She wrote the discussion board and asked for input -- about how to talk about this missing man in her life, about how to remind her of her origin story, about how to talk about the anonymous donor now that she was older than she was in previous discussions. One of the women who responded was Lily, who offered this great input:

'I'm sorry you're going through this. One thing to realize is that you don't necessarily have to deal with all aspects of her conception. One thing you may want to do is talk to her about why she misses her "daddy", ask her what she wants to do with him, etc. You may find that she misses going to the park and to the swings, or having a pizza night or something not quite as big as it sounds to you. Maybe at school there are a lot of fathers coming in to show-and-tell and she wants to participate. Maybe she's getting mad that you don't let her watch enough television and thinks he'll be more fun. The thing that she misses him for may be quite solvable.

The other thing is that there was a person in her life who is now gone. She doesn't have the greatest frame of reference for terminology, so "Daddy" is what she settled on to call him. She's not going to know or care about anonymous donors at this point. I'd focus less on her use of the term "daddy" which at her age is more angst-ridden for you than for her, and focus on helping her deal with her sense of loss for the person who is gone. What would you say if one of her best friends or an uncle moved away? What would you say if that person deployed to a war zone? This may not be the time to reinforce that "we don't have a daddy" but instead to figure out how to make more connections and how to deal with loss.'

What about you? Do you have thoughts to share on the subject?

Mikki