💛 Father’s Day can be tough.

This post is mostly about grief but also about stepparenting; they are not unconnected.

Today is my first Father’s Day as a member of the Dead Dads Club, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when I teared up at a Father’s Day card display at Trader Joe’s.

Yet I found myself totally unprepared.

Not because I forgot my dad is gone (will a day ever go by when I don’t think about him being gone), but because I forgot that Father’s Day was one of the grief landmines I needed to emotionally brace myself for this year. You’d think the day we celebrate dads would’ve been pretty front and center on my radar but… nope.

Man grief is a weird thing. It sneaks in like the cast of Ocean’s 11: out of nowhere, the vault has been breached and you never even saw it coming.