Earlier this year, I moved into a new role in my professional life.
The change has been, night and day.
The learing curve has been, steep.
The rewards look impressive and....closer.
Come March 2025 my scholarly work should be published.
...and yet, there is still a gap missing in the composite.
Signposts. Can't forget them.
Happy birthday Chickybabe.
Your grandfather is ageing. I could tell you that the only thing he truely wants is to see you and your sister before he passes.
Your father is ageing, I coud tell you that the only thing he truely wants is to see you and your sister before he passes.
You already know this from other grandparents.
I am sorry.
Happy birthday, my child.
A first fan recently asked "how will your children know they can contact you?"
A valid question. Estrained from me for years, they have been told information without opportunity for rebuttal, or correction. My hope is that they have better judgement than their mother.
Before we were married their mother and I were walking on a beach and a couple passed us in the other direction. It was her Father whom she had not seen for years. After preliminary conversation She was compelled to find out more, to discover if the stories that She was told by her Mother were true. When She reached out to her Father, then validated the versions, it was apparent that Her Mother had lied to her about her Father, for Her entire life.
Unable to live with the truth that She had been lied to all her life - by her Mother - she cut off all future contact with her Father.
History is not here for us to like but exists to teach us. To not recognise or consider that there might have been an alternative explanation, is to doom yourself to replicate history.
I should have recognized that moment.
I did not.
Today, I have no idea where my children are, who they are, or if they are alive.
Should they find their way here, the answer is yes, your Father will have conversations with you if you reach out, for of the two of us, I am the only one who has left the door open for you to find me.
A counterpart - another father, wrote yesterday that it is 2499 days since he last saw his children. I feel sorry for the man, he has endured more than I ever did.
...and then I did the math.
This morning, Christmas day, it will be 5500 days since I last saw my children together. It was the last time I saw my youngest child, I saw my eldest child a couple of years later in circumstances where I thought that She would understand that there can be functionality after a divorce where both parents still work together for the benefit of their children.
I gave my eldest too much credit, I didn't comprehend the curse that had been placed upon her, how her grandmother had done to her mother, so her mother was now doing to her.
I looked at my own family also, how my grandparents, uncle and aunts, had done to my parents, and how my parents did with me. Turns out, the only one who was forthright with me about it, was the man at the center of it - my Father. I hadn't given my Father enough credit, and yet, I could fault him just as well. He did not tell me until I was in his position, of what would come.
2499 days have passed since Michael Brown last saw his children.
5500 days have passed since I last saw my youngest. Merry Christmas chickybabes. My Christmas wish for both of you is that I hope you are better than both your parents.
Going home.
I was once told you can never go home. You can never go back from whence you began. Early next year I will be returning to that which has haunted me since the day I left. But it is not home.
It's just the place that I report to others as home, when in fact, it's just the general area where I grew up. It has nothing of that which a home has. Any more.
Children. Parents. Christmas mornings waking with the family.
Stolen from me early in my life, I attempted to regather the pieces, but I didn't know how, I couldn't put it back together again. (A phrase borrowed from a First Fan.) I lost it a second time, and after that, I did the best I could.
I have found myself recently less at peace with what has happened and more at peace that it happened. I'm accountable for the wear and tear, and some of the breakages. But not the theft of the pieces.
Eighteen years ago, at about this time, I sat in the departure lounge of Qantas Airlines Brisbane, Australia, holding my youngest daughters hand, before I departed on a plane. It wasn't any plane, it was a plane that would take me to the USA. When my flight was called for boarding, I held back, holding my daughters hand, until last call. I crouched down, hugged her and kissed her.
"Daddy loves you chickybabe."
I stood, turned, and headed down the gantry tears streaming down my face.
I had no expectation at that time of the events that would follow, that would result in that being the second last occasion I saw that child.
That child is now a grown woman, living her own life, making her own decision. One of those decision is not to have any relationship with me.
I still have her email of four words "Don't contact me again."
My Father, divorced himself, was the scourge of parental alienation with untruthfulness perpetrated by my mother as to why my He wasn't in my life. Later as a teenager, I came to discovered the truth, and even later, as a divorced father myself, learnt that what goes unchallenged, becomes accepted as "the new normal".
