Episode Details

God Said I Am Loved, But I Got Daddy Issues

God told me I was loved. But believing Him was harder than I expected.

Because if my own father could leave me, how was I supposed to believe that God wouldn't? If the first man I ever loved broke my heart, how could I trust anyone else with it?

In this episode, I open up about my "daddy issues" and how my father's absence affected far more than my relationship with him. As a little girl, I didn't have the words to explain abandonment, so I created my own explanations. I learned to be strong. I learned not to depend on people. I learned to take care of myself and everyone around me. And without realizing it, those childhood survival lessons became adult beliefs about who I was and how love worked.

We also have an important and vulnerable conversation about the different ways father wounds can show up in a woman's life. My friend Abi joins me to courageously share her own story of surviving sexual abuse by her father and how that experience affected her life, relationships, and healing journey.

Our stories are different, but they reveal something important: father wounds are not one-size-fits-all, and neither are their effects.

This episode is about more than "daddy issues." It's about the stories we learned from the people who were supposed to love and protect us—and what happens when those stories conflict with what God says about us.

God said, "You are loved."

Now I had to learn how to believe Him.