Editor's Note: NSA member Jenny shared her feelings about being estranged from her father and how she chose to document it in her scrapbook. Unfortunately, her situation is not unique, but not often discussed.
I started scrapbooking three months before my grandmother suffered a debilitating stroke. The events that followed in the last two years of her life left me permanently estranged from my father. Our relationship was already strained; photos of him had only made it onto a handful of my early pages before our lives made this drastic change.
For a long time I didn’t want to scrapbook photos of him because just looking at them would bring on waves of resentment and grief. One moment I’d be gazing longingly at a childhood photo, and the next moment I’d be incredibly angry at myself for harboring any remotely positive feelings at all. As the years went by, I accepted the fact that my father was no longer in my life. I never stopped wishing that things could be different - that he could be more than he was and that the past could be changed. Despite every effort to the contrary, I finally had to admit that no matter how bitter I was, I still missed having a dad. Scrapbooking helped me reconcile these conflicting feelings by putting them all on one page.
The first page I scrapbooked of my father was called, “Missing My Dad.” I tucked the journaling into folders that explained the animosity I felt toward him, both from my childhood and my adulthood. This journaling was deeply personal, but written in a very matter-of-fact way. If this page was to outlast me, I didn’t want to come across to future generations as harsh and judgmental. I then added visible journaling about why it’s sad for any child not to have a dad in their lives. While I had chosen to remove my dad from my life, I wanted to show that I value and appreciate fathers in general.
For this page, I used a photo from my childhood of a tender moment between us that brought back bittersweet memories for me. I’d comforted myself for a long time by telling myself how much he was missing out on in my life. I wanted this layout to evoke my true feeling which is that I am also missing out. The other important element of my page was the broken-heart accent. No one can break a child’s heart in the same deep, unmendable ways a parent can. I wanted my broken heart to be what drew observers in and set the tone for my page.
Part of being in a negative parent/child relationship is carrying the burden throughout your life. This burden had grown too heavy for me. Getting my feelings down on paper helped to validate me and lighten the load. By sharing this page with others I know I will never again have to carry this weight alone.
Today, I no longer feel like I am wearing a badge that says, “I am estranged from my father.” I’ve been looking at family photos at least more peacefully. Now I can scrap photos that include my dad without becoming newly enraged. It’s important to me that my scrapbooks be honest, but not every page needs to be nitty gritty. It would be a lie to trim or PhotoShop him out of every picture and never mention him again, and a pitiful kind of revenge. With some photos of him I’ll just journal the name, date, and place. I hope eventually to be able to do some pages that elude to problems, but actually include some happy memories of him, though sometimes they’re hard for me to remember.
I don’t yet how I’m going to handle the lack of a grandfather in my daughter’s scrapbook, or even in her life. I am lucky she has a wonderful father, so I can enjoy that relationship and have plenty of uses for all those cute World’s Greatest Dad stickers. I hope someday my, “Missing My Dad,” page will give her insight into our family’s history, into me, and help her realize how lucky she is.
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