To My White Evangelical Father: A Letter Holding Space for Us Both
The Shadow of Authority
Dad,
I wish I could open this with a greeting that implies we have connection and history together. But doing so would mean drawing on obscure moments of our time together, searching for tenderness amidst emotional absence.
I’ve complained that we didn’t have a strong connection, giving you construction plans on how to bridge the divide. You seemed offended that I would imply you needed to. It was my job to obey, to parent my own needs and yours, and to be present. Being seen but not heard wasn’t true presence, but you seemed to prefer it empty that way.
I could never fully understand why it was my job to hold together our bond—until I started to look at why you assumed my role as the child had more power than yours as the parent. You were traumatized too, raised in an authoritarian home, community, and nation. That trauma shaped the way you interacted with me, and only now, with distance, can I fully see the extent of it. That learned helplessness meant externalizing your control.
You never knew you had agency, so you never took true responsibility. Instead, you were taught that respect was something you demanded, without reciprocity. That is what you grew up with. It wasn’t just a misplaced notion—it was a survival mechanism taught by a system that valued strength above all else.
Hard work, sucking it up, righteous behaviors, respecting elders, and being a good citizen—those were the mandates that shaped you.
Authoritarian systems, particularly within evangelical environments, teach children to equate love with fear, obedience with safety, and independent thought with sin. This conditioning shaped how you saw yourself and authority. You survived by identifying with being nothing more than a cog in the system, and when you received the label of 'Father,' you became that empty nothingness playing your part.
I’m sorry you were wounded. I’m sorry you never learned who you are. I love that child inside of you that didn’t get to see your power and therefore learn how to yield it. I wish he’d grown up with freedom instead of fear. I think you could have been a really good father.
Instead, I grew up in a house where obedience was demanded and love was conditional. Your version of love came with control, fear, and rules that felt more like chains than protection. There was always a line drawn between what was acceptable and what was not. The cost of fitting into the mold of what you wanted me to be was too high. I’m not sure you even knew what you wanted me to be other than the means to an end of your empowerment.
I learned that questioning you, or even thinking for myself, was an abandonment to you. Your anger was close, and we all knew the cost of crossing you. I remember the way the ecosystem of performance you were steeped in showed up in the way you managed my tenderness as though your harshness was something sanctified, something pure. But, it was just fear dressed in the name of discipline. The more that penalization came disguised as love, the more confused and afraid it left me.
I was unsure of how to feel safe in your presence. As I reflect, I assume you were unsure of how to feel safe in mine as well. You were calibrated to emptiness.
I’ve been unlearning what you taught me about love, power, and what it means to be human. And now, I see those same patterns playing out on a larger scale—people like you, who crave authority, justify cruelty, and confuse strength with compassion. It saddens me to see the macro playing out what I thought was just my own micro experience. That’s why I feel like I see you now. You really did become the cog in the system.
I guess that is why I was never really seen by you. You were trying to find a way to be seen within the pattern you were given. That meant I had to be invisible in your eyes—just a reflection of your expectations. But were those expectations truly yours, or were they handed to you by a system that demanded conformity?
We both live with the consequences of disappearing in this world. I’ve rebuilt myself piece by piece, and I wonder: What would it be like if you, too, could rebuild your sense of self? Who could you become?
Who could I have become?
What could our nation become?
It’s not that I hate or even blame you. I understand now that you were a product of your own upbringing, a system that taught you that controlling others was the only way to avoid being seen as weak. I see how your need for control has affected your relationships, your decisions, your ability to connect with anyone who challenges your beliefs.
But what I need from you now is simple: I need you to see the pain you’ve experienced. I need you to understand that your version of love wasn’t fair to you either. It was something broken. Something that shaped me through what broke you.
The distance between us isn’t just the way you parented me; it’s the silence that followed. Your unwillingness to listen, to question, to be vulnerable—that’s where the estrangement began. I tried to show you who I was, to express my pain, but instead, I received silence (though it came out loud at times). That silence made me question whether my existence was even worth acknowledging.
I don’t know if we’ll ever heal this. I don’t know if you’ll ever see things from my perspective, but I think what I understand differently now is that you would first have to see them from your own—through the history of that child you once were. Healing for us means healing for you, too.
I’m doing my part to stand up for myself now, to build a life where I am allowed to exist outside the narrow confines of what you wanted me to absolve in you. And maybe one day, you’ll find a way to do the same for yourself.
If you ever really loved me, than I have to have faith that the goodness in you would have done differently. So, I will love you by loving myself. I will trust that the healed version of you would be happy for my freedom.
Either way, I’m moving forward. I’m finding space to heal and to live outside of conformity and emptiness. I hope, in time, you’ll find that same space for yourself.
Holding the space we need to heal,
Your flourishing child
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