Re-Creation

Is is Recreation, or Re-Creation.  Is it a hobby or a necessity.  It is becoming a beast on the field, or is it becoming a new you?  What does it take to re-create yourself?  Can you ever truly become something/someone new if you still do the same things?  If I still do the things that a teen does, then doesn't that make me a teen?  If I walk, and talk like a duck, doesn't that mean I can become a duck?  What if I wear feathers and tell everyone to call me Donald or Daffy?  Do we re-create ourselves on the outside, or does true recreation... re-creation happen from the inside out?  

Re-Creation or Recreation. 

If I could... add my own philosophy to this (if you have to say you are something, it is not apparent enough to be true), then saying you are new, is not good enough.  You have to actually be new, or you are, in fact, old... the same ol' old.  I never said I was anything but "just Joe."  If you tell me you are X, and you act like Y, what am I to think?  If you say you've always been Y, but had to act like X, then I've only known you in a lie.  Either way, there is no history for us to build on.  

Thoughts? 

-JB

Ramblings on The BroHood and ManHood

There is something that I will always be no matter what... a brother.  No matter how hard I try, I will never out-grow it, I will never move on to something bigger and better.  From the moment I was born, until the day I die, I will always be someone's brother.  There is no changing that.  

Being a man, on the other hand, is not a given.  There is only one influence that is able to validate your rite of passage into manhood. It is not the prostitute or stripper your friends paid for to "usher" you into your manhood.  It's not how fast you can round the bases with your girlfriend. The only influence that can do this for boys is that of a father-figure.

Before I continue, I should point out that I have a very high level of respect for step-fathers.  In fact, I had a high level of respect for mine growing up, and I didn't even meet my BioDad until my early twenties.  But when you build your reputation, and the basis for who you are and what you mean to an individual on an intricate bed of lies, then it only takes one piece of truth to unravel it all.  In a very unspecific way, that is the best way I can explain my lost relationship with my step-dad.

To quote John Eldredge, the author of Wild at Heart, "Every boy, in his journey to become a man, takes an arrow to the center of his heart, in the place of his strength. Because the wound is rarely discussed and even more rarely healed, every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by his father."  

I feel overjoyed (sarcasm) that I was able to connect with my BioDad and lose my relationship with my step-dad around the same time. It was like I looked up one day, and I was suddenly fatherless. Now, if my step-dad was a fraction of the man he spent years convincing me and others he was, then he would still be in my life, and I wouldn't have had a need to start this blog. But he isn't. He's not even the opposite of the man he said he was... he's nothing. The last time I bumped into him, I had zero emotional response.  I actually was surprised at how much I didn't care to even look at him. Why? He became a stranger to me. How can I hate him when I don't even know him?  

My BioDad is another case all together. Most of my anger towards him was because of how he was vilified by my mother. Am I excusing him? Not at all. Did she take his kids from him? Yes. He told me he left the state because he was so angry that he was going to do something violent. So, maybe I should be grateful he didn't make me motherless, but he didn't put out the effort hot be in our lives.  Until I was in my twenties, I had NO conscious memory of him, and no idea what he looked like. I could have walked by him and never knew it.  Since he was never around, he doesn't know how to be BE around. He went from missing to absentee.

UPDATE: While working on this post I received an email from my BioDad saying that he's moving to Cali in 2 weeks.  I don't know if I have a reaction to this, or if I just want to have a reaction to this.  I am disappointed, and I want to keep from the cliche "Fine, I didn't want you around anyway!" reaction.  

All this to say that i am a 30-year-old father of 2 with daddy issues I may not be able to get resolved.  There is a missing rite of passage in my journey to manhood.  

Why doesn't a brother have the ability to become this influence in a young man's life?  He just doesn't.  Consider the situations where you hear these phrases:

"You're the man of the house now." 

"Ibn."

"You're not my dad."  

"Heir Apparent." 

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."  

How does a brother validate or usher a boy into manhood?  Can they?  What is so significant in the relationship between father and son that when that relationship is broken, or damaged, both parties suffer.  I have mentioned in a previous post, I have had trouble with my relationships with one of my brothers, but this was not a relationships I ever felt internally and deeply hurt by.  Yes, I was angered by them, but they would never send me to therapy.  

I have recently been hit by the realization that phrases like, "He's not heavy, he's my brother" and, "Am I my brother's keeper?" have limitations.  I am not only human, but a flawed human.  I can only handle so much.  I can only forgive so much.  I can only forgive what has been asked of me to be forgiven.  I am working on forgiving in the face of continued offense.  I'm working on it.  

I may not be able to resolve my daddy issues, but I still hope to resolve my brother-issues.  

I realize that this post was all over the place, but I had to get it out of my head to think straight again.  Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to join the discussion and leave a comment. 

-JB

Profiled

I got profiled on Dad of Divas' blog in his Dads in the Limelight Series.  Check it out!

