SURVIVING BLACK FATHERHOOD

Like a chess game, every move I made right or wrong cemented my image in the eyes of my children.

I'm finishing up authoring a book I have been writing over the last 10 years about my experiences as a black father the good, the bad, the ugly and I just want to share some of the manuscripts with you before I release the project.

Every chapter of this book was written as the emotional drama unfolded in living color. I hope you will not only feel my pain but see my struggle to survive fatherhood.

I never had a clear blueprint to becoming a father because my father died when I was young so I saw choppy pieces of being a father from various role models and family members. I had to figure out a way of piecing together all this information. Here are my thoughts and feelings.'

 Black fatherhood men fail to openly communicate about our emotional experiences in a public forum. Outside of barbershops or a drunken depressed stupor most men hold in their feelings of vulnerability. In the end, the real victim is the child that grows up seeing the battle lines drawn between black fathers and mothers not understanding that one day they possibly will be facing the same dilemma. Like a chess game, every move I made right or wrong cemented my image in the eyes of my children.

The sacrifices a father makes for his children can only be measured in love. Black fathers are often overlooked as being in the forethought of women/children minds as individuals who have the capacity of giving unconditional love. Too often we have to fight with negative images of Black men who abandoned the hearts of their children.

Being a father was supposed to be the highlight of being a man, but as I walked the path of fatherhood I found a lot of adversity and emotional heartache that came at the hands of the mothers. My children were innocent bystanders not understanding how I tried to spill so much love into them, but in the back of my mind fearing my child could be taken away at any moment by the baby mother.

You see I was battling my demons watching a host of nieces and nephews disappear from our family tree because of divorces and baby mama drama. Who was I to think this same fate wouldn't be my fate? I learned fathers had no real birthrights when children are born out of wed, we had to fight for them in family court. Women have the security of knowing "mamas baby daddy's maybe" and the reality is full circle.
Competing images of deadbeat black fathers flood the media and you wonder as soon as you can't provide financially or overwhelm with surviving life when will you be labeled as such.

Fatherhood becomes very complicated when you're no longer in the same home with your children, it's a predicament that no woman has to worry about because she automatically has custodial parenting birthrights and she gotta either give them away or fuck up so bad that they're lost. Parental security is built in as a mother so their few outside factors that will break the bond between mother and child.

To be continued!