We are all born expecting to live within our father’s gravity. To feel the safety of his presence, the warmth of his attention, a center that holds us in place while we learn who we are. But what happens when that center is missing? When you’re cast into open space before you ever learned what it felt like to be held?

My father was funny, capable, and cool, and I loved him deeply. He was also addicted to meth, and his absence left a void I spent the next three decades trying to fill. First with a heavenly father who would never leave. Then with surrogate fathers who eventually did. Then with achievement, mission, and the relentless work of proving my worth to men who held power over me. When he died, he took with him the last quiet hope I’d been carrying. The faith went first. Then the certainty. Then the identity I had built on top of both.

This publication is the map I’m making of that wreckage. It exists first for my four daughters, who need me to become the center my father never was for me, and who deserve a father who did the work of understanding why. It’s also for anyone who has been thrown from orbit and is still finding their footing, and for the people who love them and want to understand what they’re going through.