.

It’s prison all over again.

I knew this, so I stayed in Nashville, where we lived for seventeen years. I stayed. I shivered on a lot of winter nights and sweltered on a lot of summer nights. I walked. I went hungry. I studied in my car and got my bachelor’s degree. I wrote. I started a business. But I couldn’t do that one thing that would turn the corner for me and get me out of the truck and into a home.

In May of last year, my daughter and I moved here to Lynchburg, Virginia. In August I was hired by my alma mater and we started rebuilding yet again. In many ways, my daughter is the same as the daughter in the video. She loves me, and she knows I love her. But she missed so many important years after the divorce and even more after I became homeless. We’re not nearly as estranged as the father and daughter in the video but it feels that way sometimes, regardless.

I love my daughter. In my heart, I still see her as the ringlet-curled, little blonde girl she was when her mom and I divorced. Or when she was seven and life was great and I bought her a pony for her birthday and we had a nice home and a garden and two Springer Spaniels.

But she is not that little girl anymore.

She is a college freshman, and I will be fifty-two this fall. And in many ways, I’m still that prisoner, hesitantly facing release and wondering what is out there for me. I never remarried. Never really got close. I focused on my daughter, and being her dad. Maybe a few of those prison walls were my own creation because of those choices. I don’t know. But I know that most divorced dads feel this way. Most divorced dads feel like prisoners. Heck they even call it “visitation” when see have our kids.

Just like prison.

Most dads are nervous and insecure as their kids get older and they start staring into the vacuum left by the time they’ve missed. Most dads have some keepsakes and some mementos stashed away to remind them of a time when they felt like real dads.

Not like prisoners.

Woody, Bono, Edge, Larry, Adam…

I doubt you’ll ever read this blog or know of its existence. I don’t know if this is what you had in mind when you wrote the song and created this video. But this is how it hit me. And I think this is how a lot of dads are seeing this as well.

Thanks for that.

Christmas Letter to my Daughter

2014-12-13T09:59:00.001-06:00

Your first Christmas, you were only six months old.

Being a dad for the first time was the only present I needed.

You had no idea what was going on, but your mom and I did.

Every smile. Every laugh. Every single second was a Christmas present from God to me.

By your second Christmas, we weren’t a family anymore. You were still too young to realize what was going on in your world, but I knew. I knew you’d never have a Christmas again the way it was on your first one. Never again with both your mom and me together with you. I swore I’d never introduce the word “divorce” into your world. I can’t remember being more sad at Christmas than I was that year.

But I had you… and that made it Christmas.

The years flew by. On the Christmases you were with me it was joyous. We went home every year. Remember the first time I took you to Wannamaker’s in Philly and showed you the lights? The very same lights I went to see when I was just a little boy. We have always been great connoisseurs of Christmas lights, you and I, and with technology being what it is; you weren’t as impressed with the Wannamaker light display as I was as a child. But you smiled and we took pictures and made a day of it. I wished the monorail was still there. And the big toy department. You were always so happy. Always so caught up in Christmas, like I was when I was that age. To be honest, you helped me survive those Christmases.

All I ever wanted for my whole life was to create the family I didn’t have. The home I never knew. I wanted you to wake up every single day of your life, knowing…almost taking for granted…that your daddy loved you, that your parents loved each other and that home was a safe haven. Not the place you wished you could get away from. I couldn’t give you that. That wasn’t my choice but I had to live with it just like you did.

You made it possible. You and Christmas.

You got older. Finding the perfect gifts got a little harder each year. You weren’t satisfied with just “Dollies and Dishes.” You loved music. Loved it. I don’t remember a time when you weren’t singing. Making up little songs in a voice that had no business coming from a four-year old. You were born with that gift. It showed up almost as soon as you could talk. Christmas gifts always included something musical. You still believed in Santa, and I still climbed up on the roof on Christmas Eve and shook sleigh bells and stomped around and “Ho Ho Ho’d” and called out to invisible reindeer as you shut your eyes tight and listened as Santa delivered his packages. I lived for those Christmas Eve, rooftop adventures. I loved being your daddy.

Just as you were turning ten, my world collapsed again. I was just getting back to normal. Just feeling like a whole man again after years of heartbreak from being divorced and missing you so much when we weren’t together. Then my world spun the wrong direction again and everything was gone. No job. No success. And not long after…no home. Our beautiful little ranch house in the country was gone. And with it, our garden, our dogs and our cat and your beloved pony “Silly Willy.” Gone. You were ten. I’d spent ten years very carefully trying to never fail you or let you down. But I couldn’t stop it this time. It was out of my control, and when you’re a dad, you are supposed to be able to fix everything. I always could. I used to make little repairs around the house and you would be so amazed at what your daddy could do with his hands and some tools. But this time, I had no answers. This time I was helpless.

That was the Christmas that you stopped believing in Santa. Your cousins had told you about him, and you told me late that fall. We stopped doing the Advent Calendars too. And there was no longer any need for the sleigh bells, or the ladder to the roof.

