Perspective by Allison Bothley

Here’s the truth: almost everyone has a father story. Some of us were raised by ghosts, others by giants. Some were loved within limits, some adored and then abandoned. And yes, some of us found that “Daddy” wasn’t just a parent, but a name that slipped into the language of love and power (sometimes playfully, sometimes painfully). The word itself has become a mirror, reflecting what we crave, what we fear, and what we’ve been taught to want.

“Daddy Issues” is one of those phrases used more to dismiss than to understand. It flattens the complexity of people’s lives—mostly women’s—into a punchline, a diagnosis disguised as a joke. But behind it are real stories of love and longing, absence and effort, of fathers who did their best and those who didn’t know how.

Every piece in this issue was written by a woman. That feels fitting. Women have long been tasked with making sense of the emotional debris left behind by patriarchy: to forgive, to empathize, to carry on.

Yet within these pages, that labour becomes language. It becomes art. These poems, essays, and stories hold both ache and tenderness: the men who became fathers to our kids, the fathers who tried and the

ones who couldn’t, the girls we were and the women we’ve become in their shadow.

This issue doesn’t aim to indict or absolve. It simply holds the full, messy spectrum: the gratitude, the grief, the yearning, and the rebellion. Because to explore our Daddy Issues might be a way to understand how deeply we’ve been shaped by the way they love, and how brave it is to keep seeking it anyway.