Tim Arrigo counsels Landon on reconnecting with his daughter after divorce and his brother's death. Landon needs to write her a letter of atonement, stop the silence, and practice forgiving himself for years of substance use and missed time. He affirms his worth as a child of God and commits to becoming the man he wants to be.
I would encourage you to speak your truth. Find a way to get your truth to your daughter and not from a place of, hey, this is what happened. Let me tell you the truth to try to cover my tracks and, you know, get you to see my side. No, it's my truth for that I want to give to you as a gift because your daughter probably, if she's struggling, we know that the loss of her brother affected her, number one. We know that the loss of her father in her life definitely affected her, number two. And that's the sad part about divorce a lot of times is that the partner who lives with the kids will weaponize parental rights and triangulate the relationship, not realizing that it's harmful for their own children. Now, some of that was maybe done to protect her daughter. I get that. But there comes a time, a point in time, where ceasing all communication and contact with you, okay, that's one thing, but potentially talking negatively about you when you're not around is another. And I would encourage you to, to, to share that letter of atonement with your daughter and try to get it to her. Yeah. And to reach out to your daughter again and don't stop. But forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for the lost time. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you made. Forgive yourself for self-destructing. Forgive yourself for not showing up as the father you wanted to be. Forgive yourself for that because you didn't have a template for that. And all of that, if you really peel back the curtain, Landon, none of that was about you negating or abandoning your responsibilities as a father as much as it was about medicating and trying to soothe your own pain. And medicating and soothing your own pain comes at a cost. And the cost is my relationships, my health, my physical health and well-being. You didn't do those things with the intention to hurt your family. You did them with the intention to not be hurting yourself, to avoid the hurt and pain. But in essence, what we do when we avoid hurt and pain in those ways, we only create more hurt and pain for us and people around us. But you didn't know enough. You didn't know another option. You didn't know a way out. You didn't know an escape. At the time, you didn't really care. You didn't care. You were at the end of your rope. You're at the end of the line. And if you were your best friend watching you go through what you were going through back then, what would you have said to you?
What I said to myself, you have so much worth and you are so loved and that you need to remind yourself that you are a child of God that has infinite value and that you need to rise up and become the man that you admire.
Beautiful, bro. Poignant. Give yourself that grace. You deserve that.