But it was still Christmas. We still had Uncle Franny and Cousin Toni and Sissy and Nick and Feast of Seven Fishes. And I still had you.

This year will be the first Christmas in about five years that we won’t spend together. You’re with your mom…and I understand that. I love having you living with me now, and life is beginning to rebuild. But I miss Christmas.

I miss you being little, and I miss being your hero and your favorite person. I miss making you laugh with my Winnie the Pooh impersonations. We won’t be watching Christmas movies this year. Or listening to our traditional Christmas music. Or decorating our house.

Our house.

I miss our house. I miss Christmas. I miss my little girl.

Next Christmas will be the last one before you go off to college. It will be like all the others you have ever known, except that first one. It will once again be spent away from one of your parents. I’m still sorry about that. It still hurts. I would have endured for your sake. I would have chosen to give you your family, if the choice had been mine.

I don’t know what future Christmases will look like, or where you’ll be. One day, some young man will come and win your heart. And you’ll begin your own Christmas traditions. I hope you’ll have better success at it than I did. I think I’ve been a pretty good dad. I think I did Christmas pretty well, given the circumstances. I wish I could have a few more of them with you. Like when you were little. Like the time we drove to the beach on Christmas Eve day and saw deer feeding by the side of the woods, and you turned to me and said; “Look Daddy! It’s Santa’s reindeer getting ready for tonight!” And you were pretty sure you saw Rudolph’s nose blinking. And for a minute I felt like the best dad in the world.

I miss you at Christmas. I love you more than ever, even as you’ve become a wonderful, beautiful young woman. But I remember that first Christmas. And how much promise it held. You are still the greatest gift I ever got. And you always will be.

Merry Christmas, Morgan. My beautiful Daisy. You have always meant Christmas to me.

I love you.

Daddy

Missing Your Kids II

2014-10-14T07:19:00.001-05:00

It's October 14. I've noticed the readership has grown a little since the end of summer. It happens that way every year. I think sometimes it's the impending Holidays and the knowledge that we'll be so limited in seeing our kids...if we see them at all.
I remember it well, men. My daughter has lived with me since May. We moved to Virginia and I took a job with my alma mater and her mom saw the wisdom in letting her come with me. It was literally a matter of survival for her. But I remember too well the 14 years before this. The endless pain of Thursday morning after she'd been with me for Wednesday afternoon. The way every-other Monday felt after we had a weekend together. I remember thinking more about the time I'd missed than the time I had with her because it was so tilted in one direction. Once a week for a few hours and every other weekend. That was supposed to be a decent substitute for the fatherhood I was missing and the hole in my heart it left every single day.
But she's with me now. She's sixteen and I have about a year and a half to squeeze as much as I can from everyday fatherhood before she leaves again to go to college. She plans on going here so she'll be in town at least, but it won't be the same. She'll live on campus and be her own person, as she already is, to be honest. So I have about 18 months. This past Saturday morning I made her strawberry pancakes for the first time in six years. It was a tradition we had when she was little and we kept running until 2008 when I lost my home. It's nice to do it again, but it made me think about the six years we lost. It made me think about the 8 years before that, when I had a nice home and a good job and pretty much anything I wanted except the time I wanted with my daughter.
Divorce is cruel. It's evil. It's vicious and it's repulsive and devastating to all the people involved. Even the party who wanted it and who believes themselves happier now...their soul was damaged too. They just don't know it yet. The bitterness will steal a part of their soul eventually. It always does.
It's hard being a dad who loves his kids and who walks through this life with a giant hole in his heart where they are supposed to be. I can tell you without question that I could not have made it without my Faith. Jesus did not make my pain go away. He walked with me through the worst of it and he felt it along with me. That's what He does. he gave me enough strength to live just one more day after the devastation of my divorce. And one more day after that...and one after that.
I don;t have a story of roses and honey and happiness all the time. I have a story of tears, and hurt, and longing. But I also have a story of making it through this barren wasteland and living again.
That is what Faith does.
I encourage you men to reach out to the only One who can really help you feel again. You may hate Him right now...to be honest, I did for a long time. He's okay with that. Take your pain to Him and let him deal with it.
Becoming His son is the best way to endure as a father.

God bless you men for continuing to love your kids as you do. Do not quit. Ever.

Craig

For you dad's who miss your kids and miss your fatherhood...

2014-06-03T17:18:00.001-05:00

Dads...
I recorded this GREAT interview with former NFLer and now pastor Ed Tandy McGlasson as he discusses his books "The Difference a Father Makes" and "The Father You've Always Wanted."
Learn how to be the BEST dad there is, by becoming the son you were meant to be.

Click the link here: Interview with Ed Tandy McGlasson

Big News...

