The Fathers In Our Lives
by Agnieszka Wolsoncroft
Yesterday was Father’s Day in Australia.
We were very busy in our house from early in the morning. Anya had decided, with complete certainty, after watching the 'Father's Day' episode of Bluey for the hundredth time, that Daddy was getting an omelette for breakfast. She cracked the eggs herself and seasoned them — very serious, very focused, very much in charge. Mummy quietly handled the stove, because eight is enthusiastic but eight is also not quite ready for that part yet. Anya set the table, served the plate, and stood back with the satisfaction of someone who has accomplished exactly what she set out to do. When David walked through the door from the gym, breakfast was waiting. The day started with joy and laughter, the way the best days do.
But I know that not all Father’s Days are easy to celebrate. And not by everyone. Some of us are missing someone today. Some of us are carrying something complicated. Some of us are celebrating quietly, privately, in ways that don’t make it into photographs.
This post is for all of us. This is my version. And like most true things, it is made up of more than one story.
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If you have been reading this blog for a while, you will already know my Dziadek a little. My grandfather appeared in an earlier post — the one about the things we carry from the people we love, and the walks I still take with the ones who are no longer here. But on Father’s Day, he deserves his own proper moment.
When I think of the father figure who shaped me most completely, I think of Dziadek. My grandfather.
He took me to the forest the way other grandfathers take children to toy shops or football games. To him, the forest was the greatest gift he could give. He knew where every wild mushroom grew, which ones to pick and which to leave alone, how to read the forest floor the way some people read books. He knew where the blackberry bushes hid their sweetest fruit, where the blueberries clustered low to the ground. And the wild strawberries — so small you could barely see them, but the smell. There is nothing in the world that smells like a wild strawberry found in a Polish forest on a warm summer morning.
He taught me to move quietly. Really quietly — the kind of quiet that comes from slowing your whole self down, your thoughts, your breath, your footsteps — so we wouldn’t spook the red squirrels. He showed me how woodpeckers store their acorns. He taught me to pay attention to what was already there, if you were still enough to see it.
I have walked in forests all over the world since then. Perth bushland. English countryside. Thailand’s tropics. I always take him for walks with me.
I show him: look, Dziadek. Look at this tree. Look at this bird I don’t know the name of. You would know its name.
He died when I was twenty-five. I was living in London, lost in the particular way your mid-twenties can make you lost. I had no tools yet for grief, no practice, no language. What I had was instinct. And my instinct said: go back to the forest. Walk the paths he showed you. Smell the wild strawberries. Move quietly so you don’t spook the red squirrels.
That instinct, I later understood, was the beginning of the TAG Method. Before I had a name for it. Before I knew I was doing anything deliberate. He gave me that too, without knowing it.
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My own father was more complicated. Argumentative, difficult at times — the way fathers sometimes are when they are carrying things they don’t know how to put down. But in his last years, something softened. Our conversations became good. Peaceful. Especially after Anya arrived in our lives, something in him gentled toward joy.
The last time we spoke before he died, we talked about Anya. About her passport, about how much fun she would have in Bali. A few days before he passed, we sent him a video from Bali — Anya singing, smiling big for Babcia and Dziadek on Grandparents Day.
He died on a Tuesday morning in January. I was brushing my teeth, getting ready for work. The phone rang. My mother’s voice, broken. I sat on the rim of the bathtub and couldn’t move.
But beneath the shock, something unexpected: peace. A deep, settled knowing that he was home now. Really home. That the pain and the anger that had shadowed his last years were finished, and what remained was love. Only love.
I said: see you soon, Tata. Because that’s not goodbye, that’s what I believe.
His passing was the reason I started writing again in earnest. The reason this blog exists. The reason you are reading these words now. He gave me that, too — without knowing it, without planning it, from the other side of the world on a Tuesday morning. Grief cracked something open in me that has not closed since. I am grateful for it.
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This Father’s Day, Anya was very clear about what she wanted to do.
On Thursday, at the special Father’s Day stall at school, she chose David an apron. It’s blue and it says: ‘ She brought it home very pleased with herself. This morning, she told him ‘If your black one gets dirty, you’ll have one to swap.’ Entirely practical and entirely Anya.
