September 20 2024

The father will be a bad father because the father has a shadow. This is unavoidable and archetypal and important. It is never an excuse for intentional bad fathering — that is cowardice.

But part of the father’s mythical place is to be a bad father. Oedipus’s father King Laius was a murderer. Abraham went to kill Issac. God betrays Jesus. This stuff is written across time.

I will be a bad father because I cannot truly see my boys. They are too similar to me and I’m unable to see myself as I am. When they anger me I am seeing myself in them, but rather than recognizing that and grieving it, instead I pout or yell or blame.

I will also be a bad father because I am scared of being a father. I am absolutely terrified and I want to leave and run away and hide. But I choose to stay, believing that I am a good father even in my bad fathering. I have to know this. I have to be reminded so that I don’t put too much pressure on myself to be something that I cannot be. That’s why I need other men around my boys who can mentor them in ways that I cannot. Mentors don’t need to worry about putting food on the table or fixing the roof, and they can see the bright goodness in my boys and can call them to more in the places I cannot.

So I lean on my brothers. I cannot do this alone. Help me live into my goodness as a father by seeing what I cannot see and saying what I cannot say. Tell me when I am showing my teeth when I should be weeping. And whisper again and again that I cannot and do not have to do it all by myself, that it’s not all on my shoulders. That’s a burden no one can bear.