2014-05-10T19:14:00.000-05:00

Dads...
I have several big announcements for you all.
1: I am RESUMING the radio show in June. I had to suspend it for over a year because of my living situation but...
2: I am relocating! My daughter and I are moving to Virginia next Saturday (5/17) God provided a job and a wonderful townhome for us. Since I'll soon have internet that I don't have to sit in a restaurant to access. I am excited about hosting the show once again and I hope you guys will call in and we can talk through this journey together.
3: I am moving WITH MY DAUGHTER. Her situation became such that it necessitated her moving with me. There is a lot to this story of course, but the one thing I would say from all of this...DO NOT GIVE UP! Remain in your child's life no matter what and I promise you...you'll be there when they need you and it might be the difference for them.
I am so excited dads! I have a new book project for guys like us...hoping to get started on it this fall. I really want to give a lot more attention to this blog and to your emails and contacts now that life is becoming "normal" again.
Hang in there...
YOU are always the dad!
Craig

The Big Lies about Dads

2014-02-09T18:20:00.000-06:00

I haven't written in a while and for that I apologize. I have been busy. There is a new book in the works and some other new irons in the fire. But I sure haven't forgotten you dads.
I have been reading the emails and comments I receive here on an almost daily basis. My heart aches for you guys. I recently reconnected with a dear friend from high school who has one of the most excruciating and horrifying stories about the frustrations that dads feel when their fatherhood is not protected.
I can't relate it here because it is too lengthy. But his life was irreversibly damaged by the torture of a very evil woman with whom he had a child, and even more so by a single decision he made that altered his life forever.
People think that men don't hurt. They think we don't cry over our kids. That this life is somehow easier for us. That we don't really care about the time we miss with them. Not really. They think we don't grieve this loss and lay awake at night missing our children. They think we can somehow adapt to this life better than women can. That we are all deadbeats. That visitation and time with your kids and influencing them is of no value to us. They could not be more wrong.
I can't count the number of nights I lay awake crying over the hurt I felt missing my daughter. How many times I would call her just to hear her voice for five minutes. How many times I would watch the VHS tapes of her 3rd birthday party or our trips to the beach together. I would sit in her bedroom at night and close my eyes and feel her there. I poured out my tear-filled prayers from beside her bed, because my heart told me that if she had been, it was there that I'd be praying those prayers anyway. It made me feel more connected to her I guess.
Dads hurt as much or more than moms do. Deadbeats and malcontents get the press and the starring role in movies on Lifetime, but those images are a lie. Like all the other lies told about us.
Be strong dads. The lies become true only if we decide to live up to them.

Missing Your Kids...at Christmas

2013-12-21T19:35:00.000-06:00

Hey Dads,
I am sorry it's been so long since I've posted here. So much has been going on. I promise that after the Holidays I will resume my focus on this blog. We need each other, that is obvious by the number of hits this blog gets, especially this time of year.
I am leaving tomorrow to drive home to the Philadelphia area. I am so excited I might not sleep tonight. It's been a year since I've been home, so it's a long overdue trip.
My daughter is coming with me, and I am so happy about that. Morgan gets to go home with me pretty much every year. Her mom doesn't keep Christmas that much. Not like I do. And so Morgan prefers to come with me and stay with her mom at Thanksgiving.
I am a big Christmas guy, and not having her there on the few Christmases where she stayed with her mom was interminable.
I know most of you won't have that same blessing. I know that most of you will awaken Christmas morning to nothing but a longing in your heart and an ache for what is supposed to be. I understand. many of you will see your children on Christmas Eve or Christmas day but not both. Some of you will have neither. Some of you have bought just the right presents, and wrapped them carefully. They sit under your tree waiting for your kids. Your heart sees those kids rushing into the room happily, eagerly awaiting their chance to open those gifts and enjoy family life. Your daddy's heart screams to make this vision a reality. But most of you will have a modified version of this. Some of you haven't seen your kids in a long time.
I wish I had a magic elixir to take away the hurt you all feel, but I don't. I will tell you that the one and only hope is in Jesus Christ. He understands your pain. He has the grace it takes to get through these next few days and weeks. He loves you.
These five years of homelessness and loss have taught me this: That God has a plan. That no matter that may happen, He has not abandoned you. It hurts, it grinds you to your core, it brings you to your knees. But God will use even this if you will bring it to Him.
I will be praying for you. A few of you I have come to know by name, because you've emailed or commented here. But I will pray for all of you who read this blog and come here looking for some sliver of comfort in this back breaking pain we carry this time of year.
Every good dad misses his kids. 263 of you have landed here because of using that word in your search box since Dec. 1 alone. But this time of year, we miss them so much more.
They miss you too, dads. Never, ever forget that.
I love you guys. I am praying for you.
Craig

Just a smile...

2013-08-13T05:39:00.000-05:00

I've been so worried about my daughter lately. I've chronicled it here. Her home life with her mom and the man her mom is married to is deteriorating and she wants to come and live with me. There is a possibility of a career move on the horizon and so this is looking like a probability now. This past weekend, Morgan was with me. I have never been more worried about her than I was on Saturday and Sunday. She was sad in a way I have never seen her be. I was afraid I was losing my daughter.

