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Today’s Author Highlight is author, memoirist, essayist, TED talk extraordinaire Acamea Deadwiler with an excerpt from her piece, Google Said I Suffered from a Syndrome. We’re honored to have such a prolific writer in our newsletter and we know you’ll enjoy this piece as much as we did.

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Google Said I Suffered from a Syndrome

Excerpt

by Acamea Deadwiler

Curiosity had taken control of my fingers when I typed “fatherless daughter” into Google. After almost three decades of not caring, or convincing myself I did not care, I wanted to know what psychologists and researchers thought of me. Even in my preparedness I was startled by the immediate result. Google guessed what I was about to type next and predicted the word “syndrome.”

Syndrome?

The term sent an offensive jolt up my spine. It made the effects of my fatherlessness sound so dire. Like some debilitating disorder. Like, I was broken.

It’s not that I was unaware of my divergence in comparison to daughters with dads. I just didn’t think I’d missed out on anything especially meaningful. Differences never appeared overt or serious to me. Maybe that’s because I never paid any much attention.

Still, different does not equal damaged. The nerve of those who fed this information to the internet. If I am burdened by a “condition,” when would my initial diagnosis have been?

When the man I called “Daddy” went away on Naval assignment long enough for me to lose my faith in him? Or when my mother explained to me that he wasn’t my daddy at all?

Perhaps it happened when I was eight years old, on the day I sat in front of a window waiting for my biological father to come and claim me.

Attempting to pinpoint the potential onset of an affliction, I hurried through my thoughts—doing 90 down the fast lane of a slow memory. It was only when I eased up on the gas, took my time, stopped and explored landmarks along my journey that I could see where it started to hurt and write into the wound.

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Questions with Todd

1. What influences—whether literary, cultural, or personal—shape your writing style?

   I love language. So, my writing style has been influenced by creators who you can tell choose every word of their stories carefully. In literature, writers Hanif Abdurraqib and Melissa Febos have been huge influences. I also am fascinated by producers like Shonda Rhimes whose shows are known for characters who deliver strong monologues and emotionally-charged scenes that somehow still feel controlled. I aim to craft art as impactful—that makes people feel something without the feeling overwhelming them.

2. How did revisiting these memories and emotions shape the writing process for you?

   Revisiting memories and emotions shaped my writing process in that it forced me to look at the events of my life as a whole, instead of individual parts. I was able to figure out how it’s all connected and could very much be established as a cohesive story.

3. How did it feel to confront the word ‘syndrome’—and did that reaction surprise you?

   It made me defensive, first and foremost. I didn’t like the weight that word carried and it kind of added to this idea that something was inherently broken inside of me due to circumstances beyond my control. The reaction didn’t surprise me because I don’t enjoy feeling helpless in any aspect of life. I still don’t know if I accept the notion of growing up fatherless resulting in a syndrome, but I understand it undoubtedly shaped me in ways I hadn’t considered.

4. What role do you think societal expectations and definitions play in shaping how we view ourselves?

   I think societal expectations and definitions play as large a role in shaping how we view ourselves as we allow it to. If we seek external validation or allow other people to tell us who we are, we’ll play into that. I’m a proponent of deciding who you want to be and working to become that person. I think life is a journey of designing ourselves.

5. People are very quick to judge that which they do not fully understand. What do you think is society’s biggest misconceptions about experiences like fatherlessness?

   Specifically for women, I think the biggest misconception is that those who’ve grown up fatherless are doomed to seek constant comfort in the arms of men. One of the most common "symptoms" of Fatherless Daughter Syndrome is considered promiscuity. We don’t always consider how it can actually push little girls to the other end of the spectrum, where they resist connection because they never got to build that muscle so to speak.

6. In writing this, did you discover anything about yourself that you didn’t realize before?

   I realized that my resistance to love and commitment was a defense mechanism, not a signal of my strength in aloneness.

7. What advice would you give to someone exploring their own wounds through writing?

   My advice would be to be honest, mainly with yourself. Also, I read something like, “write from the scars not the wounds.” You’re able to better and more healthily write about a painful subject once you’ve started to heal.

8. What’s next for you as a writer?

   I’m finishing a book about children and physical discipline. I also just started working on an essay collection with a central theme of identifying joy even in challenging circumstances. I want to be sure I’m able to do that and not accentuate the negative.

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