Steven LaChance Blog

These are thoughts from the quiet moments in the morning, from a night that was too long.

Sometimes the quiet in the early morning gets loud enough that I finally let myself say it. Not out of frustration. Not as a defense. Just because it is true.

I did my best.

I was a very young father. And with youth comes a lack of wisdom. I raised three children as a single dad while I was still figuring out who I was. Learning as I went. Carrying a responsibility that never waited for me to catch up. In some ways, my kids raised me.

My goal was always to protect them as best I could. And that was not easy as a gay man back then. I had to sacrifice parts of myself to make sure we were safe, to give them room to grow without carrying the weight of my own truth before the world was ready for it.

Love was never something I rationed. It was something I leaned on, or at least I tried to. But there was always so much going on underneath everything. Things I did not yet have language for. I was trying to learn how to love myself inside all of it, because in some ways I felt unworthy, and the world had a way of reinforcing that feeling.

I did not always get it right. Some of the ways I was wrong were deeply human. I can see those moments now with clarity. Not as accusations, but as memories that still matter, because love was present even when it was imperfect.

I once told my grown children, now parents themselves, that there is no version of this where you do not make mistakes. What matters is that you keep showing up, that you stay present, that your children know they are loved even when you fall short.

What stays with me is not a tally of sacrifices or decisions. It is the simple truth that I showed up with the heart I had at the time. Everything I did came from wanting them to be safe. To feel anchored. To know they were not alone.

There were family wounds. Old resentments. People carrying their own damage and passing it along, sometimes intentionally, sometimes without even realizing it. Some harm came from cruelty. Some came from fear. Some came wrapped in good intentions. And some came from a few people who simply did not have the capacity for empathy. All of it layered on top of lives that were already fragile.

By then, a great deal of damage had already been done to all of us. It felt like trying to piece our lives back together with paper clips instead of glue. I carried anger. I carried betrayal. Ordinary human emotions you try to push down so they do not spill onto the people you love. But they always find their way out, usually in the wrong moments.

I am not trying to explain how things became what they are now. I am not trying to resolve anything here. This is just me standing in the truth of my own life and letting it be spoken.

Looking back, it almost feels like a dream. There are moments when I shiver at how fragile we were moving through it all. We were navigating dangerous waters without fully understanding what surrounded us. I think it is the danger you cannot see while you are inside it that stays with me now.

That we made it through to the other side at all feels, in many ways, like a blessing.

I raised three children as a single father while walking through things most people never see from the outside, held together by fragile pieces, paper clips instead of glue, staying human when it would have been easier to harden, staying present when disappearing would have hurt less, keeping love alive even when I was exhausted and unsure, standing where I was with what I had, and continuing forward anyway.

I did my best.