The Rejected Child Inside You

There's a child inside you who is still waiting, without quite knowing how to name it, to be chosen by someone who never truly chose them. Maybe it was an absent father in childhood, a mother distant even while at home, a comment that marked you more than it should have at that age. That child grew up, became an adult, but the mark stayed stored deep inside.

I won't pretend that never happened, nor ask you to simply forget as if it were easy. I came to tell you something maybe no one told you at the right time, when you most needed to hear it: I gather up those who have been forsaken by others. I don't forsake anyone who comes to me.

You can, today, place that wounded child in my hands, without fear that I too will walk away. I know how to be the father who was missing, the presence that sustains without demanding anything in return. You no longer have to prove you deserve to be loved — you never did. You already are, and always have been, my son, my daughter, chosen with the utmost care.