An Education in Manhood

My own thought caught me off guard today.  Aside from being a husband and father searching for my own manhood, I am a Special Education teacher in a Middle School.  There are constant discussions and debates over the roles of teachers and the lines they can and should cross, and what it means to "educate" children.  Maybe I come back around to this idea over and over, because I have written a post about this before.  Click on the link and feel free to leave a comment on my Education Blog.  Where are these boys seeing manhood for 6-7 hours everyday?  Who shows them how to try, fail, and try again as men?  Who is there to say "so what?" "Suck it up", "pull it together", or "be a man"?  

Not many, that's who.

DADDY'SDOWN, BUT NOT OUT!

Getting to know Chris reveals a survivor...

After my [email] interview with Chris, the author of DaddysDown.com, I found myself with a deep respect for him. This is the kind of respect one has for an individual who goes through hell and comes through the other side a better person. For this reason, he reminds me of my own biological father, whom I’ve only known for the past seven years. He too was recently clean and sober when we met, and he had also endured some rough years. However, the man I met on this side of those hard times was a gentle gracious man I’ve grown to admire. Pulling yourself out of your own muck and mire, even with the help of friends, family, or faith, is an undertaking few have success with.

THE INTERVIEW:

Chris is what happens when you allow the harsh truth to stop making excuses for you, and you let it set you free. The one thing that attracted me to his blog was his About the Author section where he explains how he suffered from Paternal Post-Partum Depression (PPPD). Since I had never known anyone who had suffered from this, I was intrigued. I won’t go into it, because Chris does a great job in this section and in a recent post. However, this is something that does hit new fathers, and can be an isolating downfall for new dads who think they are failing their kids, and have nowhere to turn for help, for a helping hand, or for a way out. Chris has provided them this.

I strongly believe that we are not the mistakes we make in life, and that we are defined by how we respond to what life brings us. The insights Chris can bring as someone who has dealt with addiction (continues to beat addiction everyday), someone who has gone through PPPD, someone who has ADHD are numerous, and creates a platform to draw many to his site.

WHY DADDYSDOWN:

Chris has been blogging for about three years, and has been working on DaddysDown (in one form or another) for about a year and a half. The initial reason for the blog was to spread awareness about PPPD and to tell his own story about his experiences with it. However, the purpose of the blog has evolved in a natural way to address more issues of fatherhood. In Chris’ own words,

“Daddy's Down described a father that was depressed or for lack of better terminology, down. It has since morphed into a commentary on how beat up I often feel as a father after a day of parenting, especially when I haven't had my coffee. It also tends to create an image in people's mind of this dad, passed out cold, down for the count. Daddy's Down just seemed to continue to work when I changed the focus of my blog.”

Even though DaddysDown was not started as a brand, it has branding potential, and you could picture merchandise with the label on it someday. DaddysDown has many connotations to it, and I think it can mean a lot of different things related to fatherhood. Money is not Chris’ motivator, and has four main goals of his blog:

1. To tell my life story to the world so that they can learn from my mistakes and not have to learn from their own as well as learn from my successes so that they can experience their own.

2. To give dads a toolbox that they can use to be better dads and raise excellent children who will one day be better dads and moms.

3. To be a place to vent and hopefully have someone who will listen.

4. To be entertaining. I love nothing more than to make people laugh and smile.

While I would love to one day be able to make a little money by blogging, that would only be a byproduct of the four goals that I have listed.

KEEPING UP THE FIGHT:

Chris strikes me as a good man who continues to try and do better. Like any good man, he has a great woman behind him. He credits his forgiving and supportive wife with helping him remain accountable daily to being clean and sober. What a blessing. His children help to motivate him to stay clean, and much like every dad, he wants to be present, engaged, and able to remember their childhoods and watch them grow. Chris credits those in his life who loved him enough to pray for him for the fact that he is not currently in a gutter somewhere. “Thank God that HE is a God of second chances and forgiveness,” he says, “HE has put my wife and kids in my life, and I believe that HE uses them as daily reminders of how good I have it.”

One of the last questions I asked Chris was what lessons do you hope your children learn from your life? I liked his answer so much I will just quote it.

The answer is very short and simple: Be honest, be honorable, love God, and always do the right thing even if it hurts.

These are things that I wish I had learned as a kid and the lack of them caused me to travel through a very dark path in my life. That dark path is one that almost cost me everything. Had I only learned early on to be honest, be honorable, love God and always do the right thing even if it hurts, then my life would have been a whole lot easier up to this point. I would never want my kids to experience the things that I have experienced. They can avoid the pitfalls of my life by learning those four things.

I liked his answer because it has to do with creating a better life for his kids than he had, which is what fatherhood commissions every man to do. Thank you for your efforts Chris.