Part of her misery -besides her home life- is her desire to leave the school she now attends. So yesterday, in an effort to maybe give her some hope, I picked her up early and took her to the high school here in my neighborhood where she will be attending. School was out already when we got there, but the staff was still there and they let us walk through the building. As God would have it, the art teachers were still in their classrooms. Morgan is a supremely gifted artist as well as a singer. We walked into the art room and she lit up. She met the teachers and they were genuinely excited at the idea of a gifted student like Morgan coming to their school soon. We walked to the music rooms and the theater. I watcher her as we walked through the beautiful building and I got tears in my eyes. My daughter was smiling.

I haven't seen her smile this way since Christmas, and our trip home. She seemed to stand a little taller and her pace was a step quicker. She had hope.

I love my daughter...more than anything. I haven't been able to give her much lately but yesterday she got a shot of hope and it made her smile. Seeing her smile -just a smile- gave me hope as a dad.

It didn't cost me a dime. It came from knowing my daughter...really knowing her. Knowing what would give her hope and then doing that thing. That's how you love someone.

A Daddy's Regret

2013-08-11T10:12:00.000-05:00

It's Sunday morning...
I'm sitting at my laptop while my daughter sleeps downstairs. We're staying at a friend's house overnight. Actually I've been staying here for a couple of weeks while I do some work on their bathroom.
Yesterday, Morgan called me asking me to come get her from her mom's house because...for the ______nth time (I stopped counting long ago) the situation is explosive and neither one of them wants to be with the other one.
I don't fault her mom completely. Teenagers are...teenagers. And her mom has stresses on her that are quite a lot to deal with. My situation hasn't helped. I have not had a place to live for four of the past five years. There's no need to repeat my story here...I've told that tale.
(I have recently gotten hired for a decent position and at very least will be able to get a place of my own in about six weeks)
But her mom doesn't really understand how to resolve this problem...and to be honest, she doesn't really know our daughter.
Morgan was as sad and overwhelmed as I have ever seen her yesterday. I've never been truly worried for her like I am right now. I worry about her as any good dad does...but I am worried for her right now.
My daughter is at-risk. And the majority of it is because her mom and I are divorced.
I feared this would happen. I watched for the signs. The year her mom left, I read a book by Judith Wallerstein called "The unexpected legacy of Divorce...a 25 year study" The book explodes many of the myths of divorce. It was the first study ever to follow a kid from as young as 18 months, until long into adulthood. (Prior studies had selected cases at each developmental level but had never interconnected them)
Perhaps the biggest myth it explodes is that kids "get over" divorce and they are "resilient". They are not and they do not. In fact the study revealed that the effects of divorce are cumulative. They build up over time. A child processes divorce at 4 years old and then again at 12 and 15 and so on. With each season of life, another layer gets peeled and the divorce rears it's hideous head in another way.
My daughter is facing a whole new set of layers right now.
She is a beautiful, beautiful girl who doesn't need beauty to feel good about herself. I'm thankful for that but it can create awkwardness. She is a strong personality and her mom interprets that as "rebellion". She is anything but a rebel. I am a strong personality as well, but confident enough to let my daughter have her own personality too. And when we disagree we discuss it like adults. I don't back down...but she understands why I take whatever stand I do and that removes the friction. Her mom doesn't have that sort of makeup.
Morgan needs to be with me now and that is going to take a little time. But I don't know that I have that kind of time. I'm worried. I'm scared, to be honest. And I have regrets.
I regret that her mom chose divorce. I never wanted it and fought it as much as humanly possible. But you can't stop a freight train. We live in a no-fault society and a divorce is simply a matter of course now.
Her mom remarried and has another child. I remained single. But I am starting to regret that. Because maybe Morgan needed to see a healthy family modeled for her. Her mom ummm..."chose poorly" in this area. (I shall refrain from speaking my mind here) There isn't much health there. Morgan sees only bad. She was only 18 months when her mom divorced me so she barely remembers us together at all. Maybe if I had remarried someone who truly loved Morgan and who truly loved me and Morgan saw this...maybe she would be happy today instead of so brokenhearted.
I lived in dread -from the day we walked out of the courtroom- that Morgan would become a statistic. A girl who distrusts love so much that she'll never let herself fall. And I fear it might be happening.
I ask myself "Where is God in all this?" and to be very honest...I am out of answers for that. I just don't know. I don't care if He comes to my rescue...but come to my daughters!
I know I get a lot of readers on this blog. A LOT. I don't know how many of you men who read this are in the process of divorce and have the option of stopping it and making a go of the marriage. But I beg you...I never had that option, but if I did I would have endured hell for my daughter's sake. If you can...DO IT!
Your personal "happiness" is secondary to the happiness and health of your child. Because you're the dad.
And if you have already divorced or if you can't stop your wife from divorcing...let yourself love again someday. Don't rush into something...that would be an even bigger error. But work on your healing, get your heart well...and let love find you. Make sure it's someone whose heart is big enough for your children. Show them that love can be bent and misshapen but it never breaks. I wish I had. I regret that I haven't

CraigDaliessio.com

2013-07-07T08:41:00.001-05:00

Hey gang...I have a new site up and running.
It's www.craigdaliessio.com There you can find out more about my writing and speaking. Eventually There'll be more than just the blogs available and you'll enjoy the way the site feels. Thanks!

