5-Year-Old Who Lost Her Father Gives Her Grandad An Invitation To Her 'Daddy-Daughter' Dance
You're gonna need a box of tissues for this one!
@kdub1220 / TikTok A little girl is melting hearts on TikTok after she asked her grandfather a very important question.
Since her own father would be unable to attend a daddy-daughter dance with her, she invited her grandpa to do the honors and fill in as her date.
The five-year-old girl’s father died when she was young, so she asked her grandfather to take her to a ‘daddy-daughter’ dance.
Kesley Woolverton of Papillion, Nebraska lost her husband Mike on January 19, 2019. Their daughter, Austyn, was only a year old at the time.
Although life has had its challenging moments since then, there are many people in the mother and daughter’s life who step in when needed. One of those people is little Austyn’s grandfather. In a bittersweet moment viewed over 2 million times on TikTok, the little girl asks her grandfather to attend a daddy-daughter dance that her mother’s local gym was hosting.
Austyn presents her grandfather with a drawing of the two of them side by side before popping the question.
“There’s a Valentine’s Day dance,” she informs him. “We need our dad to go there. My dad is not going to go. Will you go with me?”
Thankfully, Grandpa gladly accepts the invitation while pulling his granddaughter into an embrace. “I would love to, Austyn! That would be the best!” he says. Woolverton shares that she never wants her daughter to miss out on important moments just because her father is gone.
“It breaks my heart that as my journey gets easier, hers get harder,” she wrote in the text overlay of the video. “Thank God we’ve got Grandpa. The greatest man I’ve ever known and her best friend!”
Other TikTok users could not contain their emotions.
“This is the sweetest thing! I’m so sorry your baby lost her daddy, but so happy that she has grandpa!” one user commented. “I’m crying, this is the absolute sweetest thing I’ve ever seen! He loves her so much!” another user wrote.
Woolverton was overwhelmed by the support and response she received after posting the video and hopes it spreads awareness of the struggles fatherless families encounter.
"There's been a lot of people that have reached out to me that have similar situations that have thanked me for just normalizing that and making people more aware that these daddy-daughter dances are great,” she told Good Morning America. “And I don't want to take that away for people that do have dads because I loved it when I grew up, but just to make it aware that we shouldn't let people that don't have dads not go or be left out.”
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She is especially thankful that she was able to capture the unforgettable moment on video.
On February 5, 2023, Austyn and her grandfather got dressed up and embarked on their special night out and they looked dazzling in their red color coordination!
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.