A Love Letter to Black Fathers Everywhere
Our Daddies taught us how to love, and how give love in return
Before he left this earth, my father taught me how to give and how to receive love. And he did so selflessly. For this Father’s Day, I want to pay tribute not only to my Daddy but all the other Black daddies who are breaking their backs to give their daughters the love and the presence they so desperately need.
I was 15 years old when my mother passed away from colon cancer. I remember my father telling me that I had to tell her that it was okay to stop fighting. Selfishly, I begged and pleaded to not give my mother my blessing. I didn’t want her to release herself from the five-year-long battle she fought with cancer. I couldn’t imagine life without her. Yet, he insisted that if I loved her, I had to be selfless enough to let her go.
This would be one of many lessons my father taught me about love, sacrifice, and selflessness. From that moment forward it was just me and my dad — thick as thieves, ride or die, besties. So, when he suddenly died of a heart attack early one Sunday morning in December 2011, my world came crashing around me. Who would now be my teacher in lessons of transparent and unrelenting love?
It was true then and it’s still true now: Black daughters need their fathers.
