To the Good Dads, We See You

I get accused of being anti-father more than almost anything else.

It's not true. It's never been true.

Fifteen years into this work, I have sat across from more good dads than most people will ever know exist in this space. Engaged dads. Protective dads. Dads who show up to every hearing exhausted and broke and still keep showing up, because their kids are worth it.

Here's what is true. Family court has a documented pattern of bias against mothers. The research backs that up. Survivors who reach out to me are disproportionately women, because abusers who target women disproportionately weaponize the court system against them. That pattern is real, and naming it is not the same as saying every father is the problem.

Healthy fathers exist. Unhealthy mothers exist. I have worked with both, and I have learned not to assume gender tells you anything about who is the safe parent in a given case.

I had a good dad myself.

My dad turned 19 the month before I was born. He had a scholarship and a future as an architect ahead of him. He never said it out loud, but I know exactly what I cost him. When I was six months old, he got full custody. My mom was struggling with mental illness and addiction, and my dad never spoke a negative word about her. Not once. When he talked about her, it was always with compassion. I have enormous respect for how he carried that.

It was the two of us against the world after that. A kid raising a kid. We barely got by, but we made it. Whatever bruises came our way, his answer was always the same. Rub dirt on it.

He was stubborn and unstoppable. Most people didn't understand him. I didn't always agree with him, but I understood him.

He could fix anything you put in front of him. A self-taught historian who could talk for hours on any topic, a machinist, a woodworker who could build a house from the ground up, a long-haul trucker who crossed the country for years. He loved classic rock, and somehow always had a stray dog, a stray chicken, or some other creature that found a permanent home the moment it met him.

When I was nine, we drove cross country from Illinois to California in an old blue Pinto with "California Bound" written on the back window in sharpie. Two cassette tapes the whole way, Twisted Sister and Tina Turner. Those were survival years more than anything, but we found adventure inside the hard parts. Our first Christmas in California, we scaled down a rope on the side of a cliff, him swearing he'd catch me if I fell. We landed on a beach — to his shock, and mine…it was a nude beach. California was much different than Illinois.

For the last chapter of his life, he lived in a small log cabin in the Tennessee woods, the same self-sufficient stubbornness all the way through. When he first bought it, there was no electricity, so he rigged power from the creek using a chainsaw motor. Real life MacGyver. That cabin was his castle, and he got to spend his final days exactly where he wanted to be.

He wasn't a perfect father. None of us get that but he showed up for nearly 50 years.

Then there's Glenn.

I met Glenn 17 years ago. My daughters were two and four years old. I actually told him he would probably never meet them. I was that naive about how bad things were going to get, and that clueless about what post separation abuse was truly capable of. I had no idea what the years ahead would hold.

He stayed.

Glenn went on to adopt both girls after we terminated parental rights. He has never needed a spotlight for any of it. He stayed in the background as my biggest supporter, letting me be the parent, stepping in where it counted and stepping back when I needed the space to lead. Up in the middle of the night when the girls were sick. Present for every recital, every talent show, every father-daughter dance, every open house and conference. All of it. He already had three sons of his own, two of whom were grown when we met, and he pressed reset without hesitation and signed up to do it all again.

That is not a small thing. That is a choice, made over and over, quietly, without applause.

So this Father's Day, this is for the dads who never make headlines because they never had to. The ones doing the work without an audience. The ones who lead with kindness and unconditional love, who put their children first not because someone is watching, but because that's simply who they are. The dads who would never weaponize their kids because it would never occur to them to try.

You are not the exception in this community. You are a bigger part of it than people assume.

We see you.