Everyone knows the name Jennifer Aniston.
She made a name for herself as Rachel Green on Friends. Everyone on the planet has seen Friends, and everyone knows someone who was obsessed with it.
She also went on to star in Bruce Almighty and Marly And Me. Seems like her life was nothing but success so far.
Jennifer Aniston, however, had a difficult problem that many of us may not have known: her relationship with her father.
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John Aniston was father to the universally-known Friends star. But he wasn’t there for much of her life.
John Aniston left her and her mother when Jennifer was no older than 10.
Of course, that would be a lot for a 10-year-old to live with.
Though at that age, Jennifer didn’t fully grasp it either.
Her mother, actress Nancy Dow, had simply told her that her dad “would be gone a while.”
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Little Jennifer had no idea how long “a while” would be, though.
“She didn’t say he was gone forever. I don’t know if I blocked it, but I just remember sitting there, crying, not understanding that he was gone.” – said Jennifer
She had just returned from a birthday party too when her mother broke the news.
All in all, it proved to be a traumatizing and life-changing moment for Aniston.
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Being the innocent little girl she was, she had no idea why.
She wondered if she had done something to make him leave.
A traumatizing, depressing moment can feel so much worse when you think you had some responsibility in it.
And the weight of such a thought, even if untrue, would be incredibly painful to bear at her age.
Many of us are lucky that we get to come home to our parents.
You could say we even take it for granted sometimes.
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Then one day, without warning or announcing, John called her one day and asked if they could have dinner as father and daughter.
Seems like he still wanted to be in Jennifer’s life, even if it meant not living under the same roof.
During their dinner, Jennifer learned why he left.
John had explained that he had trouble with communication, something the actress corroborated when she shared the story.
John knew what he did, and he knew how it affected his daughter. The man did apologize to her.
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Even if it didn’t make everything better, it at least gave the actress some much-needed closure.
At 51, Jennifer Aniston forgave him. I’m sure that was a milestone in the healing process she’d been longing for.
She reconciled with her father. It’s good that she did it while he was still here too. John passed away on the 11th of November.
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When he passed, she wrote him a loving goodbye despite the troubled start to their relationship.
“I’ll love you ’till the end of time.” – she said about her father
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That closed a very important chapter of her life, but it thankfully had a sweet and happy ending.
It also takes a lot of strength to go through what Jennifer went through, and come out of it all with forgiveness and reconciliation.
Now you know she didn’t really have an ideal or easy life, despite her starring role in everyone’s favorite sitcom.
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