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Comment by J.

May 16, 2009 @ 7:41 pm

Hi, Well here is some hope for you. I lost my daughter 1 month after she was born. I feel like I was kind of in the same situation as you. Well she will be 18 Monday and she found me on Facebook a few months ago. We have been talking online and I had my first phone conversation with her a couple of weeks ago. I now realize how much I do love her still. Hopefully one day your daughter will come looking for you. Keep your head up and try to find her. You`ll be glad you did. J.

Comment by Luise

May 17, 2009 @ 6:53 am

Dear J. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience. It’s worth it’s weight in gold. Blessings, Luise

Comment by J.

May 27, 2009 @ 4:15 pm

I would like to add what I am currently going through right now. My daughter, 19, has been searching for her father for several years. We had an on again/off again relationship for a little over 2 years and when I became pregnant, he was going through some legal woes and wasn’t ready to accept his responsibility. So, my daughter found him and her grandfather. She and I saw them on May 2, 2009 and this was the first time she had ever met them. The reunion was more than hoped for, as not only was my daughter delighted with having found her biological father, he, and his father, were equally excited to welcome her into their lives and hearts. My ex came up again this past weekend and spent 4 nights and 5 days with us. He and I have had numerous conversations, specifically with him asking me how to be a ‘good dad’ to her after all these years. He is petrified of scaring her away. My daughter on the other hand is having a difficult time adjusting to having a ‘dad’ around and has sent him on his way. He is crushed and confused. She is confused. Both of them need time to meld as father/daughter and I have to give him credit, he did a better job of ‘bending over backwards’ for her than she did for him. I was apprehensive when she first announced she wanted to find him. Fear that she would get hurt. As it turns out, she is the one hurting him. I am extremely disappointed with the direction things are now going. I’m sad for her that she had him pictured as a knight in shining armour, when in fact, he is just a good hearted father, wanting to try to make up for lost time. I’m sad for him, as I know this man has a good heart and would never harm her, yet she did that exact thing to him… she broke his heart. Now where do we all go? J.

Comment by Luise

May 27, 2009 @ 4:32 pm

Dear J.: It sounds like you are being amazingly supportive and understanding to both of them. It up to them, you know. They will either work it out or they won’t. Your daughter is tripping over her own expectations and she’s the one in the driver’s seat. Blessings, Luise

Comment by R.

July 15, 2009 @ 10:43 pm

Hi All, Just wanted to add another experience to the conversation. My daughter was born when I was 22, just after I had moved a few hours from home to finish my degree. Her mother and I were/are completely incompatible, to everyone’s dismay. For a very long time, things were so bad between us, we were not in contact at all, and I didn’t see her or my daughter. 6 years ago, after my daughter had just turned 6, her mother wrote me suggesting that it would be good if our daughter could know who her father was. I was working far from home then and was able to make a visit about a month after receiving her letter. After our first meeting, I was very excited and happy, and it seemed that my daughter was happy to meet me as well. Her mother and I tried to make an appropriate arrangement for me to visit, (two times a month or so, due to distance) and for occasional phone calls (6yr olds are not easy to have phone conversations with for long, haha.) After about 5 months of this, her mother decided that in fact it would be better for me not to be a part of my daughter’s life (due to her own expectations of my occasional presence having some meaning for her personal life- clearly not something I had in mind.) She explained that she would not like for me to see my daughter, and also that i should no longer call to speak with her on the phone. After trying through the summer months to contact them, and returning to live in our home state, I decided to pursue visitation and child support proceedings– even my paternity had never been legally established by this point. This process took about 4 months to become finalized during which I was granted supervised visitations bi-weekly, ending with a “standard” visitation schedule every other week/holiday with extended times in summer and at Christmas. This was about 4 and a half years ago. Two years ago, I moved out of the country due to work, and have explained in writing and arranged with my daughter’s mother that I would still like to maintain the child support agreement, and to have my daughter for two weeks at Christmas and the prescribed month in the summer until I am coming back to the states (with about 6 months to a year to go). I know that this has been difficult for my daughter,and for me as well, since we were seeing each other on a fairly consistent basis for some time. For the past couple of years though, it has not been as much, although our times we do have are at least guaranteed, even if spread far apart. My daughter is now turning 12 next week, and coming into her own emotionally. I am not able to be here with her regularly, and it is obviously having an affect on her and her comfort level with me, she is easily becoming more distant with me, where before she was quited happy to see me, now there is a distance which is growing between us. How can I help her to feel more comfortable with the fact that I am coming back soon, and we will be able to spend more regular amounts of time together, when it seems more often now that this is an idea which is very unsettling to her? I have no intention of abandoning her or dropping out of her life, on the contrary, I am anxiously awaiting my green light to come back home so we can get back on our previous track? It is so bad now, that she is not even comfortable hugging me or calling me “dad” as she used to. She is angry that I was not a part of the first half of her life, and this is not a situation that is so easy to explaining to a budding 12 year old. Truthfully it is becoming a little unsettling for the both of us, and I don’t want to lose her emotionally. Thanks for any thoughts and suggestions, R.

Comment by Luise

July 16, 2009 @ 9:45 am

Dear R.: I doubt that you can “get back on track” with your daughter. She has been subjected to so much on-again-off-again parenting that you may have to stat all over when you get back.

It would probably be wise of offer her counseling, as well. Blessings, Luise