A guy called Richard Johnson became a father for the first time in the beginning of 2015, when his lovely daughter entered the world.

Persephone was the name he and his partner chose for the baby, but a month later, the baby’s mother left both him and the infant behind.

In subsequent years, Johnson would share on a social networking site his experiences of adversity and how he triumphed over them via a combination of dogged determination and the encouragement of other members of the single father community.

Johnson claimed that he had a hunch that Persephone’s mother’s choice was the consequence of her suffering from post-partum depression in a post that he had submitted to the Facebook group called “Life of Dad” in November of 2015.

Johnson, who was just 21 years old at the time, quickly came to the conclusion that he did not know how he was going to take care of this kid by himself. On the other hand, he came into a group of other young dads who were also parenting their children by themselves and who were also unmarried.

It was a turning point for Johnson when he recognized that he did have the ability to take care of this lovely kid of his and that it was not impossible for him to still be an amazing father.  He told everyone in the group about his experience, and it caught on like wildfire.

“I had read every ‘new parent’ book I could find and put in over a thousand hours in videos on YouTube covering everything from how to braid hair and paint nails to ideas on how to cope with typical parenting concerns. ”

‘I then began to monitor the website more attentively and discovered that there were other dads out there who were in similar predicaments as myself. My daughter and I have come a long way, and I think it’s safe to say that we owe at least some of that progress to the folks who post on this website.

Because their story moved the hearts of so many people, Johnson decided to make his own Facebook profile under the name “The Johnson Family Experience by Persephone Lilith Johnson” in order to share all of the highs and lows of his life with his daughter.

Followers were overjoyed to read the latest updates on the father-daughter combination, who looked to be thriving in their adventure together. In December 2021, Johnson gave a moving update on his and Persephone’s “adventure of going from (being) lost to flourishing.”

When he started, he said, “Nearly seven years ago, my life broke apart, and I nearly gave up on everything, although we faced difficulties, we were able to overcome them all by working together.”

As we have both learned from one another, life will provide you with a great deal of adversity, but that is not the purpose. The thing that matters most is how you keep it after you’ve got it. Will you hold pain or will you hold joy? Everything rests on our shoulders.

We made the decision to be joyful, and we won’t ever give up on that.”