Daddy Where Are You?
Before the Labels
Before we learn our names, before we speak our first words, before we accomplish anything at all, we enter the world carrying an undeniable truth.
We are born worthy. We are born to belong.
She knows nothing of success or failure, approval or rejection. She knows only the language she was created with, the instinct to reach for comfort, to seek safety, to be held, soothed, and loved.
When those needs are met, something beautiful begins to form. Trust quietly takes root. A tiny heart learns that the world can be a safe place.
But sometimes something essential is missing.
The adults surrounding a child often see only what is visible, tears, fear, withdrawal, anger, clinging, endless attempts to please. They do the best they can to understand what they are witnessing.
Yet behavior is only the surface. Beneath every behavior is a story.
I sometimes imagine a quiet presence standing beside my crib. Not to predict the life that lies ahead. Not to rescue me from every sorrow.
Simply to see what no one else could. To recognize that nothing was wrong with this tiny child.
She wasn't difficult. She wasn't too sensitive. She wasn't needy. She wasn't fearful by nature.
She was merely reaching for what every child reaches for to feel safe, secure, cherished, and loved.
If her cries linger longer than expected, don't ask, “What's wrong with her?” Ask instead, “What does she need?”
Don't mistake her adaptations for her identity. The words spoken over a child matter. The explanations adults create matter. The labels they choose matter.
Because a child has no way of separating who she is from what others believe about her. Those labels can quietly become the voice she carries for decades.
For much of my life, I believed the story those labels told. Only now, after many years, am I beginning to wonder if they were never the real story at all.
Perhaps The Unfolding is simply this: The slow, grace-filled work of uncovering the person who existed before the labels.
The one who was worthy from the beginning. The one who always belonged.