Then she made him a card — a number one trophy on the front, because obviously. And together we baked a chocolate-banana cake, which she decorated with strawberries herself, with the focus and precision she brings to everything that matters to her.
She loves him so much. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever watched — the way this little girl, who came to us from the other side of the world, has claimed David as her daddy with her whole heart. He is funny. He makes her laugh. They have jokes that only the two of them understand, the way fathers and daughters do. He gives her piggyback rides and pushes her on the flying fox at the playground until she is shrieking with delight. He tells her she is beautiful. He means it every single time.
When Anya first came home from Thailand, they did bubbles together. Sitting on the back step, the two of them, blowing bubbles into the Perth afternoon while she learned that this house was safe and this man was hers. Something in her settled during those bubble sessions. Something in him did too, I think.
He is a very happy dad. This morning I wrote in my daily gratitude practice that Father’s Day is about the jokes, the teasing, the mischief — but also the warmth, the safety, the security, the enormous amounts of hugs and kisses, and that undeniable love from the very first sight. That is David and Anya. That is exactly what it looks like, every single day.
He works from home, which means he has been Leia and Gizmo’s constant companion too — Leia for nine years, Gizmo for eight. Just the three of them, day after day, in the quiet of the house. When Leia passed two weeks ago, David grieved her deeply. She was his girl too. They had spent more ordinary hours together than anyone.
When my father died in January and the phone rang at 7am on a Tuesday, David appeared in the bathroom doorway, took one look at my face, and said: “Three tickets?” No questions. No hesitation. Just: what do you need and how do we get it.
That is who he is. That is the father Anya got. And she knows it. She drew him a number one trophy and she is absolutely right.
Fatherhood is not always one shape. Sometimes it is a grandfather with wild strawberries. Sometimes it is three tickets, no questions asked.
Father’s Day is not one shape. And it is not always easy.
Some of us are celebrating a father who is still here, still wonderful, still the person we call first. Some of us are missing one who is gone — recently or long ago, with grief that is still sharp or grief that has become something we simply carry. Some of us are thinking of a grandfather, an uncle, a teacher, a friend — someone who stepped into the space and filled it with exactly what was needed. Some of us are doing the fathering today, and doing it beautifully, even on the days when it doesn’t feel that way.
And some of us are sitting with something complicated — a relationship that was never simple, an absence that shaped us whether we wanted it to or not, a grief that doesn’t have a clean ceremony to mark it.
All of that belongs here. All of it is real. And all of it, I believe, can be held with gratitude — not because everything was perfect, but because something was given, even in the hardest stories, that made us who we are.
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Thanksgiving. Appreciation. Gratitude.
Thanksgiving (Action):
Today, do one small thing to honour a father figure in our lives — present or gone, near or far, simple or complicated. A phone call. A card. A walk in a place they loved. A quiet moment of acknowledgement that they were here, and that their being here mattered. That is Thanksgiving: the act of recognising what was given.
Appreciation (Awareness):
Notice what we carry from them. The things they taught us without knowing they were teaching. The way we move through a forest, or make a decision in a crisis, or show up for the people we love. We are full of the people who shaped us. Appreciation is taking a moment to see them there.
Gratitude (Feeling):
Let ourselves feel grateful for the love that came to us — in whatever form it came, from whatever direction, in whatever imperfect and human and real way it arrived. A grandfather with wild strawberries. A father who watched his fish and softened in his last years. A husband who said three tickets and meant it. Gratitude doesn’t require a perfect story. It just requires a true one.
What we focus on expands. Today, let us focus on the love that shaped us. However it came. Whoever brought it.
Happy Father’s Day to David, who shows up every single day.
And to Dziadek, who took me to the forest and taught me everything that matters — I still take you with me. I always will.
And to Tata — see you soon.
With love and gratitude,
Agnieszka
If this post found you in a tender place today — if Father’s Day is complicated or carries grief — the 7-Day TAG Gratitude Reset is a gentle place to begin finding your footing. It starts with one memory. One true thing. That’s always enough.
Come back in a fortnight — I’ll be writing about the people who changed my life without knowing it. Not just the obvious ones. The quiet ones. The ones who never knew what they gave me, and yet I carry it still. I think you’ll have someone like that too. See you then.
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