My BEST Father's Day ever...

2013-06-16T09:32:00.006-05:00

So...my best Father's Day ever is a tie between the very first one in June 1998 when I took Morgan to church that Sunday at Oak Hill Assembly. It felt really cool to be one of the guys standing when Pastor Steve Allen recognized the dads. But the Father's Day that told me I was doing it right was actually the Friday before Father's Day in 2001. Morgan was 3. The daycare she went to did a "Donut with Dad" on the Friday before Father's Day each year. This would be my first one because the previous two years she wasn't in daycare. They gave us a coffee mug and a picture and the one gift I treasured and still have to this day...it's a laminated survey sheet. They asked the kids some questions and the teachers would write down the answers...no matter how silly, or unusual: Here is Morgan's Q and A for Father's day 2001:

My dad is __ year old. Her answer…7.

(This is old when you are four!)

My dad is _ feet tall. Her answer…10

My dad weighs about ___ pounds. 446

My dad likes to watch. Race cars and News

I like it when my dad. Chops food

(I am a gourmet cook and Morgan has always

been fascinated to watch me working in the

Kitchen)

My daddy always tells me_ He loves me.

It was this last question that made me cry right there in the daycare. Of all the things that popped into her little mind when asked what she most often hears me say, she answered "He Loves Me" I've tried to never go a day without telling her that and I think I've done a pretty good job keeping up with that goal. I've never heard those words from my dad. Not ever. I know it would have made a huge difference. More than money, more than applause or recognition for achievement. These last five years have been a grind I cannot fully explain. But never once did Morgan doubt my love for her. I think her life shows it. There is something about your dad telling you he loves you. Even if it's only once or twice.

All I Ever Wanted Was to be Your Dad...Filling the Hole in my Heart

2013-06-12T20:07:00.000-05:00

You were so tiny when you were born. Not even 7 pounds. I'm a big man and that made you seem even tinier in my arms. We wrapped you in your Winnie the Pooh receiving blanket and it was like a little cocoon. When the time came to take you home, the car seat was even too big. We had to buy an optional neck roll for you to help keep your head held up.
I'd never felt anything like what I felt being your dad. I've never loved anyone in my whole life like I did that day...and every day since. Every mundane chore was a treat. Your mom never had to ask me to change your diaper or burp you. When you woke up at night, hungry, I would take you from your mom as soon as she finished nursing and hold you until you burped, and for longer than that even. You fell to sleep in my arms and I was hesitant to put you in your crib...I relished each quiet moment.
Just looking at you as you slept, feeling you near my heart, kissing your tiny forehead a million times in a night. Every kiss...every gentle touch of your tiny hands. Telling you "I Love You" a thousand times an hour. All of those were moments of tenderness I had never known with my own dad and they were serving to heal the hole it left in my heart.
We had to wait about six weeks before taking you out to meet the world. The day came on a Sunday. I took you to church while your mom rested at home. You were dressed like a princess making her debut before society. You never made a sound during the entire service. Pastor Allen came over and held you and his wife Vada did as well. Terry and Mary took their turn. It seems like only yesterday.
I was never more proud than I was that day...except for the next day. And the day after that.
Showing the world what a wonderful, precious, beautiful daughter God had blessed me with, made me feel ten feet tall. I was made for this. This is the role I treasure more than anything.
Because All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Your Dad.

FREE KINDLE DOWNLOAD OF "SOMETIMES DADDIES CRY"!

2013-05-27T06:52:00.000-05:00

The free download offer is finished for now, but you can still get your copy for the unbelievably reasonable price of $4.99 Even if you don't have a Kindle reader. Amazon offers free downloadable apps to read it on your iPhone, iPad, Android or Laptop. Here is the link: "Sometimes Daddies Cry: What a Dad Really Feels About Divorce"
If you like this blog, you'll LOVE the book!

