Written by Shelli Marr, 27, Lis and Dave’s daughter
“You want me to do what??” I asked, suddenly aware of just how high off the ground I was. “That’s right”, he replied, “close your eyes, cross your arms across your chest, and fall backwards.” He smiled a little as he said it, so easily reading the skepticism in my face. “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you”, he said reassuringly, even as he gently guided my shoulders around to face away from him.
He’ll catch me, I repeated in my head. But I’m standing on a barstool four feet off the ground! What if he doesn’t?” I shut my eyes, crossed my arms, and lost faith. My knees buckled underneath me and I knelt on the chair. After a moment, I felt his hand on my shoulder again, and I turned around to give him a wary glance. I didn’t like this exercise. He, calm as ever, smiled reassuringly and simply repeated, “I will catch you. I promise.” I stood back up, mustered as much confidence as my eight-year old mind possessed, and fell backward with my eyes shut tight.
This brief narrative depicts a true story of a trust fall exercise that my dad took me through when I was in grade school. In this exercise, he encouraged me to trust him no matter what. We have all heard of the “nature vs. nurture” argument when it comes to what shapes a person, but the reality is that both nature and nurture play a role. It is the nurture component that I want to bring up today. My message is to fathers and how they treat their daughters.
If you have gotten to this point and read nothing else, the primary message is this: Fathers, be present in your daughter’s lives, and tell them that you think they are beautiful and that you love them. Every day.
The reason why is fairly simple, girls want to be valued and loved. I have had the tremendous blessing of being loved by my father my entire life, and he has always shown it in tangible ways. Since I was a little girl, I can recall many instances of my dad telling me how much he loves me, how beautiful he thinks I am, and tangibly showing me how much he values me for who I am. This has given me self-confidence, self-respect, and an independence that have endured the many trials of the awkward pre-teen years, the peer pressures of high school, and the navigation of boyfriends and relationships.
Unfortunately, I have seen many of my friends throughout various stages of my life who have not been given this gift. For one reason or another, their dads were absent. Some had parents who were divorced, and so they saw their fathers infrequently, or they only saw them in the context of argument with their mothers. Some had dads who were terminally ill or passed away when the girls were young, so they grew up largely without a father figure. Some had dads that were just busy with the stresses of life and work, traveling often, caught up in endless meetings, missing family dinners to help provide for those he was feeding. Still others had dads that simply didn’t care to invest emotionally in their daughters and who put up a wall of indifference to the drama and high school woes of their girls. This absence of fathers, whether physically or emotionally, seemed to me an epidemic among many of my friends in high school and college and I was able to see the impact it made.
It is my experience that if girls do not find love and value at home then they will begin to look for it elsewhere. The media and our current culture spin a world of “not enough” that girls are force-fed from an early age. No one is ever skinny enough, fit enough, pretty enough, sexy enough, providing a barrage of negatives on which to build one’s image. We girls and women hear these negatives nearly every day, which is why it is such an important role of the father to provide an alternative perspective.
If fathers are absent for one reason or another, then girls will hear what is unsaid much louder than anything that is said. They will only hear an amplification of the “not enough” message from the world as there is nothing to counter it at home. And so they will look for it elsewhere. I have known girls who are serial daters, where they go from boyfriend to boyfriend without much time in between. I have known girls who want to be the life of the party, and turn to drinking and sometimes drug use in order to feel accepted in social situations. I have known girls who had sex at an early age or who have had multiple sex partners. I have known far too many girls who have an eating disorder of one type or another because they feel they are not skinny enough and therefore not beautiful enough. I have known girls who cannot go outside without wearing makeup and fancy clothes, because they feel they “don’t look good enough” without it.
As a young girl in today’s society, there are endless things to make you feel insecure, devalued, and like you’re not enough. That is why it is so important for dads to provide a different message of love, value, and worth from a young age, to counter the negatives with positives. To give a girl self worth and self love so that the messages from the world do not throw her off course. To show her that her dad will always be there for her no matter what, and that he will catch her when she falls.
With my eyes shut, I felt like I was falling forever, with no notion of whether or not I had just made a mistake by falling backward off of a chair. What seemed like an eternity of doubt was really only just an instant before I felt the strong, sure hands of my father catching me, just as he had promised. “You see? I told you I would catch you”, he said with a hug and a warm smile. “I will always be here for you, I will always catch you, because I am your father and I love you.” To emphasize this point, he told me to go back up the chair and to fall again, this time I didn’t even hesitate. I scrambled up the chair, closed my eyes, and fell back, this time with full confidence and faith that he would be there to catch me.
Throughout my life, my dad has shown me that he loves me in tangible ways through words, gifts, and most importantly actions. I was not always the easiest child to deal with either, and yet he loved me despite my ornery and sometimes disobedient behavior. Sometimes love takes the form of corrective discipline, and my dad loved me enough to shape me by helping me to prune away those negative behaviors. This is the greatest gift you can give your daughters, by loving them through words and showing them your love through actions. I truly believe that this will give them a head start in life that many girls so sadly have not received. You, dads, have a unique position to shape your girls’ future to one of confidence, independence, and self-worth, by repeating the two simple phrases, “You are so beautiful” and “I love you”, through both words and actions over their lifetime.
Shelli Marr
