Growing Through the Wounds a Father Left Behind

Tuesday Pause™

Some daughters learn early that dependence is dangerous. Truth is, many daughters learned it not always because we were unloved, but because love felt heavy-handed, inconsistent, emotionally distant, controlling, or difficult to trust. So, somewhere along the way, survival began disguising itself as strength. For some women, hyper-independence is not confidence, it is grief with its fists up.

For many, it is the little girl who learned to stop asking for help. The daughter who became emotionally self-sufficient before she was emotionally safe. The woman who craves protection while simultaneously resenting the need for it. And if we are honest, these experiences often shape far more than our earthly relationships. They influence the way we attach to people, the way we respond to correction, the way we handle vulnerability, and even the way we perceive God, because when “father” becomes associated with fear, disappointment, silence, control, criticism, or emotional absence—trusting God as Father can become complicated too.

Many women are not simply battling relationship issues. Many of us have been wrestling with old declarations we made in pain.

Declarations that said:

I will never need anyone again.

I will protect myself.

I will never be vulnerable enough to be hurt like that again.

The problem is that survival mechanisms rarely stay contained to the season that created them. Eventually, they begin bleeding into every relationship we touch—including the relationship we have with ourselves and with God.

Several years ago, I wrote something called “Declaration of Independence.” At the time, I did not fully realize how deeply it reflected the internal conflict many women carry when strength has become both armor and prison simultaneously.

Several years into my marriage, it dawned on me that the rage I often felt towards my husband actually had very little to do with him. Truth is, little girl Jante was fighting to maintain authority she felt her dad had intimidated away. You see, I’ve had fights with my father—physically—so, I swore that I’d never allow another man to scare me like he did. Consequently, I grew abusive towards my husband, both with the lashing of my tongue and the beating of my fists. That’s not the case anymore; however, for years I had been lying to myself, believing that I’d fully overcome the trauma etched on my soul.

You see, about a week ago, God gave me a vision. In it, I saw an older man connected by a gold thread to a young man with a woman who was broken in spirit standing in the middle. Subsequently, I had my questions, and Holy Spirit answered me by helping me to realize that my husband’s penchant for shutting down in difficult situations was triggering, because it reminded me of the disconnect between myself and my father. You see, my dad and I often go years without speaking, if I’m not the one initiating contact. And I’ve made it known to him how much this hurts me. Of course, he emptily promises to do better, only for time to pass and our next interaction to be the result of me reaching for him. In two years, I’ve spoken to him twice, with both conversations being the result of me calling him. Mind you, at the end of the phone call that happened once my 40th birthday passed, he said the next time we spoke he would make the contact, but the next time we spoke was when I called him over a year later.

I want to pause here and speak to another woman entirely, because not every daughter reading this carries a wound from what her father did. Some of you carry a wound from what your father was—present, loving, consistent, safe. And yet somehow, you are still here, still hurting, still guarded.

There is the daughter whose father was not abusive, not absent by choice, not an addict, but was simply unavailable. He worked. He provided. He kept the lights on and the refrigerator full, but emotionally, he was somewhere else. She never had to survive him. She just never fully had him. And that quiet distance left its own kind of hollow.

Then, there is another woman... One whose wound does not come from dysfunction at all, but from love. Deep, real, healthy love. She had a good father. A present father. A father who called, who showed up, who made her feel chosen and safe. Then one day, he was gone, and what she is left with is not bitterness—it is grief. A specific, sacred grief that lives in a place inside of her that she has quietly closed off and marked with his name only. No man has been able to reach her there. Not because she has not been loved since, but because that space was his. And to open it again, means risking another loss she is not sure she could survive. So, she keeps it sealed. She keeps people at a careful distance—close enough to feel connected, but never close enough to fill that place. She does not look wounded from the outside. She may even be the woman everyone calls strong, whole, and full of love, but privately, she is protecting something tender. She is loving people from a place that has a ceiling, because the floor beneath her cracked the day she lost him.

To that woman I want to say: your grief is not a wound that makes you broken. It is a wound that makes you human. And healing does not mean replacing your father or pretending that space does not exist. It means allowing God—the Father who does not die, who does not leave, who cannot be taken—to sit with you in that place. Not to fill it the way your father did, but to remind you that you are not alone in it.

Father wounds are some of the deepest wounds a woman can carry, not because fathers are the most important people in our lives, but because they are often the first ones to shape how safe we believe the world to be, how worthy we believe we are and how trustworthy we believe love is.

Still, here is what I also know to be true: the God who SEES us is not the father who left us waiting by the phone. He is not the one who promised and didn’t follow through. He is not silent, distant, intimidating, or deceased.

He is pursuing you, pursuing us, pursuing our fathers even now, even here, even in this.

And that, is where healing begins!

Call to Action

If any part of this resonated with you, I want you to know — you are not alone, and you are not broken. The wounds left by a father’s absence, silence, or inconsistency are real, and they deserve to be addressed, not buried beneath busyness or bravado.

This week, I want to invite you to pause. Just pause. Ask yourself: Where is my little girl still standing, waiting for something she never received? You don’t have to have the answer right away. Just be willing to look.

If you’re ready to go deeper, listen to this week’s episode of the Out Loud w/ Jante Podcast, where we continue this conversation. And if this post moved you, share it with a woman you know who might need it, because healing is rarely a solo journey.