Between Two Worlds: A Daughter’s Struggle for Her Father’s Place at Her Wedding

“He’s my dad, Mom. He’ll be at my wedding whether you like it or not.” I could feel my voice trembling, but I refused to look away. My mother, Carol, stood in the kitchen, her hands clenched so tightly around a coffee mug I thought it might crack. The scent of burnt toast hung in the air, the old clock on the wall ticking too loudly, marking every second of the standoff.

“After everything he did? After he left us? Katie, I can’t believe you’d do this to me.” Her eyes flashed, but I saw the hurt beneath the anger. I wanted to reach for her, to comfort her, but I also felt like screaming.

“Mom, you always tell me to forgive. You always say people make mistakes.” My voice softened, but my heart pounded. “Why can’t I—?”

“Because he’s not just anybody, Katie. He’s your father. He’s the one who—” She stopped, biting her lip, turning away to stare out the window at the gray November sky. “You don’t know what it was like.”

But I did know. Or at least, I thought I did. I remembered the night he left: me at the top of the stairs, clutching my favorite stuffed bear, watching my parents shout. I remember the door slamming, Mom sobbing on the kitchen floor afterward. I was eight then, and in the years since, Dad became a kind of ghost—absent, mysterious, blamed for everything that went wrong.

Except he wasn’t always a villain. Not to me. When I turned sixteen, Dad sent me a birthday card. It was late and creased, but inside was a note: “I’m proud of you, Katie. I’m always here.” I hid it in my diary, wanting to believe it was true.

When I got pregnant at twenty-one, barely out of college, Dad reappeared in my life. At first, I thought he’d changed. He took me to lunch, asked about the baby’s father (who was already gone), offered to help. Then, when I told him I planned to finish my degree, he said, “No daughter of mine is raising my grandchild in a dorm room.”

He started calling every day, asking where I was, who I was with, if I was eating right. When I told him I wanted to move in with my best friend, he got angry. “You’re not taking my grandchild anywhere,” he insisted. Then he stopped sending money. Overnight, I went from feeling cared for to feeling controlled, like a pawn in his game.

So I turned back to Mom—the one who never left, who worked two jobs so I could go to soccer camp, who made pancakes for dinner on days when the world felt too hard. But even she had her rules, her way of loving me that sometimes felt like a cage. “You can’t trust him, Katie,” she’d say. “He’ll break your heart again.”

But what if I didn’t want to choose? What if I wanted both of my parents, even if they were broken, even if they broke me, too?

Now, at twenty-five, wedding invitations piled on my desk, I faced another impossible decision. My fiancé, Mark, tried to be supportive. “It’s your day, Katie. You get to invite who you want.” But he didn’t understand the way my stomach twisted every time my mom mentioned seating charts or my dad texted about walking me down the aisle.

One night, I sat on the porch with my younger brother Joey, the only person who really got it. “You think I’m making a mistake?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.

He shrugged. “They both screwed up. But they both love you. I just hope they love you enough to let you do what you need to do.”

But did they? Or did they just want me to choose sides?

Three weeks before the wedding, Mom found Dad’s name on the guest list. She stormed into my room, waving the paper like a white flag dipped in gasoline.

“You didn’t even ask me,” she hissed.

“Because I knew you’d say no,” I shot back. “This is my wedding, Mom. My life.”

“Your life? You think he cared about your life when he left us with nothing? When I worked nights at the diner, just so you could have shoes for school?”

“Don’t do this,” I begged. “Don’t make me choose.”

She dropped the list, her hands shaking. “You already have.”

For days, she wouldn’t speak to me. I called Dad, hoping for comfort. Instead, he said, “If your mother tries anything, I’ll leave. I’m not causing a scene, Katie.”

But the wedding wasn’t about them. It was about me—or at least, that’s what everyone kept telling me. So why did I feel like a child caught in a storm she didn’t make?

The night before the wedding, Mom came to my room, her eyes swollen from crying. She sat on the edge of my bed, picking at the quilt she made for my high school graduation.

“I just wanted you to have a better life,” she whispered.

“I know, Mom.” I took her hand. “But I need to find my own way. Even if it hurts.”

At the wedding, Dad stood in the back of the church, his hands folded. He looked older, smaller than I remembered. Mom sat in the front pew, her back straight, lips pressed in a thin line. When I walked down the aisle, I did it alone. Neither parent on my arm. My choice. My life.

Afterward, as the band played and guests danced, I watched my parents on opposite sides of the room, each surrounded by their own circle of friends, each glancing at me when they thought I wasn’t looking.

I wondered if it was possible to belong to both worlds, to love two people who hated each other, to be loyal and free at the same time.

So I ask you, does forgiveness mean letting go—or holding on, even when it hurts? Can you ever really choose between the people who made you who you are?