Many of you who read this will be fathers and you will be spending some or all of fathers’ day with your children. This is a day to celebrate your role, a role that all too often is not only overlooked and underestimated, but undermined and maligned.

This is a day for all of you to be thanked for all that you have done for your children, whether it was sacrificing precious time (that you would rather have spent with them) working to ensure that there was bread on the table, or spending a weekend building a doll’s house.

This day is for all fathers.

This day is to dispel the negative and terribly wrong stereotypes surrounding fathers.

This day is to remember that children need love and care from both their mothers and their fathers.

This day is to acknowledge the selfless love and sacrifice of our own fathers.

For some of you though, this will not be a happy day, for you will not have any contact with your children. All you will have is a cherished memory, a dog-eared photograph, or perhaps a three-year old card, handwritten in crayon with bad spelling, which is now stained with tears.

If you are a father and this day overwhelms you with sadness, remember that even though they cannot be with you, your children will still be thinking of you on this very special day.

If you are a father, have a happy fathers’ day. You deserve it.

If you are not a father, please pass this on to someone who is…. maybe your own father.

Happy fathers’ day.