All I ever Wanted was to be your Dad...Anticipation

2013-05-25T08:33:00.000-05:00

I found out I was going to be a dad on my 33rd birthday. I suppose that's ironic. Or cathartic. It was frightening...I know that much. You spend your adult life thinking about the day you become a dad, and you are convinced you will do a great job. But when you find out it's actually going to happen you aren't so sure. Suddenly it became more important than ever that I make enough money, that we have a nice place to live, that we drive a safe car.
I knew instantly that I was going to do it differently than the examples I had growing up. My daughter would never fear me. Never. She would never feel dread when I pulled into the driveway at night. She'd never be afraid to speak her mind around me or to tell me what she was thinking or feeling. She was going to be totally free to be herself...because it was God who determined who she is and who she was going to be...not me. And my daughter was never going to chase me like a phantom. She would never beg to know me. I would not be a mystery and I would not reject her.
I had set to work years before -before even meeting her mom- working on my own fatherhood so I'd be ready. I read books, listened to seminars and worked on becoming a great dad. Because I knew that if I didn't create the habit of great fatherhood, I would simply revert to the model I had growing up. That would become my default. I couldn't do that to my daughter.
Every day, as that tiny little form grew bigger and the bump in her mom's belly became more pronounced, I was preparing my heart. I was imagining holding her in my arms. Singing to her. Telling her about God, about her mom, about her daddy and how much he loves her. There was a moment when Holly was about 7 months pregnant that I will never forget. Each night, I had been in the habit of placing a paper-towel tube against Holly's belly and talking to Morgan. I always said the same thing: "Hi Morgan, it's your daddy. I love you and I can't wait to see you!". One night, around that seven months mark, we were lying in bed and I did this again with the tube and as soon as I said "Hi Morgan it's your daddy..." She kicked...very pronounced. Holly and I both laughed and cried. Our daughter was not even here yet but she knew her daddies voice and she knew what it sounded like when he told her he loved her. Something neither of us had heard ourselves.
Morgan entered this world wanted and expected. We anticipated her arrival. She was a blessing to us.
My own arrival was scandalous and shameful for my mother and father. It demanded his abandoning his plans and spending 30 months in the hell of Vietnam, when he really wanted to finish his college degree. For my mother, it was humiliating and embarrassing and it didn't end at all the way she'd hoped. I was born to a couple of Twenty-year olds who didn't want kids yet. Each had plans. Both had to rethink them.
My daughter was my plan. She is my dream. She makes me who I am and who I was always supposed to be.
Many times during those long 9 months waiting for her arrival I would imagine the conversations we would one day have. each would begin and end with "I love you". because that is the only foundation a child really desires.
"Dear Morgan,
The day is getting closer. I can close my eyes and feel you here with your mom and me. I can picture what you'll look like. I can't wait! I am so excited I just want to jump out of my skin! You are everything I have been waiting for since I was a young man. I've worked hard to become a dad...long before I found out I would be one. I don't know how well I'll do the job, but I promise I'll do my very best. While God is knitting you together in your momma's womb, I am praying He makes me the best dad I can be...the dad He wants for you. I love you already. All I ever wanted was to be your dad"

New blog series..."All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Your Dad"

2013-05-23T09:52:00.000-05:00

Good morning dads.
I'm beginning a new series this morning and I have the feeling that this will become a new book somewhere down the road.
I don't know how long I'll be writing this...each idea seems to yield a dozen more. But I'll write this until I feel like I'm done writing it. I don;t know where it's going...but I can tell you where it began.
My daughter turned 15 two weeks ago. 15 years have come and gone in the blink of an eye. That's true of all parenthood I suppose, but more so when you are divorced and your time is segmented and reduced by the order of a court and the inequity of visitation laws. Once a week and every other weekend is not equitable. You can't turn off your fatherhood on the days you don't have your kids. So you hold your breath on the days in between, listening to the time as it escapes your grasp and noticing how much they grow from week to week instead of the day-to-day that intact families experience.
My daughter's life is the greatest thing I have ever been a part of. She is the finest young woman I have ever known and there has been no point along this 15 year journey that she has not been the apple of my eye and the joy of my every day.
All I ever really wanted was to be a dad. From as early as I can remember, I knew that somehow being a dad would make up for not really having one myself. There was a man in my house. The man my mother married. But we wasn't my dad. He merely married my mom and there wasn't a connection. There wasn't a bond. There wasn't love. My father is yet another story. I've spoken to him twice in my life and that's the way he wants it. I have cut him slack for 23 years while his stories changed and he avoided me, I'm all done excusing his shameful behavior. That's not how a man behaves. Period. I have accepted the fact that a man can be someone's father and not be their dad. That's my father. I won't mention either man again in this series. I am not writing this to explore my childhood, but my fatherhood. But in order to set up the background to my fatherhood, this stuff needed to be understood. When I became a dad I stood at a crossroads where I had to choose whether I would continue the pattern of fatherhood that was modeled in front of me as a child, or whether I would do the job the right way.
I chose to be a dad. I started learning how, years before my daughter was born and years before I even met her mom. I read books, watched seminars, read magazine articles. I also made mental notes about the great dads I had come to know. The fathers of friends of mine and men in my church. Sports coaches. I wanted to be a great dad when the time came.
I was married for 7 months when my wife discovered we were pregnant. We were going out to dinner with some friends, celebrating my 34th birthday. Holly had been feeling "odd". The woman who was going to dinner with us described some of the things she felt when she was pregnant and Holly said "That sounds like me" I pulled into the nearest Walgreens and bought a pregnancy test kit. We continued on to the restaurant and Holly went to the ladies room and took all three test strips with her. All thing came back positive.
We tried to be cool and calm but we were scared. We had only been married for 7 months and had been practicing birth control like religion. We definitely wanted kids...just not right then.
By the next morning, we had accepted it and we were excited. I was calling all my friends and getting ready to start being a dad.
In hindsight, I became a dad that very night...as soon as I found out I was going to be one. From that day forward, everything I did and planned and hoped and dreamed was for this future child and the world I would give her. Had I known right away that I was having a girl, and had she been able to hear me and understand me, I think I would have told her...
Dear Morgan,
"Tonight your mom and I found out you were coming and we were going to be a mom and dad. I can't even begin to tell you how I feel tonight. How excited I am. How I already have begun dreaming dreams and planning plans. I am already praying for you and for me...so that I will be the best daddy a little girl could have. I am scared. being a dad is a huge thing and if I do it wrong, you will pay a higher price than I will. But if I do it right, your life will be exactly what God has in mind for it to be. I promise I will try. I will pray for you every day. I will never leave you alone. I will do everything I can to see your dreams come true...even if I have to surrender my own dreams along the way. I can;t wait to see you, to hold you in my arms, change your diaper, rock you to sleep, watch you while you dream and pray for you on my knees next to your bed. I wonder if you'll have blonde hair like your mom, or dark hair like me. I bet you'll be tall and beautiful like her. I know this much...your mom and dad love you already.
I love you so much and we just found out about you. I can't imagine how a lifetime will feel.
I know this much...God made me with a heart that loves children and desires fatherhood. God chose you for us. Nobody else on earth could have come together and made someone exactly like you and who you'll become. I can't wait to see you. I'm already happier knowing you'll be here soon. Because all I ever wanted was to be your dad."

