When You Are Forgotten

When I have children of my own, I have made a vow to never forget any of them. In my family, I am the forgotten child. Not because I was a disapointment or a failure, convict, or any sort of negative reason. Oh no, I am forgotten because I am success and I can take care of myself. It's a hard pill to swollow.

However, I am not alone. The other day and group of fellow jury duty members and I were sitting down to discuss the latest Dear Abbey letter in which a distraught woman wanted a baby shower and her father vetoed it. She was quite pregnant and deserving of a baby shower from her family, her father just flat out did not want to celebrate the upcoming arrival of his newest grandchild. Welcome to the world of a dysfunctional family! I will be in that exact same boat whenever my husband and I have a baby...

Dear Abby advised to move on and let friends throw a baby shower instead... and that is absolutely correct.

We can fight with our dysfunctional families until the day we die and sadly, positive change is not going to occur. Telling the Father that he is WRONG isn't going to work, because on some level he already knows that he is wrong. Explaining to him that he NEEDS to attend the baby shower of his own daughter won't work, because he uses that as a weapon to hurt his daughter. For whatever reason, this man has decided that he isn't going to love and support his child, he is instead going to hurt her at every chance he gets.

In my own family, I see my father and once in a blue moon my mother, try to make amends because they KNOW that they are totally wrong in how they treat me, but the treatment doesn't change. Today I stupidly called them, even thought I know I need to keep contact to a minimum, because I had some exciting news. However, my dad did not let me finish a single sentence and tell him my news... Instead he went on and on and on about my sisters baby and after 20 minutes I gave up and hung up. My parents haven't even pretended to care about my life in the past 5 years and it is not going to change. My exciting news was that my pregnancy test came back positive. Unfortunately, we've had an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage... and while I am very positive and happy about this, because we've had two "Failures"- their words- they don't even want to know about it until I am in the delivery room. Talk about supportive...

To the girl whose Daddy won't even attend her baby shower: My heart goes out to you and seriously, when your baby is born, do not subject it to your father because nothing good can come from it.