Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between. 

What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way. 

This week, Amina*, a 19-year-old woman, discusses her relationship with her father, her discovery of a whole other family on social media, and how growing up has shaped her perspective on relationships.

Let’s start from the beginning. What’s your relationship with your father like?

Honestly? I keep saying I don’t know my father, and he doesn’t know me. As a child, I lived with my grandparents, and from the time I was about 1 to 8, he visited quite often. It could be once every three months, but he visited. These visits would consist of him bringing clothes and food items, and then we’d discuss things for about an hour or two before he left. That was it. He’d sit down, ask me surface-level questions about school, maybe tell me to behave, and then he was gone again.

When I got to secondary school, things changed, and he didn’t visit as often, just a few times. I remember that from about 2018, I didn’t see him for five straight years till he randomly visited in 2023. That was the last time I saw him, actually.

Five years without seeing your own father? That’s a long time, especially during your teenage years.

Exactly. And the thing is, during those years, I was changing so much. I was becoming a whole different person, going through puberty, dealing with teenage emotions, trying to figure out who I was. And he just… wasn’t there. He missed everything. My first day of secondary school, my birthdays, my struggles, my achievements. Everything.

When he showed up in 2023, it felt like a stranger had walked into my life. We sat there trying to make small talk, and I realised we had nothing to say to each other. No shared memories, no inside jokes, no real connection. Just this awkward silence between two people who share blood but nothing else.

That must have been so strange and uncomfortable. Why weren’t you living with him in the first place?

Nobody has really given me an accurate answer as to why I’m not with him. But I think I’m grateful I didn’t grow up with him now, lol. Growing up, I thought my grandparents were my actual parents. But as a child, I was pretty curious, and the age difference between my aunt, the lastborn of my grandparents, and me didn’t make sense. So I asked my grandpa, and he explained that my mum had died. My grandma was really angry. 

She was angry that he told you?

I think she was angry that I was asking questions, that I was starting to piece things together. Maybe she wanted to protect me from that pain for as long as possible. At the time, I was still pretty young, so I didn’t think too much about not staying with my dad. But as a teenager, I began to question it. Like, okay, my mum died, but where was my father? Why wasn’t he the one raising me?

Right. Your mother passed away, so why weren’t you living with your father?

Exactly! And nobody wanted to answer that question directly. They’d change the subject or give vague responses. It was like this big secret everyone was protecting, but I was the one living with the consequences of it. I was the one without a father.

And then I found out something else. My father got married to a second wife whom I never met, and had two daughters, twins, with her. We found out through social media that she died some years later. Then, when my cousins found them on social media around 2022, I discovered they were living with their mum’s family.

Wait, so your father’s second wife also died, and those children are also living with their mother’s family, not with him?

Yes! Can you imagine? This man has a pattern. Two dead wives, and both times he just… left his children with their mothers’ families. It’s like he collects families and then abandons them when things get difficult. When I found out about my sisters, it wasn’t even shocking. It was just confirmation of who he really is.

That’s such a painful pattern to see repeated. Have you reached out to your sisters?

We’ve connected on social media, but it’s complicated. We’re all dealing with our own abandonment issues from the same man. Sometimes I wonder what he tells himself to justify this. Does he sleep well at night, knowing he has three daughters scattered across different households, all of us growing up without him?

What She Said: I Had a Baby So My Dying Mother Could Meet Her Grandchild

I’m sorry. How would you describe your current relationship with him?

My dad and I barely talk to each other. Our chats mainly consist of me asking for money and him sending me receipts. Our relationship feels transactional. Not feel, actually, it is. If he saw himself as a parent, I think he might have to do some introspection about what being a parent entails.

When you say “sending receipts,” what do you mean?

Tuition receipts, mainly. He pays for school fees, and that’s basically it. No “how are you doing?” No “how’s school?” Just receipts. Like he’s fulfilling a contract, not raising a daughter. It’s so cold and mechanical. Sometimes I wonder if he even saves my number in his phone or if he just has me listed as “daughter 1” or something.

That sounds incredibly lonely. Has there been a specific moment that really drove home how absent he is?

