Being a Single Dad is Hard, but There is a Silver Lining

Note for readers…. I wrote this entire blog on December 11, 2020. However, I decided to finish editing and then publish it today May 8, 2021.

December 11, 2020…….

Its 10:49 am and I am sitting near the ticket counter at the Vancouver Airport ready to fly back home to Nashville. I wanted to write this while the feelings are fresh. My eyes are still red from crying earlier as my oldest two daughters were picked up an hour earlier from our Airbnb by their mom. I woke them up at 7am to finish packing, checked everywhere to make sure they didn’t forget something and then we all laid on the couch for a bit just trying to absorb these final moments. They were waiting on their mom, and I was waiting for a Lyft.

We just had the most incredible vacation. I flew to Canada a month ago to pick them up, we flew back to Nashville for one day to grab my fiancé and my youngest daughter Mia, and we were off to Vegas for 2 weeks to enjoy everything they had to offer. After Vegas, I had to fly them back to Vancouver, but instead of dropping them off, we had to self quarantine in an Airbnb for 14 days without leaving the property. Yeah.. They have pretty strict Covid laws. It was heaven… Just the 3 of us for 2 full weeks spending quality time together doing our favorite activities like watching movies, playing games, cooking whatever we felt like, and just enjoying the moments.

Sophia is my oldest. At 11 years old, she is bright, aware, and very responsible. She always does her homework, loves to cook, and picks up on things like you wouldn’t believe. My middle daughter Kylie who is 10, is kind, caring, and absolutely hilarious. She’s probably going to be a Tik Tok star in a couple of years.

In 2013 their mom and I divorced while living in Nashville. Since she was Canadian and had no family or support system in the US, She decided it was best to take our daughters to Canada and live with her parents until she got a job. We were still recovering financially from a restaurant we owned that went under during the Great Recession, putting us $200,000 in debt. Since she wasn’t a citizen and we had two children under the age of 5, she couldn’t really work, and paying for two separate homes was not something I could afford alone. I was working all of the time digging us out of it and really nothing about our situation was easy. The most difficult day in my life was the day she packed up the little white Nissan Cube, and took the babies away. I had not been away from them more than a week since Sophia was born in 2008, and now 5 years later I was having to say goodbye and figure out how I was going to see them as often as possible. I swore that day that I would never let more than a few months pass without flying there to see them and I also swore I would video chat with them every single day.

The next few months were extremely tough. Everyday I felt like a failure as a father and beat myself up. In the end, I just became an anti-social workaholic for the next year and used all of that borderline depression as motivation to work harder. If you are a single or a divorced father who loves your kids and are reading this… You know what I mean.

For 7 years I made it work. Every 3–4 months, I would take 2 weeks and either fly to Canada and travel all over the place and explore with them, or I would pick them up, fly back to Nashville and either plan a trip in the US or just spend time with them at home. Although not ideal, this became a beautiful thing. The way I justified it in my mind was by telling myself that although I only see them 2 months out of the year… Those 2 months I am fully present with zero distractions. I truly felt and still feel today that I get more “quality” time with them in these 2 months than many parents get all year. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know, but it helps me cope.

In the last 7 years we have traveled everywhere. We have been all over Canada and the US. We skied in Whistler, toured all the landmarks in Washington DC, rented some incredible places in remote areas, toured many beaches, and spent tens of thousands of dollars at Dave and Buster’s. These trips were everything to me. At the end of each trip on the last day we had a ritual. We made a video talking about what we did, what we liked most, and in most of them we were all crying. These are the most important videos in my life although I don’t ever watch them. I tried once, and it was too painful. The empty feeling comes crashing back and so I hang on to them thinking that one day when we live close to each other, we can truly appreciate what we went through by watching them.

For 7 years this worked like a charm but nothing could have prepared me for 2020. I think this is why I am especially emotional today. Because of the pandemic, I hadn’t seen my kids in almost a year. Our last trip was Christmas 2019. I had two trips fully paid for that I had to cancel and the hardest thing in the world was having to talk to them every night and tell them I don’t know when I would see them next. All I could think about was how disgusted I was that it has been a tenth of their life since I have seen them last. When you do math this way, you really realize how short life is. Finally after 11 months of hoping and praying, I got the approval from Canadian customs to come and grab them on the condition that I quarantine with them when we returned. Fuck yeah… That was all I needed to hear. My oldest was born in Las Vegas where my restaurant used to be before we moved to Nashville when she was around 2 months old and she hadn’t been back since. After a lot of thinking, we decided to book a 2 week family trip there, where we would stay at ultra unique properties and do every activity possible until we were worn out. That is exactly what we did. After we finished, we flew to Nashville for 2 days, spent Thanksgiving with my family, and I flew them back to Canada while Cat stayed behind with Mia because she had to work.

This was another legendary trip on the books but today I am doing a lot of self reflection. Although I am sad, I have had some important discoveries this last week and I wanted to write this to encourage the other fathers out there who are in a similar situation as me. Fathers who love their kids more than anything on earth, but don’t get to see them everyday because of a divorce or a severed relationship. Here are the things that I have realized and why I believe there is a silver lining to living this way.

1. I believe that it is beneficial to expose your kids to some pain and loss early on. I believe this prepares them for the real world. Two of the greatest qualities that anyone can possess today, is mental toughness and grit. Many parents shelter their kids from everything and when they get old enough to make their own decisions, situations such as moving away for school, or a bad breakup can be overwhelming for them and crush them mentally.
2. Distance helps prevent taking those you love most for granted. I see this all of the time with families who are always together.. When you are with someone all day everyday, it is so easy to take them for granted and never really consciously think to be present with them. When you don’t see someone you love for a period of time, the only thing that matters when you are with them is being present and extracting every moment that you can from the time. Now obviously if I had a choice, I would choose to always be with them, but I choose to be grateful and see the positives to not having a choice in the matter.
3. Makes you more creative with the time that you do get to spend together. 3–4 times per year, when I have the dates set for all of us to be together, I get so excited to get on the computer and just start searching for interesting, fun, and educational places to visit. We get on zoom and we search Airbnb’s together, map routes together, and ultimately plan the entire trip together. We try new things, we visit new places, and ultimately we learn and grow. These pre-trip experiences were almost as fun as the experiences themselves.

In summary, If you are a divorced dad, and your kids live full time with their mom… don’t think that your kids have a huge disadvantage over families that are still together. With a little creativity, and some commitment, you can maximize the situation and turn the time you are together into an adventure. I own a daycare outside of Nashville and having 150 bright, beautiful children where many of them are in foster care or come from divorced families, I can tell you first hand that the children who excel… aren’t necessarily the ones with a family that is still together.

It’s a brand new year, and with that can come new decisions, new commitments, and new adventures! I’ve learned that the time I spent feeling regret, or playing victim for not having the ideal family situation can be better used to put experiences in place where your kids can develop a sense of curiosity and wonder while strengthening your bond and the relationship…

Being a single dad isn’t easy… but there is a silver lining if you can shift your perspective and believe it!