A stunning but painful story on @ADELLEO's #LegallyClueless has left me shaken. A single mother details, through tears, the cruelty she was subjected to by the father of her child (a pastor).

It got me thinking about my own father: The 'voice of a nation'. The deadbeat.

My mother, in all her fallibility, was there. It was hard, but she was present.

She shielded me from the games my father played: the meetings he never showed up to. Appointments he'd cancel. One time, he made us wait for hours outside his office as he snuck out through the back.

While the entire country adored him, he couldn't spare a second to meet his child who was sleeping hungry (he would eventually blame my mother for this )

Men get a pass. We protect their horrific behaviour. We excuse their absence. We normalize their callousness.

I'm done.

One second he's a sensational murder suspect and the next - a hero that the country must band together to help. It floors me. How he weasels his way into safety every time.

But he is no hero. He's a fraud. A coward in shiny suit with nothing but a borrowed accent and a smile.

I wanted to be loved my him. Out consumed me. He never showed. Ever. Not once. Except on screen - smiling.

When my mother had had enough of my nagging (to meet him), she sat me down on her bed to gaslight me into silence, "Are you sure he's your father?". I was.

I was also 10.

Respectability has no home here. Neither does the cycle of shame so many kids find themselves trapped in. Wondering why a man would choose to exit through the service elevator to escape seeing his eyes in the child he wouldn't claim.

A child assumes that they are the problem.

This isn't isolated. So many of us carry the weight of failed fathers and are shamed into protecting them.

We are encouraged to quietly triumph. To 'prove them wrong'.

Yeah - that's not our job. I thrive for myself: not to prove my worthiness to worthless fathers.

The gag is, for a time there, I actually helped him out. Because I was told it was the 'right thing to do.' That the past didn't matter. That fathers have to be honoured - regardless of what they did - or didn't do.

This rhetoric must die a swift death.

Honour and respect is earned: not deserved. It is not inherent to anything or anyone.

Many of us are carrying the guilt of rejection and we must unburden ourselves - regardless of society's expectation of performative familial honour.

You owe them nothing.

I am lucky. I have therapy and a chosen family that loves me ferociously. My healing is in progress and it is glorious. (It also helps that karma showed up and showed out ).

If you resonate with this, I encourage you to also seek release. This is how we heal.

I will write about this one day. No punch will be pulled. Because the person I have become, inspite of it all, is a glorious sight to behold.

I thought I was missing out whenever I came a across a billboard with his face on it. Turns out, it was the other way around all along.