To his readers, Chris wants you to know the following things:

I want them to learn that a good cup of coffee and a big bear hug are essential to life. I want them to learn that you have take care of yourself if you want to take care of your family. I want them to learn that in the worst of times you can be assured that things will always get better. I want them to learn that being a father is a gift, but one that comes with much responsibility, The rewards however are endless. Most importantly, I want them to learn that God loves them and wants them to be happy.

Chris, thank you for your struggles and triumphs. Thank you for your efforts, and for your blog. Thank you for sharing your life with the world. And thank you for the DADTIFICATES they are one of my favorite parts of your blog. Keep them coming. And thank you from me for being my first dad blog interview!

Dad-Blogger Interviews! [Coming Soon]

I have been blogging for about 2 years, with this most recent one centering around fatherhood. While I have been looking around at other dad blogs, one of the things I find difficult, is learning about the blog and the blogger quickly. For this reason, I have been following ALL the dad blogs I come across in the hopes that I will get a chance to go back and see if it is something (or someone) I will be interested in. This is why I am going to do a series of interviews of dad bloggers. I will be starting with Daddy's Down and I think I know who I will do after that. I think it will be a good way to get to really know the dad-bloggers in our community, which will bring clearer understanding to their blog posts. I tried to do this for my own blog with my mission statement post.

If you would like to be interviewed, please post a comment below or tweet me @ManvDadhood.

I look forward to getting to know the dad-blog network.

Blood or Water - Part 1: Surviving The Brotherhood

When I started drafting this blog post, I did not know it was going to be as long as it has been turning out. That is why I decided to split it up and turn it into a series that looks at only one family relationship I have had trouble with; my brother. This series will focus on a subject I don't want to hold in, and can't hold in any longer. However, these are things that I do not want to verbally talk about, or maybe I just can't get myself to physically form the words with my mouth. In any case, I'm gonna try to let this confusion in my head become something coherent for you to read and discuss.

From The Cosby Show to The Simpsons
The house I grew up in was ideal, but the house I look back on in my memories has become tainted and the characters are almost unrecognizable to me anymore. I grew up the youngest of 7 in a blended household that I grew up believing was a very safe and loving place. My closest sibling is my brother. In fact, of the 4 brothers I have, he is the only fully biological brother I have; meaning, I have a step-brother and 2 half-brothers. I looked up to my brother, and he was very, very protective.

As it turns out, this relationship with my brother has been the best and worst relationship I have ever had with anyone... EVER! I never knew it was the worst relationship until recently. If I examine my own thoughts at different occurrences, then I have the mentality of someone who experienced emotional abuse, and he has the characteristics of someone who is emotionally abusive. He was very protective of me, but it was with the mindset that No one messes with my little brother... except me! I remember him keeping others from taking advantage of my youthful willingness to please, but then he exploited that much worse.

Forgotten Example
I have endless stories of the things I experienced at my brother's whim growing up, but I'll limit them in this post to only 1:

In my brother's senior year of high school, I was in 7th grade. I was not dumb to how intense he was. While watching the TV one afternoon, he asks me if I want to walk down the street on a hot sunny day and shoot some hoops. I knew I shouldn't have, and I tried to resist. I told him that I didn't want to because I didn't want it to turn into a basketball lesson from him. He assured me it wouldn't he said he just wanted to shoot around, and wanted me to go with him. As a little brother who wanted to shoot as well as his older brother I was enticed, but still reluctant. Only shoot around, nothing else? I asked hoping for the best. He, of course, assured me that we would only shoot around, and I agreed.

Soon after arriving, the shoot-around turned into him barking out orders and yelling while I was stuck listening and trying to perform a left-handed hook shot. There came a point, when I was practicing free throw shots, and when I missed one, I had to do push-ups on the black asphalt. Why didn't I say no, and leave? Why did I stay and take the punishment? We were being raised in a militaristic household with a chain-of-command, and I was not allowed to say NO to my older siblings (it would be like disobeying a direct order from a commanding officer), and he exploited this. By the end of this boot camp-like practice session with Sargent Brother, I had blisters on my palms from doing push-ups on asphalt that you could see the heat rising from.

Conveniently, my brother has no recollection of this event, but you can see why I remember it so vividly. It was not a sad day for me when he graduated and moved out. This is not the only thing that I experienced from my brother that he has forgotten, and he tries to imply that I'm making them up, like they never happened. Like these meant nothing to him, and aren't even worth remembering.

My brother believes that the ends justify the means, and he is a great manipulator. So when I excelled at basketball, he suggested that he had a hand in it.

Part 1 Wrap-Up
My family has done more to hold me back than to help me succeed, and I don't know how I made it out with a decent head on my shoulders. I do have deeply-ingrained defense mechanisms that keep life at arm's length. But after coming to realization that this relationship was emotionally abusive, I have been able to start letting go of some of the anger I hold towards him; anger towards someone means that they control you, and I'm done being controlled.

Thanks for checking this out, I'll have the next part of the series up sometime this weekend.