For the first time since my wife died 5 years ago, I spoke about her with my daughter.

A week ago I came to reddit to get some advice about my 13 year old daughter. I made two threads--one here and one in r/relationships. The thread here dealt with telling my daughter about consent/rape/sexual assault. The thread there dealt with my inability to get over my wife's death.Very many people reached out to me and told me I needed to get to a therapist for both my and my daughter's sake. I took their advice. A friend of mine is a doctor who made a call to a friend of his and got me into an appointment with a therapist this past Tuesday.Since that very tough session I've been thinking of how badly my daughter must want to know about her mother and how much it hurts for her to see me so attached to the past.So I got up early this morning and made her favorite breakfast and after she ate I asked her if she wanted to know how her mother and I met. I feel ashamed that I let my daughter live 13 years without sharing this with her; especially after her mother left our lives so abruptly.My wife has been gone 5 years and today was the first time I initiated a conversation about her with my daughter. I put my pain before her needs and I feel like a shit father for it.I haven't seen my daughter so happy as when I told her the story of how we met. She was so excited she stopped me before I got into the meat of the story and ran and grabbed a picture of her mom from her college graduation and just looked at it the while I told her.She laughed and she cried and I realized just how badly she needed this.I made her a promise that before the end of this year, we'd finally clean out her mother's belongings and that she could keep anything she wanted. That made her very happy.I realized it's been so hard to talk to my daughter about her mother because she reminds me so much of her. She's so bright and joyful and kind. She has her mother's sense of humor and she looks so, so much like her.It hurts more than anything I can imagine but I have to let go of my wife. I just wish she could see how her daughter has grown. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2hPbyI6