I'm all set to start my year with a crown and a sash, with photo opportunities nearly every week. Thanks to the wonderful invention we call the internet, most of my family and friends will be able to follow my journey this year, just like they have seen pictures of my "crowning moment" even if they weren't in attendance. Technology is wonderful that way, and in a few weeks, my mom will get to see a recording of the pageant that she missed in person.

But no matter how many appearances I make or how many pictures I share, there will always be an chair in the front row that makes my heart ache with the emptiness. More people than I can keep track of will take my picture this year, but not the man who taught me to love photography in the first place.

I lost my father just over six years ago, in November of 2009, and of all of the milestones I have met since then, this crowning as Miss Ventura County has felt like the hardest. At my high school graduation, I cried, but I had been able to prepare for it, I wore the jewelry he gave me and braced myself for the heartache. Similarly, my graduation from Pepperdine this spring will be a long-awaited pain, a subtle burn underneath the celebrations. Even my wedding I have been able to picture dozens of times, I have adjusted the part in my dreams where I had hoped he would walk me down the aisle.

When I started doing pageants, the thing that kept playing in my mind was just how proud my father would have been. Even when I started to hide my face in books, and most people around me focused on my intelligence, my father repeatedly focused on my beauty, how I seemed to have it all. In those formative years, early elementary school, I was already beginning to internalize the messages that I could not be both pretty and smart. Daddy, however, insisted that I could and would do it all. Way back when I was six years old, anxiously trying to think of a way to make a difference in the world, my father consistently supported my ideas, rather than telling me how they wouldn't work, he would ask me how they could. With his help, I could usually come up with a logical solution –– he told me I was his princess, and especially after I started reading about historical princesses, he supported my idea that a tiara would give me a responsibility to others beyond that of the average person.

While my mom is quick to point out to those who hear about my new title that she "never aspired to be a pageant mom" just like she "never wanted to be a cheer mom," I can't help but picture the huge grin that would be on my father's face if only I could see him now. My mom is proud of me, but she laughs at the sash and the crown I now call mine. As someone who worked in social work for years, she doesn't necessarily think that anyone is exempt to the responsibility to others, and certainly not that a crown is necessary or even helpful to make a difference. It's been over a decade since I played those games with my dad, but when they put the crown on my head, I couldn't stop thinking about how much of a difference I could make now that I'm a public figure.

I stopped by the cemetery this Friday to show my dad my crown, and wanted to cry because this is one thing I can't even imagine his response to. I know he would be proud, I feel that already, but what would he have said? Would he have found a way to travel to state to see me compete at Miss California? Would he introduce me to some friend of his to get me new gowns custom-made? Would he have gotten me a new shirt designed with a crown on it? Right now, I know he listened, I know he's smiling down on me, but I can't explain how much I ache at not being able to hear his response.