Do You Love Her?

Do You Love Her?

By Catherine Davis | 1.16.17
Editor, L&SS
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   I didn't know what to expect if I clicked on this little girl's video! Horrible thoughts ran through my mind, and I almost deleted this request to post it on my Facebook group wall! 

One thought came immediately to mind as I watched and cried throughout this video. "Why can't fathers see the hurt they're causing their children?" It is as clear as day in all children who face the terrible situations this little girl faces all too often, if not daily!

If you want to know how I know so much about this, I think you can guess what I am about to tell you. Yes, I didn't have my father either as a little girl. I was younger than she when he and my mother decided they'd had enough with each other and they split up and later, they divorced.

My father had a girlfriend (The little girl mentioned that her dad was always looking at girls) who was terribly resentful of the four of us children; our ages ranged from 8, 7, 5 1/2 (me), and 2 1/2 years of age. From what I was told, my father wanted to take care of us, but he was a long distance truck driver and was never home. 

Word got back to my mother's side of the family that our step-mother was physically abusing us. They told my father and then he gave us to them so they could send us to our maternal grand mother in California (We lived in Chicago, IL at the time). I didn't hear from my father for about 11 years! And when I we did talk, it was only over the phone. I finally got a chance to see him again when my mother died (in Chicago) a month before my 18th birthday, and I flew to her funeral. At the airport, he didn't even reach out to greet and hug me, I hugged him - he was so stiff! I got a pain in my heart that day that never went away! I flew back to my foster home (Yeah, our grand mother was worse than our step mother with the abuse) and only saw him again for the few months he lived with me and my daughter. I was 33. We didn't really talk! I promise you, "I tried to talk with him"! He didn't seem to like me. :'(

I am 53-years-old now and he has since passed away. I still feel the emptiness of him never being there for me as a child. But I forgave him decades ago because I love him still!

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