The Part of Me That Still Wants My Father to Be Proud

Last weekend, I took a short trip with my children.

On the way back, sitting in the train, I asked my father if he could ask a friend of his to send some home-cooked food for the kids.

Such a small thing.

He said he would arrange it from a hotel instead.

He didn’t want his friend to know about my divorce.

Or that I was living in a different city.

I know my father.

I know the world he comes from.

I know that for him, what people know about your family can carry a weight that I don’t carry in the same way.

I know he wasn’t trying to hurt me.

And still, something in me shattered.

Because what I heard was not about the food.

It was his shame in the choices I made.

Don’t let people know.

Don’t let them know about my daughter.

And suddenly, all those years of being an adult felt very far away.

I wasn’t thinking about my divorce anymore.

I wasn’t thinking about what his friend might think.

I was just that little girl again.

The little girl who wanted her father to look at her and feel proud.

The little girl who wanted to know she was still good in his eyes.

Who wanted his face to soften when he looked at her.

Who wanted to feel, “Papa is happy with me.”

Maybe that is why it hurt so much.

Because somewhere inside that grown woman sitting on the train was still that little girl,

still wanting to be seen,

still wanting to be accepted,

still wanting to know that whatever life had become,

she had not fallen out of her father’s love.

And perhaps this is something we don’t talk about enough.

We grow up.

We become independent.

We make our own money.

Make our own decisions.

Raise our own children.

Sometimes we build lives our parents could never have imagined for us.

And still, some part of us wants to turn around and see our parents’ faces.

Are you proud of me?

Do you see me?

Can you still look at me and feel that I am okay?

I think that part of us doesn’t disappear just because we become adults.

And I have heard enough from strangers to know what it feels like when people don’t understand my life.

The questions.

The remarks.

The expressions.

I’ve learnt to let most of it pass.

But when it comes from your father, it touches a different place.

Because you can spend years becoming strong enough to not need anyone’s approval,

and still want your father to give it to you.

I still wanted it.

That is the truth.

I still wanted him to be able to speak about my life without feeling the need to hide it.

I still wanted him to see that I was okay.

Not because I needed him to make my life okay.

Because some part of me simply wanted my father to be able to look at the woman I had become and feel proud.

And yet, something was different this time.

I was hurt.

But I didn’t go looking for his acceptance.

I didn’t explain my divorce.

I didn’t defend my choices.

I didn’t try to make him understand.

I didn’t need him to tell me that I had made the right decision.

I knew.

And that surprised me.

Because I could still wish that he saw things differently without needing his eyes to change before I could see myself clearly.

I could understand his fear of society without taking it on as my shame.

I could understand the world he comes from without living inside it.

And perhaps this is what growing up really asks of us.

Not to stop wanting our parents’ love.

Not to become indifferent to what they think.

But to slowly stop handing them the authority to decide what their love means about us.

Because our parents may love us deeply and still have fears that hurt us.

They may want the best for us and still not understand the life we choose.

They may never fully see us the way we have longed to be seen.

And that hurts.

It should.

We don’t have to pretend it doesn’t.

But perhaps there comes a point where the little girl can still whisper, “Papa, I wish you were proud of me.”

while the woman can quietly answer, “I am proud of me.”

That day on the train, I was still hurt.

I still wished my father could see my life differently.

But for the first time, I didn’t need to become different for him to be comfortable with who I had become.

This is often the work I find myself doing with people—not helping them stop wanting their parents' approval, but helping them understand the little part of them that is still waiting for it, and slowly learning that wanting to be seen is different from living to be approved of.