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Closing Gap

 Reading these lines from The Absent Father Effect on Daughters by Susan Schwartz, brought to mind childhood memories for me:

Although the mirror of the father’s face does not reflect a daughter’s self-same face, it can reflect emotions, affects, approval, liking and love. His gaze determines how she will interpret others from his cherishment and presence for her. When a daughter is uncertain of who she is because she is uncertain of how she is seen, she experiences anxiety. The father’s mental representation is internalized, allowing the child and then the adult to find herself in the other

My father was very parsimonious in his praise for me until my late twenties and thirties. It was his way of ensuring that I continued to strive harder and do better and did not get too comfortable. There was good and bad to his strategy and I adapted my style with J as a single-parent. When I was trying to stand-in for the absent father in her life, I praised her effort and diligence always but did not focus much on the outcomes.

I could not however give her the "approval, liking and love" my father gave me very generously. I never doubted for a moment that he sincerely believed that I was perfect as a woman. While that was not necessarily true and it becomes obvious even to daughters of the most doting fathers once they come out into the real world, unsheltered and unprotected. But there is a tremendous value in that on-ramp the father can provide his daughter making it easy for her to make that transition from childhood to womanhood confidently. I simply had no way of closing this gap for J. 

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