On making the effort, getting little back, and choosing to keep going anyway
by Mike, founder, SoulForge Community
A few weeks ago, I sent my kids a parcel.
This is something I do once every two months or thereabouts in accordance with the extremely limited contact order I have with them.
I’d recently been down to the River Thames on one of my mudlarking trips — hunting along the foreshore for whatever the river gives up. If you know anything about this nerdy pastime, you’ll know that most finds are fragments: pieces of old pottery, clay pipe stems, the occasional coin, if you’re lucky. That evening there was nothing that would make the evening news. But I had picked up a few things I thought might be interesting enough to send to my children ’up north’ – including a few pieces of what looked like ‘uranium glass’ which glows under ultraviolet light because of the radioactive pigment that was used in them before anyone knew about the dangers of radiation. In the letter I sent with the parcel I suggested to them that they could test the fragments in the school science lab. And there were a few small other items – interesting, oddly shaped bits of old pottery, that kind of thing.
I also sourced some specific ethnic food from local shops — things they had actually asked for. That took a bit of effort walking down to the right part of town. And then came several days of low-level stress when the parcel was delayed in the post, and I was left wondering whether the frozen food would defrost before it arrived, whether it would still be any good.
I did get a fairly quick reply to say that the parcel had arrived, but not much more. Then a couple of weeks later another brief message saying ‘thanks’. It was good to hear from them — it’s always good to hear from them. But the parcel wasn’t mentioned with any kind of specifics. No mention of the mudlarking finds - the uranium glass or the suggestion about the science lab. Neither about the frozen food, whether it had arrived safely, whether it had defrosted, whether they’d eaten it to no ill effect! To be fair my youngest did write to say they liked the sour sweets I’d included — which genuinely meant something to me, because I’d sourced those specifically knowing they likes them. But that was about it.
You end up feeling just a little bit unappreciated.
I’ve sat with that feeling, and I want to write about it honestly — because I think a lot of dads in situations like mine will know it exactly. The effort that goes into these gestures. The anxiety while they’re in transit. The hope that this time, something will land. And then the flatness when the response comes back and the thing you worked on simply isn’t mentioned.
Why the parcel matters more than it looks
The mudlarking thing wasn’t random. Before they went to live in another part of the country, I used to take my children on walks in the countryside where walking over newly ploughed fields we would keep our eyes on the ground — looking for anything unusual, anything that might be archaeological. It was something we did together occasionally. Nothing formal. Just a shared habit of attention, of looking for the interesting thing that might be hiding in plain sight. (I used to be an archaeology geek when I was a teenager).
The Thames trips are an updated version of that for me. Something I’ve added into my life over the last few years — a way of spending time outdoors, absorbing, looking. When I send the finds ‘up north’, I’m not just posting objects. I’m trying to bring my kids into my world a little. To show them what I’ve been doing. To help us reconnect to things we used to do together. To say: this is something I’m doing now and I thought you might find it interesting, because I remember that you did once.
That’s what the parcel is really carrying: I know you. I’m thinking of you. I went out of my way for you. Here’s a connection to our past. So the absence of acknowledgement isn’t just about manners. It’s about that message not landing — or landing somewhere I can’t see.
The three explanations I hold at once
When the response comes back flat, I find myself sitting with three possible explanations — and I’ve learned not to collapse too quickly into any one of them.
The first is the situation itself. They’ve been living in circumstances that, over years, may have shaped what they feel able to express toward me. Children who have been discouraged from showing enthusiasm about the absent parent don’t always know how to express it even when they feel it. The flatness in the response may not be the flatness in the heart, only a restrained expression.
The second is something harder to name. They have been through something genuinely difficult — something that wasn’t their choice and wasn’t their fault. Part of how they process that might involve a felt sense that I owe them something. That the effort I make is expected, not remarkable. That’s not an unreasonable thing for a child to feel, even if it’s hard to receive.
The third is simply: they’re teenagers. Most teenagers are not enthusiastic about things their parents do. Most teenagers don’t write thank you letters. Most teenagers respond to parcels with a shrug and get on with their lives. I know plenty of men with close, uncomplicated relationships with their children who would describe exactly the same dynamic. The non-response might just be fourteen and sixteen doing what fourteen and sixteen do.
I hold all three at the same time. I don’t know which one is operating. Probably all of them, in different proportions. Living with the ‘not-knowing’ is its own kind of discipline.
What you do with no motivation
But here is the honest question this raises: what keeps you going when the effort generates no feedback?
I’m not going to pretend it’s easy. There’s a real battle between the part of me that says keep going — they need to know I haven’t given up, the consistency itself is the message — and the part that asks why I’m bothering if it disappears into silence. That battle is real and it returns every time.
What I keep coming back to is this: I’m not doing it for the response. I’m doing it for the adults they’re going to become. The twenty-five-year-old versions of my kids, looking back, will know whether their father kept showing up or whether he gave up. That’s what the parcel is actually for. Not the children who received it and didn’t mention it. The adults who will remember, one day, that something kept coming regardless.
That’s not easy comfort. It requires doing the right thing with no reward, which is one of the harder things a man can do.
If you’re in this situation — if you also send letters that aren’t answered, or parcels that aren’t mentioned, and make the effort that seems to disappear — you’ll know the battle I’m describing. You’re not alone in it. And the fact that you’re still doing it says something about the kind of father you are.
Mike, founder, SoulForge Community
For more on showing up when there’s little coming back, see the Showing Up for Your Children section of the SoulForge Community resources at soulforge.org.uk/resources. And if you want to read about the broader grief of this kind of distance, Post 6 — Grief Without a Funeral — covers some of the same territory from a different angle.
SoulForge Community exists to support men navigating domestic abuse, parental alienation, and the family court system — and the longer work of rebuilding. Visit soulforge.org.uk.