But for some, that "new normal" is all they know. As was done to me, was done to the mother our children by her own mother. Years ago - maybe before we were married, the girls mother ran into her Father and when she later sought out to verify the stories she had been told by her mother - his ex wife, she was faced with the reality that what she heard was not accurate. Faced with the consequences, she choose to exclude her Father, unable to accept, that her mother had lied to her about why her Dad was not in her life.
In my forthcoming book, I included this, and other examples of the parental alienation I endured, for two reasons.
It's been 18 years past since I departed Australia, but I never departed my role as a Father. Someday, someone will run into my daughters and say "I read what your Dad went through."
The second reason is its been 18 years past since I left Australia. I write for the next guy. The next guy could be my ex wifes only son - the half brother to my daughters. I thought I was good enough to stop the promulgation of alienation. Here's hoping that my daughters brother does better than those in the family before him.
Happy birthday Chickybabe.
Each year on this day I think back to the first occurrence of this day. What occurred, what had to happen, who brought you into the world.
As you grew, I use to think that the worst thing that could occur was that your life would be taken by accident - vehicular, illness, abduction - I never though that the worst thing that could occur would be that your life would be taken by alienation.
I am sorry.
You have now been out of my life longer than you were in it, and your grandfather - Poppy, has lost the grandchildren he tried to recapture life with - after his children were taken by alienation.
And you will probably do the same, should you choose to have children.
Happy birthday, my child.
Here we go again, another lap around the globe as we grapple to "flatten the curve in fourteen days", now in its second year.
I have returned to writing after an extended absence in another country fulfilling the obligations of emergency management in the Covid era. Returning to writing I have been presented with atopic that continues to plague me, grief.
Twenty one days to complete a manuscript for publication.
Yup, we go again. Damaged goods.
The following is a reproduction of an article that I wrote for the Fathers Rights Movement California State Chapter on 6 Feb 2021.
My parents were divorced when I was young. As a teen and later as a college student, I'd occasionally visit Dad at the Army base he lived and worked at. On his desk were photographs of my brother and I but they were old photos...as toddlers, the first day of school - there was nothing recent.
I never understood why.
Come forward sixteen years and I'm divorced with two daughters. On my last day in Australia before coming to the USA, Dad took us to a fine seafood restaurant. At the end of the meal a photo was taken of the people present, including my Dad, my brother, and my daughters.
Come forward another sixteen years and and the photo pops up on my Facebook memories.
And suddenly...I understand why Dad only had old photos of my brother and I.
It was all he had.
The photograph taken at the restaurant was the last time my Father saw his granddaughters. It was the second last time I saw my daughters.
Now, it is all that I have.
Happy birthday Ming.
It's a been a long time since we last spoke. I can't recall how long it is. I recall what was said, and how I was away.
In the last sixty days I've lost the man who taught me to parent, a parent I cared for and a co-parent. I kept to myself since I got here because of the damage that was done before I left.
How's your Goddaughter? You might know more than I, but the loss of the girls broke me.
I went back to work on my book last week. In particular, I changed the part where I mentioned you and your wife. I had not used your names through the first few drafts - not because I didn't want to, but because I felt that you and D didn't need the "publicity" that might come when the book came out. I prefer to think of the two of you as the couple who could point to the book and go "he's talking about us there." There is a section where your words read "If he comes here, it's because no one else believe in him."
I have change it, to include your name, not because the words have changed, the relationship has changed. You were #thefirstfan and people should know, even if it's not the case now.
Happy birthday Anthony, from your fan. Your friend.
I thought of you last night.
Actually, I think of you every night. Sometime I think of you first thing in the morning
Most times I think of you after starting my day and wonder what you are doing.
I always think of you in the evening.
But last night it was different, you arrived in my dreams - like you have many times before.
I know the exact date the last time we spoke, the last date I saw you. Time, has not been favorable.
Wherever you are, what ever you are doing, I think of you constantly.
You are missed.
Every time I think of you, with every word I write.
Once again, the return to the Arctic begins at Chesterfield Inlet.
