Fathers.

I keep writing this over and over, and I keep getting tripped up on explaining how I’ve come to feel the way I have about Father’s Day. So let’s keep it simple.

If you have or had a father worthy of celebrating, please, celebrate with nearly all your heart. But please also keep a tiny place in your heart for the many, many people who are not feeling it – who have little to celebrate, perhaps even have some real solid reasons to just shut off social media and hide today as the entire culture conspires to remind them of what they didn’t have. Everything about our culture tells us our feelings aren’t valid – that we have to love and respect our parents, no matter what.

We don’t. Love and respect are to be earned, not demanded, and for the people who squander or destroy the bond a child will naturally feel toward a parent, there should be no mystery why they don’t get or deserve either.

That pressure keeps children (of all ages) from admitting, to themselves, this real situation, their real upbringing. It keeps gay and trans kids from being who they are. It keeps abuse victims from speaking out. It keeps the neglected from being seen. It denies their reality, and helps the gaslighters (intentional and not) to continue to walk around clean.

So, please . . . celebrate yours, if you will. But don’t tell anyone else how they should celebrate theirs.