Until tomorrow...

Sometimes you just don't know what to do...

2013-05-15T19:40:00.001-05:00

I have no idea where this article will go. I just know I need to write.
I'm struggling. Like so many of you out there who read this blog and email me privately or comment publicly. I feel lost. I feel like I am spinning wildly through my life. I feel like the fixed end of my compass has come loose and I can't find True North anymore.
My daughter turned 15 last week. You want to know how long a blink is? It's 15 years. Five years ago I became a homeless dad. I lived like that for almost 4 years. I found a place I could afford and I stayed there for a year from January 2012 until February 2013. Then the work I was doing ground to a halt at the same time my landlord decided to sell the condo I was staying in and since February 3 I have been homeless again.
I am embarrassed, humiliated, losing hope, and feeling my dreams and my life slipping right through my hands. I can't stop it...it's like sand. There are no jobs here for an almost-50 year old man who has been "out of the work force" for 5 years. I have been working. But they don't count self employment. You work a hundred times as hard when self-employed, but try convincing them that.
Meanwhile my daughter is growing up and I am missing important time with her and my heart is tearing open because of it. What am I supposed to do? I have always...all my life...been a hopeful, optimistic guy. My glass was always half-full and ready to overflow.
Now I fear the future. I wonder if this is never going to change. What is the impetus? There is nothing to look to and build on. And I live in a town where almost everyone could care less. There are a few exceptions, and I love and appreciate them, but for the most part, this town is full of arrogant people who see themselves as better than anyone else who isn't wealthy, famous, beautiful and connected. Even the church is like this.
The folks who have shown me kindness and encouraged me have been wonderful. But the cutting, hurtful words of the others have broken what little remains of this once successful man. The only thing worse than the vicious, arrogant, prideful remarks of the Dave Ramsey-followers around here, has been the deafening silence of the rest of the bunch. Especially the church folk. The "gawd-fearin' Chrus-chunz" who are quite certain that their life is as good as it is because God loves them and loves their life and therefore He must not love you if you aren't successful. Pastors who suck-up to rich, famous people because it makes them feel better about themselves and it's some sort of declaration of God's satisfaction with their ministry. That and they love to name-drop and they get a real rush having famous names in their speed-dial. It's almost impossible finding a church not in this mold.
Meanwhile me and my daughter almost never spend any time together and she misses me and I miss her and my heart is breaking and none of these people give a crap.
I just don't know what to do anymore. Where to go to find a job. How to plan for Morgan's college in a few years...or even how I am ever going to sleep indoors again.
Sometimes you just don't know what to do...
I've always been a resourceful guy who found work, found a way to make a paycheck and made a way. Now I can't apparently.
Guys reading this blog understand...they get it. A good man grinds himself to the bone to protect his family and provide for them. When you have days like the ones I've been having, and when they stretch into months and then into years, you keep going because your family is there when you get home at night, looking to you for hope and they give you hope in return.
But when you are divorced and those faces are somewhere else and you can't come home to them...your reason to press on is lacking. It's broken. And sometimes you just don't know what to do to find it and fix it and get it back.
I love my daughter. More than any words could ever say. I don't know how I am ever going to be able to take care of her again. That's where I am tonight. Most times I can figure things out and I have the answers.
But sometimes you just don't know what to do...

