For many, the third Sunday in June is anything but a celebration.

Greeting cards and commercials suggest Father’s Day is a uniformly happy occasion — a barbecue, a tie, a heartfelt card. For a significant portion of our community, that picture feels foreign or even painful. Some are estranged from their fathers. Some are grieving. Some had fathers who were physically present but emotionally absent. Some had fathers who were neither.

The cultural script around fatherhood often presses people to “just call Dad” or “make peace before it’s too late,” with little acknowledgment that those choices may not be safe, healthy, or even possible. Men in particular tend to struggle in silence with these feelings, having been raised in a culture that gave them few permissions to grieve or feel ambivalent about their own fathers. Women often carry their own complicated grief about absent or harmful fathers while caring for children, partners, or aging parents.

This week’s column is for the people who quietly dread mid-June. We’ll look at why this holiday hits hard, what the research tells us about father loss and father wounds, and how to take care of yourself when everyone else seems to be celebrating.

Q: My father died years ago, but Father’s Day still ambushes me. Is something wrong with me?

A: Nothing is wrong. Grief is not a linear process that ends on a calendar date. Anniversary reactions are well-documented and can persist for decades. The brain encodes loss alongside the rituals and seasons that surrounded it, so a holiday designed to celebrate fathers will reliably activate those memory networks. Expecting yourself to be “over it” is the part that doesn’t fit the science.

Q: I’m estranged from my father by choice. Friends keep telling me to reach out before it’s too late. How do I respond?

A: You owe no one an explanation for protecting your peace. Estrangement is rarely impulsive; research on adult children who cut contact shows it typically follows years of effort to maintain a viable relationship. A simple, repeatable line works well: “I’ve thought about this carefully, and the current arrangement is what’s healthiest for me.” You do not need to convince anyone. You only need to stop debating it with yourself.

Q: My father was emotionally absent but never abusive. Am I allowed to feel hurt?

A: Yes. Emotional neglect is a recognized form of adverse childhood experience and predicts adult depression, anxiety, and relationship difficulties at rates similar to more visible mistreatment. The absence of cruelty is not the presence of love. Many adult children of emotionally absent fathers feel guilty for their pain because they cannot point to a discrete event. The pattern was the event.

Q: I want to honor my late father, but my memories are mixed–he was loving and also alcoholic. How do I hold both?

A: Ambivalent grief is the most common kind of grief, even though it is the least talked about. You are not required to sanitize him into a saint or reduce him to his worst behavior. Many people find it useful to write two short letters — one to the father they loved and one to the father who hurt them — and to allow both to be true. Holding contradictions is not disloyalty; it is honesty.

Q: My kids’ father is alive but mostly absent. How do I handle Father’s Day with them?

A: Be honest at a developmentally appropriate level and resist the urge to either villainize him or paper over reality. Children read parental affect more than parental words. A neutral acknowledgment (“Father’s Day can be a complicated day for our family, and that’s okay”) gives kids permission to have their own feelings rather than performing the ones they think you want. If they want to make a card, let them. If they don’t, don’t force it.

Q: I’m a father myself, and Father’s Day reminds me of my own father’s failures. I worry I’m repeating them.

A: The fact that you are asking the question puts you in a different category than your father. Awareness is the first variable in breaking generational patterns. Research on intergenerational transmission of parenting shows that parents who can articulate a coherent story about their own childhoods — including the painful parts — are far less likely to repeat them than parents who minimize or dissociate. Therapy that focuses on this specific work is well-established and effective.

Q: My father has dementia and no longer recognizes me. Is it still worth visiting on Father’s Day?

A: The visit is rarely for the person with advanced dementia in the way it once was; it is for the part of them that still responds to tone, touch, and music, and for you. Many adult children describe a slow-motion grief that begins long before the death itself, sometimes called ambiguous loss. Going, or not going, are both defensible choices. Whichever you make, do it intentionally rather than out of guilt.

Q: My father was abusive. I have not seen him in twenty years. Why does Father’s Day still bother me?

A: Because the trauma response is stored in the body, not in the calendar. Reminders of unresolved trauma can produce real physiological symptoms — elevated heart rate, intrusive thoughts, sleep disruption — long after contact has ended. This does not mean the estrangement was wrong; it means the original injury was real and the nervous system still remembers. Trauma-focused therapy can substantially reduce this reactivity.

Q: How do I support a partner who has a hard time with this holiday?

A: Do not try to fix it. Ask what they want — company, distraction, solitude, or simply acknowledgment — and believe them. Avoid the well-meaning but unhelpful reframes (“at least you have me,” “try to focus on the good”). The most useful sentence is often the simplest: “I know this is a hard day. I’m here.”

Father’s Day is an emotional Rorschach test. For some it is straightforward joy. For others it is grief, anger, longing, relief, or a confusing mixture of all of them. None of these reactions are pathological. They are signals worth listening to.

If your reactions to this holiday are intense enough to disrupt sleep, work, or relationships — or if you find yourself replaying old wounds without resolution — it may be worth a structured conversation with a clinician. Father wounds, paternal grief, and estrangement-related distress are among the most common reasons adults seek therapy in midlife. They are also among the most treatable.

Whatever this Sunday looks like for you, you are not alone in finding it complicated.

For those navigating complicated feelings around fatherhood — whether as adult children, partners, or fathers themselves — professional evaluation can help clarify what is grief, what is trauma, what is depression, and what is simply being human. Comprehensive Psychological Services (WeCanHelpOut.com) offers individual evaluation and treatment to help you understand what you are carrying and decide what to do with it.