06/21/2026
This year’s Father’s Day post looks a little different.
Derwood Nicholson passed away August 16.2025
We weren’t told he had died.
I later read his obituary and realized something I wasn’t prepared for.
I didn’t speak about it right away.
Not because I didn’t have something to say.
But because I wanted to understand what I was actually feeling.
You see the story being told didn’t acknowledge the first five children he left behind.
An entire chapter of his life absent from the story shared after his death.
People often assume that if you didn’t really know a parent, their death wouldn’t affect you. What I’ve learned is that grief isn’t always about losing someone you had.
Sometimes it’s about losing the possibility of what never was. I only accidentally met my father a couple of times in my life. Yet when he died, I realized I never got the chance to say goodbye—which sounds strange when you’ve barely had the chance to say hello.
But that’s the complexity of this kind of loss.
What hit me hardest wasn’t simply that he had died. It was the finality of it.
For most of my life, there was always a possibility..
When he died, that possibility died too.
And I wasn’t prepared for that kind of pain.
What surprised me most wasn’t the sadness.
It was the impact it had on me emotionally.
The shock of it. The way it settled into my body. The way it occupied my thoughts.
The way it reopened questions I thought I had made peace with years ago.
Because when someone has been absent for most of your life, people often assume there is no wound.
But absence leaves its own mark.
And sometimes a loss like this doesn’t create a new pain.
It awakens an old one.
One of the hardest things for me was reading stories about a loving father, a supportive father, a father who showed up.
Not because those stories weren’t real.
It was the contrast between what was possible and what never was. I understand that every child has their own experience. Two things can be true at the same time.
It was difficult reading a public account of my father’s life that did not acknowledge the first five children he brought into this world.
Whether that chapter is comfortable or uncomfortable, complicated or simple, it is still part of the truth.
We existed. We were his children. We were part of his story.
Reading that obituary left me with a feeling I had known before.
The feeling of being forgotten.
The feeling of being unacknowledged.
The feeling of wondering whether we mattered at all.
I didn’t want to sit with that feeling. For years, I stayed quiet. But I’ve come to realize that telling my story doesn’t take anything away from anyone else’s. It simply gives space to my own.
I was one of five children from my father’s first family.
We were here. We mattered. We deserved more.
And although we weren’t part of the final story that was told, we were still part of the story.
Today, I’m thinking about those carrying complicated feelings.
Those whose fathers were absent.
Those who never had the relationship they needed.
And those grieving what could have been.
I see you.
You are not forgotten.
Your story matters.
Wishing peace, strength, and healing to you today.
Happy Father’s Day to all the children who had to become their own foundation. ❤️
xo Danielle
