Happy Fathers Day!
Not just to the dads. To the men and women who stepped into a gap they didn't create and decided a child would not go without. especially when that choild was not promised to them.
Today… is Fathers Day, and I am reflecting on my experiences connected with this day… I never really celebrated father’s day until I became a father… and it was always awkward, mostly because I never really knew if I was doing a good job.
Like many, I learned to be a dad, by giving my kids what I always thought I needed. I am not sure if I did it right but thats all I knew.
For most of my childhood, my dad was a man I knew about more than a man I knew.
The divorce took him out of the house and, for a long stretch, out of my life. I learned what it felt like to be unfathered. Not unloved by everyone because I was surrounded by love, but unfathered. There's a specific kind of quiet that lives in a boy who's waiting for his dad, who isn't coming home.
I carried that quiet for years.
I built a whole self around filling the space where he should have been. I was not alone…
I had my maternal grandfather (Papa), uncles (Uncle Reinaldo, Tio Kiki), neighbors like Mr. Johnnie Lewis and even two social workers at Covenant House Merit , Jones and Joe Toney that tried to guide me in my formative years. They each added to my life in ways I will tell in my upcoming book. What I am about to announce is dedicated to them…
I recently joined a Mastermind led by a friend and met Casey, when he attended my first Siembra Connect event, he told me about Break The Cycle… I immediately understood that space he is trying to fill.
As a grown man, I reconciled with my dad. It wasn't a movie scene. It was slower and harder and more ordinary than that. But it happened. We found our way to each other again, and I got to know the man instead of the absence. That reconciliation rearranged something in me. It showed me that the story you're handed is not always the story you have to keep telling.
I know what this does for the boys that Casey serves….
That's why I am starting a team.
It's called Break The Cycle, and we're walking and running a 5K together Augiust 9th, at Prospect Park.
I'm not doing this because I have it all figured out.
I'm doing it because I know the weight of growing up without a father, and I know how many people are carrying that same weight in silence today, on the one day a year designed to make it impossible to ignore.
Some of you grew up without your dad. Some of you are trying to be the father your own father never was. Some of you are doing the quiet, unglamorous work of repairing a relationship that broke a long time ago. Some of you just want to stand next to people who get it.
That's who this team is for.
Breaking the cycle isn't a single dramatic moment. It's putting one foot in front of the other, over and over, in a direction your family hasn't gone before. A 5K is just that, made visible. We move together. We finish together. And we prove to ourselves that the patterns we inherited don't get the final word.
I'd be honored to walk this with you.
Join Break The Cycle here:
If today is heavy for you, you are not alone. Come walk with us.
🌱 George
PS… I am not a runner so I will likely be walking this time… but even if you cannot be there walking beside me, consider walking “virtually” and support this cause.