Dear friends,
When I look back on my journey as a dad, some patterns appeared clearly on the surface:
Overreacting — when my rational mind fails to command my wild emotions. I lost it in front of my kids
Under-reacting — when my overthinking overloads my brain. I fail to act when the situation demands it
Getting caught in between — this one is the worst. I feel like standing at a crossroads, being hopelessly lost, and lack the ability to make the right call in the moment
I wasn’t ready when our daughter was born back in 2020.
Over the last few years, I’ve been slowly crafting my way out. And the result is What’s Dad.
What’s Dad is a therapy for myself as I seek a balanced and steady course for my mind. Just as even a calm sea will still show some ripples, I treat it as a remedy to embrace myself, to find peace with myself, and to believe in myself.
I would love to share my lessons with other dads out there. This is a self-exploration guide for dads who want to define what being a dad means to them.
If you’re a dad, let me know the one thing that resonates with you the most. I hope you will find something valuable here. I hope you will know you are not alone.
If you’re not, please share with someone you love who is.
Until next time.
- Franco
This work is inspired by all the incredible dads I met on Substack — , , , , , ,
P.S. The next interview series with five of my favorite Substack writers is ready to go next Friday. Stay tuned!
Franco - so cool that you built a tool for other dads to tap into! Looking forward to going through it and I’ll let you know my thoughts once I have.
I love this!! I feel the strongest with “caught in between”. It is really like learning how to fly a plane when you are flying a plane.
But most importantly, it is the difficulty to find really like-minded dads to talk about the feelings. To me, like-minded dads are those who put the family first, care about the human development of their kids, and like to reflect and share genuinely.
A lot of that came more about money, status and hobbies, can’t really connect.