if you didn’t, my dad’s missing from the second photo. as a kid, you don’t really understand the promises of marriage. you just see your parents, your heroes, and believe love is forever. when my parents split, I didn’t realize how much it shaped me. but now, as a husband and father, I see things differently. I understand how hard marriage can be, especially when you grow up without examples of what it’s supposed to look like. I don’t blame my parents for that. they did the best they could with what they knew. what I’ve learned is that healing doesn’t mean rewriting the past, it means choosing how the story continues. and that part is up to me. I’m grateful for what they taught me, both the beautiful parts and the painful ones, because they gave me the chance to build something new. we can’t change what we came from, but we can choose what grows from it.