My dad like many Southern men is this very emotionally expressive person who isn't as articulate in words about his feelings as he is with breaking a chair or something like that.

From time to time I'll look back through the personal journals I've scribbled in throughout my life the keepers of my raw thoughts and emotions. The words poured forth after my dad died when I went through a divorce and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are so many what-ifs scribbled on those pages.

Dad was just an emotional wreck. He was drinking a lot of the time he was smoking a lot of pot. And because he takes certain medications the drinking was making him... you know he wasn't even present really.

As a dad I'm emotionally dedicated but I'm not 'figuring out their life plans'. But of course as I'm telling them about the rights of wrongs I'm thinking back to what I was like at their age.

As a father now I wouldn't do what my dad did because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.

The one thing that kept our family together was the music. The only thing that our family would share emotionally was to have our dad cry over something the kids did with music.

My dad's side of the family had lots of artists and musicians. There's an emotional quite sentimental quality to Slavic culture. It's very open it loves art it loves music it loves literature. It's very warm it's very up it's very down. I would celebrate that.

I've never heard my dad say a bad word about anybody. He always keeps his emotions in check and is a true gentleman. I was taught that losing it was indulgent a selfish act.

Great dad. Yeah he would ask me for money on birthdays and you know inappropriate times. And I just wrote him off like 'You're not a father.' I just learned you cannot emotionally invest in people who are not attainable.

We are biological creatures. We are born we live we die. There is no transcendent purpose to existence. At best we are creatures of reason and by using reason we can cure ourselves of emotional excess. Purged of both hope and fear we find courage in the face of helplessness insignificance and uncertainty.