You know, and so, while I don’t agree with that, that we need to neglect other issues. Oftentimes, I see the conversation thrown out sometimes to, you know, to negate other things that are other issues that are addressed. And you see kind of the statistics, which we don’t have to necessarily get into, but you see the impact of not having your dad this should be a more prominent conversation.

And that’s an adoptive father, a stepfather? There’s no father at all. You know, when you look at the amount of children, one in three children under the age of 18, lived, they live in a home without a father. I mean, I think in certain instances, it is spoken about, but just overall. But yeah, it’s, you know, as I have grown older, I’ve been able to be more aware, right of how how much I’ve been impacted by his absence. So those are just some of the ways that it impacted me. And as guys started to approach, I didn’t know what to look for in a guy because that piece wasn’t there as well. I struggled with identity, you know, even as I grew older, didn’t realize that as it as a young child, but as I got older, I realized I didn’t know who I was, you know, because that piece of me was missing. You know, as you mentioned, I moved 25 times in my childhood, you know, and I remember when I just jotted down, let me just trace all the places that we lived, and I couldn’t believe it was that many times, you know, so we struggle, just as my mom sought to make ends meet and to provide for two young girls. For one, it caused us to struggle with poverty. He did say encouraging words, when he did engage with me. Even though I will say when he did call, he was very kind on the call. Even though I desired that even at a very young age, I desired to have that fellowship or that, you know, relationship with my dad, that wasn’t there. For one, you know, the relationship that we had wasn’t really a relationship, you know, there wasn’t much depth there at all.

And, you know, it impacted me in so many ways. And so what that looked like was me having phone conversations with my dad, maybe once or twice a year, we would talk for maybe about five minutes each call. Yeah, so um, you know, my mom moved us across the country when I was three years old.

Finding my father blair linne