Being a single parent is something that blows my mind. I can’t imagine the strength, perseverance, and all-around toughness. It really is an unbelievable thing, to all the single parents out there I have nothing but respect and admiration for you guys. Richard Johnson became a father in January of 2015 when his daughter Persephone was born. Like any new parents, things took adjusting to. The new parents quickly realized things were more difficult than they had imagined. Within a month of their daughter being born Persephone’s mother fled with her to California without telling Johnson. She eventually changed her mind about wanting to be a mother and threatened to put her daughter up for adoption unless he came immediately and picked up his daughter.
Like any good father would the 21-year old jumped immediately on a plane and went to get his daughter. He picked up his daughter and brought her home, soon after they arrived the realities of single parenthood set in. He quickly realized that he was in no way prepared to raise a daughter alone. Richard believes the mother abandoning the family has a lot to do with her dealing with postpartum depression. Richards quickly realized he was alone and absolutely terrified. He was facing the fact that he had to raise his child by himself. Luckily, he stumbled across a Facebook page called ‘Life of Dad’.
This gave Richard an opportunity to see that he isn’t the only single dad out there going through similar struggles. He saw that there are people just like him out there being great fathers, so he had no excuse to be anything but. He decided to straighten up his life and build the best possible life for his daughter and himself. He even shared his story on ‘Life of Dad’ and his message is a touching one.
My name is Richard Johnson, and I’m a single father to a beautiful little girl named Persephone.
Her mother left about a month after she was born.
We still don’t know exactly why, but we suspect postpartum depression played a part.
In the first few weeks of it being just her and me, I stumbled upon your page by accident.
I was so nervous and scared about being a father in general, but now I was a single father and had to fulfill two roles. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
I had read every ‘new parent’ book I could find and clocked in over 1,000 hours in YouTube videos from everything to braiding hair and painting nails to theories on how to deal with common parental issues.
I then started to watch your page more closely and saw that there were other fathers out there who were in similar predicaments as me.