Loved & Chosen

So I def didn’t anticipate starting this blog with, “Hi! I’m Kimani. Here are my father wounds. What’s your name?” But here we are with post day landing on Father’s Day, so 👁️👄👁️. When I was a preteen I decided that I wasn’t going to be one of those girls who let their lack-of-a-dad bother them. From that moment on you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t living that inner vow out. But if you did tell me, you would’ve been right. I spent a lot of my life unknowingly trying to make the men around me fit into the void of my biological father’s absence. It was evident in so many of the typical ways. And we will probably get to dive deeply into all of those. Today, though, I’m in an own-my-stuff type of mood. 

I’m a daughter who wears many hats: I’m God’s daughter, my mama’s daughter, an abandoned daughter, a goddaughter, a step daughter, and a claimed daughter. To be so many different kinds of loved and chosen daughters, I have really allowed the one overtly negative kind to overshadow the rest. While sitting across from the lady and in the wise counsel of all my mental health professional friends (because it takes a whole entire tribe of clinicians to help me get right, and that’s okay 💅🏾) I realized that I had a lot of sky high expectations and barbed wire fences to match in my relationships with the dads who have tried their best to show up for me. 

My stepfather will tell you himself that he is a radically different person today than he was 20+ years ago when he came into my life. While time had passed my hurts and hostilities had not. My expectations of the ways he should love and interact with me were blocking me from enjoying and appreciating the ways he does. My inner child’s tendency to run or avert her eyes was robbing me of the chance to see how much care, of his own unique kind, he looks at me with. This doesn’t invalidate the feelings of younger versions of myself because one thing I’m gonna always do is stick beside little Ki. It does make room for me to invite little me into the progress that has been made and to stop denying her of love that is available when she stops living life through the bifocals of her abandonment and rejection wounds.

So Happy Father’s Day to all the different dad’s I’ve had. Thank you for loving me even when I made it difficult without even knowing I was or why. I’m living more squarely in being loved by God and focusing on me and what’s my part. Shout out to all the dad’s figuring out life, manhood, husband-hood, co-parent-hood, and fatherhood the best way you know how — whether you had a blueprint or not. And to all the sons and daughters may God walk you through your own unique journey of awareness, understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, and freedom. You are deeply loved and undeniably chosen by Him. 

With Flailing and Flourish, 

Kimani Sioux