As a Dad...

2013-03-31T19:34:00.002-05:00

As a dad...you notice other kids your kids age, and you observe how this world is effecting them.
As a dad, you learn to spot hurting kids...especially the same age as your child. As a dad, you see headlines that tell of a world just waiting to devour our kids and you worry, you pray, you plan, you lose sleep, and you pray some more.
As a dad, you hurt for the hurting kids you come across. You hurt for the friends your child has who are in pain. You constantly reevaluate the job you are doing as a dad. You raise the bar daily...sometimes by the hour. As a dad, your every effort is for your kids, for their dreams..and in this day in which we live...for their safety and survival. As a dad, you cry, As a dad you worry. As a dad you learn, you educate yourself, you try to think three or four steps ahead of where they are now and what might be coming next. As a dad you worry if you're doing the job right. You pray that you are and you worry that you aren't.
As a dad, you feel the time racing past you like the wind. Slipping through your hands like sand. As a dad, you fault yourself for your failures and take precious little comfort in your successes.
My daughter will be 15 in little more than a month.
I remember the day she was born. I can still smell the baby powder and how she felt asleep in my arms. I can still hear her singing in her car seat in the back of my car as we drove home for vacation. I can still hear her simple, poignant bedtime prayers.
As a dad, I grieve the time that flies by without regard for my futile grasp. As a dad I face each day desperately hoping to improve my lot for her sake.
As a dad I hurt when I see another dad on TV, broken-hearted over a tragedy that has wounded his child. As a dad I have no tolerance for dads who don't appreciate their children, don't take the time to be a dad, don't empty their souls into their kids each day, knowing that whatever they can pour into them will get them through, more than money or material ever can.
As a dad I am saddened by parents who see parenthood as anything but the greatest gift God gave anyone. Who set their clocks on "when these kids will be gone". As a dad I am brokenhearted over dads who never know their kids...never know their dreams...never work to see them come true.
Everything I do is measured by what I do...as a dad.

Great article from another fatherhood blog

2013-03-14T15:19:00.005-05:00

I follow several dad sites on the net. I like to post good material when I see it. This came in my email this morning. Good practical advice.

http://www.backupcare.org/blog/10-ways-fishing-with-your-son-is-about-more-than-fishing/

Have I done Everything?

2013-03-06T11:57:00.001-06:00

Remember the movie "Rudy"? Sure you do. Remember the scene where Rudy has endured three semesters of Junior College, overcome a learning disability, slept in a store room, and worked three jobs just to stay there, and he still has been turned down for Notre Dame? He sits in the church sanctuary waiting for Father Cavanaugh. When the Father comes walking up the aisle with some other priests, he sees a despondent Rudy and stops to talk to him. After a few moments of conversation, Rudy asks Father Cavanaugh "Have I prayed enough?" To which Father Cavanaugh smilingly replies "I'm sure that's not the problem." Then Rudy desperately asks him "Have I done everything I could do?". Father Cavanaugh's response, as I recall, was "I think that's a question only you can answer."
As a post-divorce dad I ask myself the same things constantly. "Have I prayed enough for my daughter? Have I poured out my heart to God on her behalf with the frequency, earnestness, sincerity, and desperation of a loving daddy who can't always be there to protect, defend, encourage, train, and love?" I know the answer is yes but I still struggle. I still wrestle in the days between visits and between interactions. I rely on the phone and the email and text to fill in the blank spots in my heart. It's seldom enough.
Almost daily I am introspective and ask myself "Is there anything else I can do?" I suppose if Father Cavanaugh were here, his response would be the same..."Only you can answer that question."
I know there is little I can do beyond what I have done. But that is the problem. I'm a dad. All the time. I shouldn't have to meter out my fatherhood in bits and pieces and moments. There is no natural ebb and flow to my time with my daughter. It is staccato, like a machine gun. Big bursts, followed by long silence. This is unnatural and painful. I am a "Full-Time Daddy in a Part-time world" and it hurts.
But I have done all I can and then some. So I rely on the One who loves my daughter even more than I do. When I miss her, long for her company, worry about her, or spend a little longer thinking about how it once was...I take comfort in prayer. I package up my hurts and the emptiness that I feel in between days with her and I drop them at the feet of the only One who loves her more.
After 13 years I have learned that He is always on the job and He truly wants what is best for her.
Dad's...ask yourself those two urgent questions; "Have I prayed enough?" and "Have I done everything I can do?" Answer them honestly, fix what needs fixing, and then trust that God will honor your heart and watch over your kids.
Your friend,
Craig