So the letter came.

You put it on the bureau for your mom, but you just had a feeling it was something bad. Something tragic. Something you might never survive. Hands know when they hold a thing like that.

So it was not entirely surprise that met you when your mom knocked on your bedroom door and beckoned you and your sister out into the kitchen, where your brother was already waiting, lured from the walls of his room still shaking with the angry chant-singing of Korn’s Jonathan Davis. It was not entirely unexpected when she looked at the three of you, swallowed hard and announced that your dad wouldn’t be coming back. It was not entirely new news that he had a new family now.

There was, after all, that year in a place where he promised to live with you all, when he only came home enough nights to count on one hand.

And yet is something like this ever entirely expected?

You try to stay strong and brave and hopeful, but if one were to look deep down inside, they would see how everything is breaking all apart, smashing against the mountains of divorce and betrayal and abandonment that would take a miracle to move. You take it calmly, of course, but you are anything but calm inside. You try to let it roll right off, but it’s really rolling you flat.

There are no words for pain like this.

So you go back to the room you share with your little sister, the room with dirt that won’t come off the windows no matter how hard you scrub because they’re a thousand years old, the room with rust-colored carpet that smells like ancient days, the room with walls so thin you can hear your mom crying in the next room when everyone else is asleep.

You lie there, listening, thinking, trying to figure out how to breathe in a black tunnel like this one. You think about the three moves in three years, making new friends in places you never wanted to be, and at least you’re done with that. You think about the year you spent up north, in your dad’s home place, where promises came and went like they were nothing more than flakes of snow falling from a southern sky in summer.

You think about that new family.

What do they have that you don’t? Why do they get to keep him? What about you, specifically, made him leave?

This is the way your 11-year-old mind works out all the knots. It twists more intricate knots. But this is the truth for you, that your presence has been replaced by those whose presence is better.

One day you will know that there are many factors that go into a complicated divorce like this one, but all you know right now, lying in a daybed beside the trundle your sister never pushes in when she’s finished sleeping, is your own truth: You were not good enough to make him stay.

You will let that sink all the way down deep. You will let it burn your joy to ashes. You will cry and rage and wonder. And then?

You will carry on, because this is who you are.

But you will carry on with a bleeding wound that will crust and dry and weep at the most inconvenient of times. Like the first time you meet your dad’s new family. Like when the girl from school says you have a pointy nose. Like when that boyfriend who is not The One comes calling in another five years.

A heart that feels unwanted is a heart that turns hard. Yours was not meant to turn hard, but here it is bending. Breaking. Freezing solid.

So lean in close, and let me whisper your freedom: He did not leave because of you.

He did not leave because of you, sweet child. He didn’t. HE DID NOT LEAVE BECAUSE OF YOU.

(He did not leave because of you.)

It wasn’t your fault, child. You did nothing to make a marriage end like this. You did nothing to make him stay away. You did nothing to make him leave.

You are a good enough daughter.

You will spend too many years trying to prove this to every significant and insignificant person who comes sweeping into your life, and you will never really believe it yourself. I know how the wondering can worm its way inside, and I know how you can spend decades of your life trying to fight your way into something that looks like letting go. Something that looks like forgiveness. Something that looks like joy.

Tomorrow, when you return to school, you will see all those friends with their seemingly perfect lives, and you will wonder why some get to have parents who love each other forever and others, like you, live their lives with missing dads. You will be tempted to wish you could be them, wish you could be better, wish none of this had ever happened in the first place. This wishing will launch you into a black hole, and it will take strength you don’t think you have to climb back out.

That black hole will hold things like worry that your mom won’t make it as a single mom, even though she’s done fine the last few years with everything but the papers sealing divorce. It will hold things like a twister of self-hate every time he doesn’t call on your birthday (and he won’t). It will hold things like a day when you will have to choose who walks you down the aisle—the man who gave you your eyelashes or the man who raised you.

There is something else I know, now that I stand on the other side of it. It’s not easy to see from your vantage point, but one day far removed from this one, you will be glad for what this experience has taught you—things like resilience and love and forgiveness and mercy and hope. Mostly you will be glad for the person it shaped you to become.

You see, even in the black hole that is divorce, there is still light. There is still hope. Hold on to the light, and hold on to the hope. Keep it ever before you, as you walk through your hallways with peers who seem to have their perfect lives (but probably don’t) while yours is falling clean apart. Hold its warmth in the dead of night, when you wake up wondering what he’s doing right now, whether he loves his new daughter more, how you might possibly prove he made a mistake in his choosing.

Forget proving yourself altogether. You are already worthy of a father’s love, and you don’t have to do anything in the world to prove it. And there is a new dad coming, one who will love you just to love you, not because he gave you the color of your hair and the length of your legs. Let him love you. This is healing, too.

Sometimes we don’t recognize the light until we’re walking in the dark. And one day, when the dark comes to meet you again, when you’ve lost a beloved grandmother or your baby girl dies or you just wonder how you can possibly keep on keeping on, you will remember this first time the lights went out. How it made you stronger. How you changed. How you walked yourself out.

So hold on, child. Remember to breathe. Beat those voices back into gone, and cling to the truth:

You are a survivor.