Quote

One day, you have a father who's always around, and then the next day, he's gone. I was too young to comprehend that. I actually thought he was going to come back.

My father was out of my life when I was pretty young - when I was 7 years old, he was gone. I didn't see him for the rest of my childhood.

I did not have a father. It was my mom who chose to be alone. She felt that she would be better off by herself with me after I was born.

When I was growing up my mother would say, 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.

I was just a kid and I didn't have a dad. That's hard, because when you're a kid, you blame yourself for everything. And I blamed myself for him not being around, for my parents not being together.

I didn't grow up around my father. I didn't really grow up around my mother, either. I was raised by a community of people. Spiritually speaking, my father is in Heaven, and that is who I look to for all my answers. And that's why my faith is very strong and why my passion is strong.

I didn't know who my daddy was until I was 10 or 12. Surprising as it may seem, he was living right across the street.

My father was never around. It was almost as if he didn't exist. I would tell my friends he was in Cleveland, on business. Sometimes, every six months or so, he would come by for dinner.

When you have a child, you think about your personal history and what you offer them as a larger narrative, and I realised I knew nothing about my father's circumstances other than what he'd told me.