Black Does Crack

When I say I miss my daddy, I’m not talking about some perfect, storybook man. Daddy was complicated. He was a Black man in America carrying more than he ever said out loud. He was flawed, layered, and sometimes hard (for some) to love. And still, he was emotionally present for me in ways that mattered. Daddy didn’t always get it right, but when it came to me, he showed up. And that’s the man I’m grieving.

Being a Black father in this country is not simple. You’re parenting under pressure: racism, expectations, survival mode, unspoken trauma. You’re trying to protect your children from a world that doesn’t always see their humanity, while wrestling with the ways that same world has wounded yours. There’s no manual for that. Just a lot of improvising, a lot of trying, a lot of carrying things in silence.

And then there’s the other layer: fathering alongside women who have been scarred and now scared. Women who’ve had to be strong for too long. Women whose trust has been broken, whose bodies and spirits have been overworked, overlooked, and overburdened. Co-parenting, partnering, loving in that context is complicated. There are landmines everywhere — old wounds, unspoken fears, generational patterns. Daddy didn’t escape that. Shit… none of us do.

So when I grieve him, I’m not grieving a flawless hero. I’m grieving a man who was doing the best he could with what he had, in a system that was never built for his wholeness. A man who had his own scars, his own limitations, his own blind spots, and still tried to be emotionally present for his children. For me. That presence, imperfect as it was, shaped my nervous system, my sense of safety, my understanding of love.

And here’s the part that humbles me every time: I’m a clinician. I know grief. I know the theories, the stages, the waves. I can talk about attachment, trauma, complicated loss. I can name the patterns, explain the triggers, outline the coping skills. But none of that knowledge protects me on days like today.

On Father’s Day, all the clinical language falls away. I’m not “processing bereavement.” I’m just a daughter who misses her daddy. I’m just a Black woman sitting with the ache of having had an emotionally present father in a world that tells us that’s rare. And then losing him. I’m just a human whose heart cracks a little when the world starts posting their brunch photos and matching T-shirts and “Happy Father’s Day” captions.

Grief for a complicated Black father is not neat. It’s love and confusion, gratitude and disappointment, pride and pain all tangled together. It’s remembering the times he showed up and the times he couldn’t. It’s honoring the ways he tried, even when the trying wasn’t enough to fix everything. It’s holding the truth that he was both wounded and wonderful, both limited and loving.

And on days like today, all of that rises to the surface.

Black Does Crack is my reminder that we don’t have to pretend we’re invincible. That our skin, our degrees, our titles, our clinical expertise don’t make us immune to breaking open. My grief is not a failure of my training. It’s proof that I loved and was loved. It’s proof that my daddy mattered… complications and all.

So if Father’s Day is complicated for you too, if your daddy was flawed but present, if he tried and sometimes missed the mark, if he loved you in ways that didn’t always fit the Hallmark script—your grief is valid. Your confusion is valid. Your tenderness is valid.

Beauties, you’re allowed to miss a man who wasn’t perfect. You’re allowed to honor the ways he showed up, even if he couldn’t show up for everyone. You’re allowed to feel the crack in your voice when you say “my daddy” out loud.

Black does crack. And today, it cracks under the weight of love, history, complexity, and the reality of what it means to be a Black father and a Black child in this America.

I miss my daddy. The whole of him. The flawed, emotionally present, complicated man he was.

And on days like today… Shit.