Father’s Day: A Love Letter to the Almost-Dads, the Grieving Dads, and the Dads Still Waiting

Father’s Day can be beautiful.
It can also be brutal.

When you’re walking through infertility or grieving the loss of a baby, Father’s Day can feel like a reminder of everything you don’t have. The card that was never written. The tiny feet that never kicked. The dream that still hasn’t arrived.

It’s a day that can be quietly devastating.

Maybe you’re partnered with someone who should’ve been a dad by now. Someone who has held your hand through appointments and heartbreak, who has injected meds and carried hope, who has said all the right things even when nothing felt right.

Maybe you’ve experienced a loss, and this day feels like salt in the wound, a public celebration of something deeply private and painfully missing.

Or maybe you are the one grieving, not just for your partner but for yourself, for the family you imagined, for the timeline that keeps shifting, for the ache of it all.

Wherever you are, I want you to know:
Father’s Day is complicated for many people.
And your pain, your longing, your story — it matters.

There is no single way to be a father.
There is fatherhood in showing up every day with love and tenderness, even when there’s no baby in your arms.
There is fatherhood in the men who hold space for grief and hope at the same time.
There is fatherhood in the waiting, in the trying, in the still becoming.

If this Father’s Day feels heavy, I see you.
Skip the brunch. Mute the social media accounts. Go for a walk. Talk to someone who gets it. Or say nothing at all, just breathe.

You are not alone.

To the men waiting to be called “Dad,”
To the ones who lost a little one too soon,
To the partners who carry us through the hardest days,

You are seen. You are loved. You are already showing up in ways that matter.

This Father’s Day, let’s hold space for the joy and the heartbreak, and honor the quiet strength of the dads still in the waiting.