A Letter to My Children

My dear ones,

There are things I need to say, things that have lived quiet for too long.

When you were growing up, I wanted to be strong for you — the kind of father who could keep the world from hurting you the way it hurt me. I thought discipline meant safety, that structure would protect you from the chaos I’d known. But sometimes, in trying to give you strength, I gave you fear instead.

I never meant to. The habits from my own past — the strict training, the tension that never left my shoulders, the reflexes built from years of stress — followed me home like ghosts. And in my worst moments, I let those ghosts speak louder than my love.

I told myself I was teaching discipline, but sometimes I was only teaching silence. I thought I was showing you how to be strong, but what you saw was a man still wrestling with his own pain. I know now that my tone, my anger, my distance at times — they left marks I never intended.

For that, I am sorry. Truly.

I can’t undo what’s been done, but I can name it — and I can change it. I can learn to listen more than I speak. I can show you that love doesn’t need to sound like command, and that strength doesn’t have to carry fear in its shadow.

You didn’t deserve the weight I carried. You deserved patience, laughter, and light. You deserved to feel safe, even when I didn’t know how to feel safe myself.

I hope you can see that every hard lesson I gave came from a place that thought it was protecting you — and that I now see protection means more than control. It means presence. It means love spoken softly and shown steadily.

I love you, all of you, more than my pride ever let me say when you were small. And if you remember nothing else from me, remember this: it’s never too late to unlearn the lessons that hurt us.

With all my heart,

Dad