A STORY for FATHER’S Raising DAUGHTERS

Before finding and reading my father’s letters to my mother, I only knew her side of the story, the letters she had written to him. They painted a picture of a young woman who was frightened, pregnant, and in love, or maybe more infatuated than in love. I think she had built him up in her mind as someone larger than life.

My mother never wanted the small town, farm life future that had been set up for her. She had every advantage…loving parents, sister twenty years older, and friends who supported her. But at eighteen, she left college and fled to New Orleans to dance on Bourbon Street. That’s where she met my father. By nineteen, she was pregnant.

Her letters from that time are full of insecurity, uncertainty about her future, about whether this man she loved could provide stability, or even stay. Friends wrote to her, encouraging her to be strong and independent, reminding her of everything she had going for her. But her tone, again and again, is one of apology and self doubt.

There’s a psychological term for it that “woe is me” mindset, that quiet resignation that says, I’ll take whatever I can get; I don’t need more. I don’t know what the proper term is, but I see it clearly.

People might assume a scarcity mindset comes from growing up poor, I thought so.

But it doesn’t always. Yes, we were on public assistance. Yes, sometimes we depended on the little my aunt could send. But I never remember feeling hungry or destitute. It just was what it was. I had nothing to compare it to.

The scarcity mindset isn’t always born from lack of money, it can derive from self worth. 

My mother had everything she needed growing up, yet she carried this deep sense that she didn’t deserve more. And when I read my father’s letters to her, it became clear how he recognized that insecurity and exploited it.

He called her childish for wanting stability. He told her she was selfish for expecting anything more than struggle while he pursued his career in show business. Even before my brother was born, he threatened to leave her holding the relationship hostage if she didn’t fall in line. He framed her desire for security as immaturity.

Reading those letters, I see how manipulative it was especially toward a nineteen-year-old whose brain was still developing, trying to make sense of love and survival. He even suggested she go back to dancing right after giving birth, comparing her to other couples where the wife worked in clubs while the husband “chased his dream.”

It’s disturbing to read now, but it explains so much.

It explains my mother’s devotion how she mistook manipulation for love.

It explains her low sense of worth, how she learned to shrink herself while he took up all the space.

And it explains the ripple effect, how those patterns seep into the next generation, shaping how we see ourselves, what we accept, and what we think we deserve.

If my father were alive today, and I knew then what I know now, I think I’d have given him a piece of my mind.

Because that kind of control, that emotional conditioning, doesn’t die with one generation.