Cheryl Burke Honors Late Father On His Posthumous 73rd Birthday

Cheryl Burke Honors Late Father On His Posthumous 73rd Birthday.

It has been three years since the passing of Cheryl Burke's father, Stephen Louis Burke, and the reality star continues to hold his memories dear in her heart. The patriarch, who left the earth nearly a month shy of his 68th birthday, is being celebrated by his doting daughter on what would have been his 73rd birthday.

A bond between a father and child, especially a daughter, cannot be overemphasized. As such, it is not unexpected to see how appreciated the "Dance Moms" star's father is with her recent social media post to her thousands of followers. 

She shared a throwback snapshot of her father with a short note that expressed how much she misses him. The thoughtful Instagram post dedicated to her father's posthumous birthday showed the 38-year-old in her infant years with her good-looking father.

Young Cheryl was all smiles as she sat on her dad's lap in a white ballerina-like outfit with matching shoes and a fringe-cut hairstyle. She appeared comforted by her father, who wrapped his hands around her waist. Stephen, also smiling in the photo, was dressed in all black with a mini afro hairstyle.

A mini note was attached, and the daughter noted her conviction never to stop celebrating her father. She wrote, "Whether or not they celebrate birthdays in heaven, I am celebrating you today on your special day. Most you, dad?."

This remarkable memory comes a little over three years after the "Dancing with the Stars" pro first shared the news of her father's passing in public. PEOPLE reported that years before the dancer lost her father, she dished on their estranged relationship on Bethenny Frankel's talk show, revealing that the two reconnected after he was in a bad accident.

When he passed, she announced she was stepping away from the internet to mourn her father privately. Cheryl shared a throwback photo of herself as a child getting a kiss on her head from her dad on her different social media accounts. 

In the caption, she wrote about doing things differently if she saw him again. "Dad, if I had one more chance to have you here with me today, I would do things differently. Every day I would tell you how much I love you. I miss you so much already."

Knowing that Cheryl and her father were not on the best of terms most of her life brings our mind back to last year when she opened up about her early years and how she grew up in an abusive environment.

She revealed on the "Allison Interviews" podcast that love had a different and antagonistic definition in her household. Also, the childhood trauma affected her romantic relationships as she would unconsciously fall prey to the same type of men who were "abusive, non-available, non-committal," and unfaithful. Cheryl later said:

"My definition of love was not real. To me, love equaled infidelity, love equaled being treated like s**t, love equaled physical violence, love equaled mental abuse."

To her, the unhealthy environment she was in as a child influenced her dealings with any "nice man," as she would flinch without understanding why she felt so disgusted. She pointed out that her reaction was so because she never had such niceness growing up.

But as she grew, the former "DWTS" star mentioned that she got to the point of liberation from her toxic behavior because she forced herself to understand the reason behind her affinity for such men, which was linked to having "no father figure" in her life and being sexually assaulted at a younger age by "an older retired mailman."

However, the "I Can Do That" star noted that she has tried to be intentional since divorcing her ex-husband, Matthew Lawrence. She confessed, "If I don't retrain my brain, I will be attracted to the same person. I will marry someone who resembles the person before, and it will just be a vicious cycle."