Woke Up Fatherless is an online publication that anchors stories (fiction and non-fiction), experiences, and poetry about fatherlessness. Our content is predominantly geared toward women and the female perspective, but we happily publish content from the male perspective as well. As long as it is relevant to this community, we believe there is value in sharing regardless of gender.

WHAT WE PUBLISH

Fatherlessness is a broad topic and is often wrongfully categorized as only including abandonment. In avoiding the dangers of a single story, we want to hear from you about fatherlessness by way of abandonment, death, mental incapacitation, incarceration, and all other…

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I’d rather not make another decision about them. I wish we could take off and put on our minds like clothes, because some thoughts are seasonal and sometimes mental nakedness is liberating. Instead, we are often held hostage by our own consciousness, oscillating between two versions of the realities we believe in or want to create (or ones that have been created for us). When your inner voice is your commander in chief, how do you compete with that? I suppose obedience to that voice is measured by the magnitude of the…

A friend of mine recently posted a now deleted quote from a male author who was expressing his disdain for marriage, outrightly blaming the failure of these partnerships on women being “too much” and taking everything (physical and financial assets) in a divorce. While there were so many things wrong with the quote itself (I wish I retrieved it), the co-signs by mostly men and a few questionable women were louder than the opposition. The flames of ignorance moved so rapidly about the post that three times I thought to myself, “You can just stop, drop, and roll on to…

“Do you want to say hello?” …It’s usually how the awkward conversation starts, and that’s in the rare instance you’re asked and not told to “ke ke” with whomever is on the other end of the phone. For traditional millennials, communication is best served cold — through text messages, voicenotes, and any other method that allows for the manipulation of response times. But total eradication of the ostensibly vintage practice of voice calls is not possible and leaves some of us vulnerable to the most uncomfortable conversations with strangers — because that’s who they are, really.

The relative

Let’s start with one…

Try this quick exercise: Using a stopwatch, write down two physical traits and two personality traits you love about yourself. Make a note of the time it takes to complete your list. Now do the same thing, but this time, record what you dislike about yourself. Do you notice a difference? (Discuss your results in the comments)

About a year ago, two of my good friends, Rob and Thaksheela, challenged our book club to practice seven days of self-love by documenting one physical trait and one character trait that we admired about ourselves, on a daily basis. The exercise was…

I’m Leaving My Marriage For A Coffee Date

Guilty. That’s the verdict my conscience delivers on the mornings I skip devotion. Having been raised a Seventh-Day Adventist christian, starting any day without worship is an infraction. So, I often police my alleged missteps and tell myself, “just make sure you do it tomorrow morning.” Most times I’m just trying to check a box, literally. But if morning worship has become a ritual of accomplishment, why am I doing it? Simon Sinek is somewhere, jubilant that I may go on a tangential refrain of his book, Start with Why, though it is so relevant. At some point, I have…