I Wish My Dad: the Power of Vulnerable Conversations between Fathers and Sons by Romal Tune

Author:Romal Tune [Tune, Romal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL031000 SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / General, FAM033000 FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Parent & Adult Child, FAM020000 FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Fatherhood
Publisher: Broadleaf Books

Takeaways

Vance’s “I Wish My Dad” story is filled with grappling with the double consciousness that Du Bois describes so well. Being a statuesque Black man growing up during the Civil Rights era, being abandoned by his father, navigating complicated grief, and watching the exodus of so many loved ones from his life by the age of ten: Vance’s ability to create his own life in light of all that is a miracle.

The vibration of his father’s words—Never overestimate your value to anyone—lives in Vance’s body and has become an internalized core value. These and other painful messages—married with the absence of his father, grief, and the violence Vance faced because of his dark hue and his choice to be nonviolent—can culminate into complex trauma.

Vance’s father was the survivor of traumatizing events as well. We can only imagine what he experienced serving in the army on the front lines during the Korean War. He then arrived home, became a father and husband, and went through college, still carrying the trauma of war in his body. He tried to escape the visceral nature of trauma through his heroin addiction, and that addiction pushed him further away from himself and his sons.

How does a father muster up a presence and love for others when he doesn’t have the capacity to do it for himself? How can a father show up for his sons when he cannot show up for himself? It is clear that Vance’s father wrestled with his own layered identities and passed this down to his sons.

Vance’s faith, kindness, and commitment to his own healing in therapy will help him untether himself from his father’s pathologies. Vance has taken responsibility to break a generational cycle of absence and abandonment through being a dedicated and active father in the lives of his three children. Through parenting his children, he has the opportunity to parent himself in the ways he longed for.

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