Yes. When I was 12, I was diagnosed with scoliosis. I needed surgery. I asked for money from some of the money my mum left for me since he was a signatory to the account. He told me that scoliosis was not something that happened in our family, and where I could possibly have got it from. He said my grandparents were the ones pushing me to ask for such things, and that a 12-year-old would not know all that. That was it. He never followed up on the conversation.

He dismissed a serious medical diagnosis? Just like that?

Just like that. He made it seem like I was making it up, as if I were being manipulated by my grandparents to scam him or something. A 12-year-old child with a spinal condition, and his response was basically “that’s not real.” My aunt and grandma took out loans for me to have my surgery. I was in the hospital for a month plus, and to date, my father has no idea I went through such a life-threatening surgery.

He doesn’t know you had the surgery?

He has no idea. I could have died on that operating table, and he wouldn’t have known until someone told him. A month in the hospital, weeks of recovery, learning to walk again, dealing with the pain and the fear. He missed all of it because he couldn’t be bothered to follow up on a conversation about his daughter’s spine literally curving.

That’s when I really understood that he doesn’t see me as a person. I’m just a responsibility he can check off his list by paying school fees. Anything beyond that? Not his problem.

I’m sorry. How has all of this affected the way you see men and relationships?

Unfortunately, I have also become emotionally unavailable myself. Sorry to anyone who has had to deal with that. The stories I’ve heard about my dad and how he was to my mum really inspire me to stay single. But yeah, I find it hard to believe men now, and I fully believe that marriage makes you lose autonomy over your life as a woman.

What kind of stories did you hear about how he treated your mother?

I’ve heard bits and pieces over the years from my grandparents and aunts. About how he wasn’t there for her, how he was distant even when she was alive. When she got sick, he didn’t show up the way a husband should. It’s as if he has a pattern of disappearing when things get hard, when people need him most. And my mum… she deserved better. She deserved a partner who would fight for her and be there.

You’ll Also Love: I Got Pregnant, and My Sister-in-Law Made My Life a Living Hell

So you see marriage as a trap?

Kind of, yeah. I see how my mum’s life ended, abandoned by her husband even in death, because he couldn’t even keep their daughter. I see my stepmom, whom I never met, and the same thing happened to her. Two different women, same outcome. It makes me think that giving yourself to a man, trusting him with your life, is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Does this affect your own romantic relationships?

Oh yes. In fact, I sometimes sabotage my relationships. I’m always going in with the mindset that, within this specific window of time, this person will leave me, and if they end up staying, I try to sabotage it by leaving first. So now, I’m trying to just steer clear of relationships and situationships, lol.

You leave before they can leave you?

It’s as if I have a timer in my head. “Okay, we’ve been together for three months, he should be leaving soon.” And when he doesn’t, instead of being happy, I panic. I start picking fights, becoming distant, finding flaws that probably aren’t even there. I create the ending I’m expecting because at least that way I’m in control of it.

That sounds exhausting.

It is. It’s so exhausting. And I know it’s not fair to the people I’m with. They’re probably genuine, they probably actually care, but I can’t let myself believe that. Because if I believe it and then they leave, as my father left, I don’t think I could survive that.

Have you considered therapy or exploring these feelings?

I don’t have an answer to this yet. Right now, I’m just trying to be honest with myself about it. I know I have issues. I know I need help. But I’m also 19 and still trying to figure out how to navigate all of this.

That’s fair. Do you think you’ll ever forgive your father?

Forgive him? No, I’m still very much angry, and I think I’ll hold that anger in my heart forever. He doesn’t deserve forgiveness. He’s not even sorry. You can’t forgive someone who doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong. He probably thinks he’s a great father because he pays school fees. Meanwhile, I had major surgery, and he doesn’t even know about it.

That anger is valid. What would you say to other young women who are dealing with absent or deadbeat fathers?

Your father might have been a shitty person, but don’t let that define you at all. You are not him, you are better than him, and you can create a whole life for yourself where he doesn’t matter at all. I’m still working on this myself, but I’m trying to remember that his failures don’t have to be my story. I can break this cycle. I can be different. We all can.

If you want to share your own story with us, please fill out this form.