I was a single man without kids well into my 40’s. You could say I enjoyed living the bachelor life, but I was waiting for both the “right time” and the “right person” to come along to have children. Now don’t get me wrong, I’d always loved children; I come from a big family and have over 30 nieces and nephews (including greats and grands). My life, however, revolved around being a full time entrepreneur and partner in a successful entertainment company. I had just celebrated my 6th year out of corporate America (after a 13 year career) when I met and fell head over heels for an intelligent, beautiful and successful woman who had 3 kids from a previous marriage. We both fell in love and were blessed to have our own beautiful daughter together in 2015. Both of us, in our 40’s and me going from no kids to 4 kids!
Some tease me about waiting to have my first child in my mid 40’s, but I feel lucky to have had her at this time in my life. I am at a place where I’ve already experienced life’s distractions and am past the selfish phase that most of us go through in our lives. Additionally, being an entrepreneur gives me the freedom to focus fully on my daughter. She is at home with me during the day since my business is usually at night and on weekends and I get to pour information into her all day long. That is something that I am very proud of and take full advantage of. I am beyond lucky and some might even say that I am blessed.
From the moment I watched her enter the world, my love for my daughter has given me a new purpose in life. Since I have become a Dad, I can’t hold in the excitement I feel and every opportunity that I have I express the joy that being a Dad has given me. What has been interesting to me was that I began to notice (on social media) that many of my male friends started opening up, showing and sharing their joy of Fatherhood a lot more. It made me realize, we don’t hear enough about the great Fathers out there, only the Mothers. Now I’m the first to admit that Mothers are great as I had the greatest Mother ever. However, the narrative on Fathers could surely be improved.
So I felt it was important for there to be a space for men to be recognized as great Dads and have a support system like women have as Mothers. To be fully responsible for someone’s life and well being is a powerful and also scary thing. I wanted to give men a place to learn all things related to being a Dad while also providing a place to network with other Dads. A supportive “Club”, if you will. It could also be a place for Fathers who may have yet to realize their potential — to learn and share ideas on how to become more engaged, and in turn, becoming the best Father possible!
From changing diapers to feeding to bathing to helping with the homework; to attending spelling bees, games and Parent Teacher meetings; to helping to pay for college and giving our daughters away in marriage – Dads do it all.
Simply put, my mission is to change the narrative around Fathers. I am definitely not the perfect Dad who has all the answers but as you can probably tell, I sure am a proud Happy Daddy!