The Father I Was vs. The Father I Am Becoming

There is a version of me I am not proud of. Not because he was a bad man. He was not. He worked, he provided, he kept the lights on. But he thought that was enough. He thought fatherhood was a financial transaction. You give them what they need to survive and you call yourself a good dad. That version of me learned that from watching his own father. And for a long time, he did not question it.

What I Learned From Watching My Dad

Growing up in Jamaica, my father was present in the way that counted on paper. He was in the house. The bills were paid. We did not go without. But there were no conversations about feelings. No motivational talks over dinner. No moments where he sat with me and said, son, I see you, I am proud of you, I love you. Those words existed somewhere between us but they never made it into the air.

What I learned from that silence was not how to love. What I learned was how to fear. I was afraid to speak to my father about anything real. You went to him when something was broken or when you needed permission. You did not go to him when something hurt. You did not go to him when you were confused about who you were becoming. That door was never open and I never thought to knock.

I am not telling that story to dishonor him. He did what his father showed him. And his father did what his father showed him. The pattern was old before any of us arrived. But patterns can be broken. That is the whole point of becoming.

The Shift That Started With Amelia and Jahiem

When Amelia and Jahiem were small, my version of fatherhood looked exactly like what I had inherited. Be financially available. Be present enough. Check the boxes. I told myself that providing was loving and for a while I believed it.

Then they got to high school. I watched them start to form their own opinions, their own questions about the world, their own sense of who they were. And I realized with a quiet kind of terror that I did not actually know them. Not deeply. Not the way a father should know his children. I had been in their lives without being in their lives. There is a difference.

That recognition cracked something open in me. It was not a dramatic moment. There was no single conversation that changed everything. It was more like a slow accumulation of small awakenings. The time Amelia said something wise and I realized I had not been the one to water that wisdom. The time Jahiem handled something hard without coming to me and I understood it was because I had never made myself someone he could come to. Those moments landed quietly. They stayed.

When Avi Changed Everything

By the time Avi came into the world, I was a different man in the making. I had started doing the work on myself. Reading. Listening. Sitting with uncomfortable truths about who I had been and who I wanted to become. Personal development became less of a hobby and more of a practice. I was absorbing everything I could about what it meant to love consciously, to parent with awareness, to be present not just physically but emotionally and spiritually.

Avi got a different father than Amelia and Jahiem did in their early years. Not because I love her more. But because I finally understood that our children are not obligations. They are opportunities. Every single moment with them is a chance to pour something real into a human being who will carry it long after you are gone.

With Avi I listen differently. I watch how she sees the world and I take mental note of her mindset, her fears, her joys, the way she processes things. I tell her I love her. Not once a week. Every day. I want her to grow up in a house where love is spoken out loud and felt in the ordinary moments, not just the big ones.

What I Am Teaching All Three of Them Now

The version of me that is becoming is not perfect. He still gets it wrong. He still has days when the weight of life presses down and patience runs thin. But he is conscious. He is awake. He knows that his children are watching not just what he does but how he does it. They are learning from his reactions, his choices, his silences and his words.

What I am working to give all three of my kids, Amelia, Jahiem, and Avi, is something my upbringing did not give me. Permission to love themselves. Practice in self love, every single day. The understanding that they are worthy not because of what they achieve or produce but because of who they are.

Fear may have made me disciplined. But love is what will make them free. And I would rather raise free people than obedient ones. That is the shift. That is what becoming looks like.

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."

Frederick Douglass