Father's Day and the Grief Nobody Talks About

Every year, Father's Day arrives right on schedule. For some people, so does everything they've been trying not to think about or feel. The posts, the tributes, the throwback photos, the messages about how Dad was always there sometimes start appearing the week before. For a lot of people, that reflects something real and worth celebrating. For others, it is a reminder of something that was never there, or something that was there and then wasn't, or something so complicated there are sometimes not words to describe it.

Not everyone has a father to call. And for those who do, not everyone wants to or are able to. Some people lost their dad to death, some lost him to addiction, mental illness, a significant other, or years of silence that eventually became permanent. And some never had a father in the picture at all. Others had one who showed up physically but was never quite there in the ways that mattered. And then there are people dealing with something that gets talked about far less—grieving a father who is still alive.

That last one is its own particular kind of hard. When a parent dies, there is grief of course, but there is also structure around it. There is a funeral, there are people who acknowledge your loss and support you, there is a cultural script for what comes next. When a parent is still alive but the relationship is gone, or never really existed, none of that is there. You know where he is and you could theoretically call. But you do not, or he does not, or he doesn’t answer if you do, and the door that should feel open stays closed. There is no ceremony for that. Most people will not even recognize it as loss. And people might still ask about him and bring him up to you often.

Source: Rachel Needle

Understanding Ambiguous Loss and Estrangement

Pauline Boss, a family therapist who has spent decades studying this phenomenon, called it ambiguous loss. The term originally described situations like a missing person, but the concept extends to relationships where someone is psychologically absent even when they are physically reachable, or psychologically present even when they are gone (Boss, 2006). Estrangement tends to fall into this category, and so does the long, quiet grief of a relationship that never became what you needed it to be, or one that did and no longer is. What makes it especially complicated is that for some, hope tends to stay alive. The person is still there, so things could, theoretically, change. Research on estrangement finds that adult children often remain caught between the desire to make meaning of what happened and the ongoing uncertainty about whether the relationship could ever be repaired (Scharp & Thomas, 2016). That possibility can be a comfort, but it can also keep you stuck or even frozen, cycling between hoping, being disappointed, and bracing for the next round of it. It is exhausting in a way that is genuinely hard to explain to people who have not lived it.

The social piece adds another layer. Estranged adult children frequently feel isolated or stigmatized, often encountering pressure from friends and family to reconcile rather than receiving any real acknowledgment of their loss (Scharp & Thomas, 2016) or understanding of why the distance exists. This is especially difficult when it is not the adult child’s choice to be distanced. On a holiday when everyone around you seems to be celebrating, that silence can feel especially loud. The message, spoken or not, is often some version of: you should fix this. What people in that position usually need instead is for someone to recognize that what they are carrying and feeling is real.

And underneath all of this, there is often love, which is the part that surprises people sometimes. You can love someone and still feel deeply hurt by them. You can miss a father who was not good to you or was and no longer is. You can feel grateful for certain things while grieving the things that were or currently are missing. These are not contradictions but rather they are just what it looks like to love a person who is complicated or has changed, which is most people.

Coping Strategies for Those Who Struggle on Father’s Day

If Father's Day is hard for you, one of the most useful things you can do is stop trying to make yourself feel differently than you do. Not every holiday has to be an opportunity for resolution or reflection or gratitude. Sometimes it is just a hard day, and the kindest thing you can do for yourself is move through it without piling expectation on top of pain that is already there.

For those fortunate enough to have a loving relationship with their father, celebrate it genuinely. Post the photo, make the call, have the brunch. None of that needs to stop or change. But it is worth acknowledging and holding some awareness that the people around you may be having a completely different experience of the exact same day. You do not have to say anything about it and you do not have to change what you are doing. Just knowing it tends to make people a little more empathic, or a little more gentle, in how they interact with and show up to others. Compassion does not ask you to minimize your own joy; it just asks you to remember that your experience is not everyone's.

What's hard about a holiday like this is that the people around you are all having completely different experiences of the same day, and most of them are not talking about it. The person smiling at brunch might be holding something heavy. You probably can't tell. That's worth remembering, whether yours is something to celebrate or something to survive.