Tag: singleparenting

  • Father : A silent duty

    Father : A silent duty

    Fathers are often overlooked or forgotten, because they’re seldom in the limelight.

    Silently serving in the background, they often do what is seen as just their job, or their duty.

    Not wired with an overt nurturing instinct, but rather that of a silent sentinel, ensuring their family’s safety and comfort, they often grow accustomed to being in the background, creating the spaces needed for their family to thrive.

    When we expect fathers to behave in a similar way to mothers, we diminish their contribution and their sacrifices.

    When we expect fathers to show up like mothers, we under estimate their emotional needs, and ignore their silent pleas for gratitude.

    When we expect fathers to experience emotion and sentiment in the same way that mothers do, we assume that they were gifted with the beauty of connecting with a soul growing within them, not realising that they were always on the outside looking in.

    There is a bond between mother and child that a father will never experience because of the sanctity of childbirth. Perhaps that is why fathers will always find a different way to express their love for their family compared to mothers.

    Honour your father by recognising his struggle and efforts without finding reason to judge him compared to your mother.

    And if you find he is falling short anyway, approach him with understanding, believing that the gentleness you wish to experience with him lies beneath that seemingly impenetrable exterior that developed only because he quietly accepted his place as a provider and forgot to nurture his own emotional needs.

    And to the fathers who show up despite not knowing how it is done because they didn’t have the loving guide of a mentor in their lives, I especially salute you. Breaking cycles of toxic dysfunction is never easy, and is often excruciatingly lonely.

    So if no one else notices you today, I do. With love, appreciation, and respect.

    Happy father’s day.

    #fatherson

  • Don’t pay it forward

    Don’t pay it forward

    Vengeance is easier than understanding.

    Bitterness is easier than forgiveness.

    Mirroring the behaviour of those who treated us badly is easier than rising up to be better than them.

    Each time we choose the easier path, we become the very monsters and degenerates that created the hurt and pain in our lives.

    Too often, we raise our children with harshness because we are afraid of spoiling them.

    Recognise that such fear never inspires moderation or a wholesome approach to life.

    If you treat your children the same way that you were treated, understand that you will lose them to the world because they will despise what you stand for and discard any good you tried to teach them.

    Your children have more options to choose a different path than you ever did. Give them reason to connect with the value of choosing the path that you believe will be good for them rather than simply demanding compliance with your rules or boundaries.

    Parents with unresolved childhood trauma at the hands of their own emotionally inaccessible parents raise emotionally stinted children who need to escape the reality of life rather than embrace its beauty or opportunity.

    If you want to break the cycle of abuse, the cycle of generational trauma, the cycle of harshness and detachment, or the cycle of dysfunction, you must first recognise its roots within yourself.

    It always starts with you.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Claim your humanness

    Claim your humanness

    My daughter looked quite distressed when she asked me this question over the weekend.

    “What drives people to be so cruel to animals, like skinning them alive, or abusing them for profits?”

    The first thought that came to mind was this. We only lose our humanity when we feel less than human.

    The truth is, we only lose our humanity when we believe that we are defined by what happened to us, rather than what our choices were in response to those trials of life.

    Watching her grappling with the reality of who she is versus how others have treated her and betrayed her trust in her short life is grounding me in ways that I never thought possible.

    I swayed from anger at not knowing how to be there for her, to self-pity for not being a good enough parent, to a quiet albeit sad patience, knowing that all I can do is allow her the space to come to terms with the harshness of life in a way that makes sense to her.

    As her father, I fear that she may outgrow me in the process, which stirs up the self-pity and anger, but just as soon, I regain my composure knowing that by giving in to either, I will only create a self-fulfilling prophecy if I insist on inserting myself into this precarious space in which she finds herself.

    So my test in her test is to be consistent and available while she finds her way through it.

    The struggle of single parenting is grossly underrated.

    And the struggle of a single father raising a daughter even more so underrated.

    Through it all, there was another battle just beneath the surface of the ones that I thought were important. That is, the battle to claim my humanness in the face of exactly the same kinds of betrayals and cruelty that I had faced, which are echoed in the struggles that taunt her.

    And it’s through recognising this deeper battle within that I realised the root of my anger and self-pity. It is the need to have my sincerity and effort accepted by one I hold dear, so that the lessons learnt at the hands of brutes and hypocrites will allow me to give that which I did not receive.

    Also, it is my need to protect her from the demons that have so often derailed my efforts in life. I want to protect her from that which ravaged me when I was her age.

    But I can’t. No one can save us from the journey that we must take to discover the beauty of who we are.

    The only thing we can do is remind them that giving up midway through that journey is never worth it. Because once you emerge from the other side, there is a depth and breadth to your humanness that would otherwise have escaped you, and would have left you empty and wanting in your efforts to connect with the beauty around you.

    The irony being that the depth and breadth that is discovered further isolates you from those who distracted themselves through that journey, rather than embraced the pain and the education that it offered.

    A beautiful patience and a courageous perseverance is needed to hold on to your humanness in an inhumane world.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • The absent parent

    The absent parent

    Even an absent parent is still parenting.

    It’s then on the shoulders of the present one to compensate for that.

    Sometimes, the absence of someone has a greater impact on us than the presence of others.

    This is especially true for parenting.

    The absent parent leaves the child with feelings of abandonment, insignificance, and a low self-esteem, to name a few.

    Worse still, it tortures them with the hope that it could be better if only…while distracting them from embracing the life and love that they have.

    It’s that unfulfilled hope and the failed expectations that become the burden of the parent who is present, who is still committed to the wholesome development of the child, to mitigate the impact of that negative influence.

    While it’s true that the children suffer, not enough is done to recognise the impact on the single parent.

    Because the human is often forgotten behind the role or the label that we assign to them.

  • Happy Father’s Day

    Happy Father’s Day

    Father’s day. It might be one day of the year for others, but for father’s, every day is father’s day.

    For those father’s who had to figure it out by themselves.

    For those who are prevented from being fathers.

    For those who think that they’re not enough.

    And of course, for those women who had to step in for the sperm donors that didn’t step up.

    Every day is your day, because you understand why you’re blessed to be able to shape the characters of innocent souls to be the best version of you.

    To the sperm donors who think that their insecurities, or their needs are more important than showing up, consistently, for their children, I pray that you realise what harm you’re causing for yourself, as well as those innocents, by wallowing in self-pity instead of owning your shit.

    Happy father’s day. If you were blessed with a guiding hand, and gentle wisdom to prepare you for your role as a father, make this day a celebration of the one who gave you such a wonderful start in life.

    And use your blessings to pay it forward. This world needs it.