It’s pretty humbling when you’re googling “how do I stay calm and not snap at my kid because I’m dealing with a lot of shame right now” and some of the searches suggest talking to a therapist.

I’m a therapist.

This kind of late-night spiraling can trigger my fears, which often take the form of a very specific line of questioning:

While I think most parents have these questions, there are some of us who didn’t have much modeling to draw from as we stepped into fatherhood. And for us, those questions carry a kind of depth that can feel overwhelming.

I grew up largely without a dad in my life. He had his own existential woundings, and for reasons I still don’t fully understand, he couldn’t show up for our family. It was hard. For a long time, I didn’t even want to become a parent because I couldn’t bear the thought of putting another human through that same kind of absence and longing.

But time passed. Things changed.

And now I have two incredible children who feel like extensions of my own spirit. What I’ve noticed since becoming a parent is this: I carry an invisible pressure. I’m not just raising kids. I’m trying to rewrite a story.

While there’s something meaningful (maybe even beautiful) about that desire to rewrite a family narrative, it comes with a cost. Every deviation from the path feels loaded. My mind is quick to sharpen its criticism:

But what if being a good dad has very little to do with feeling like one?

What if it has everything to do with the simplicity of showing up…

When I let those questions push back against the spiraling ones, I start to notice something: I’ve already been doing this.

Maybe the question isn’t “am I a good dad?” but “Am I building something different than what I was given?”

And if you could shift the question…