Life blesses us with moments; it can take you from your lowest lows to to soaring heights. Life is an
unpredictable force that no one can really control. It is a force one is thrown into and is expected to
survive because you are always provided with the tools you need to make it. It comes with many
challenges that make you grow as a person, teach you lessons and sometimes, life just kicks you down
over and over and over until you can’t take no more and are forced to fight back.

This force is so strong that everyone fights for it even when the odds are not in their favor. We live our
lives moment to moment trying not to break down and show weakness because life loves mocking the
weak. It then gets to a point when life just blesses you with a gift that is so precious you will do anything
and everything to protect it, your heart aches whenever discomfort engulfs this gift of yours. What am I
talking about? Parenthood!!!

This phenomena changes ones perspective of life, it shows you just how much love you are capable of
feeling. Having a child is the best moment in anyone’s life and you can never really understand it until
you experience it yourself, but the parenthood comes with its own demons. You learn that the love for
your child can be both your strength and your weakness. You realize that you should choose who you
have a child with because your child’s life will be influenced by that person more than you could ever
comprehend. Personally I have been blessed enough to have a child with the most loving, strong willed,
beautiful woman god has ever created. She just represents the light in my life I thought I could never
have. I have been lucky enough to have an understanding woman to be the mother of my child and love
me with all my shortcomings.

Fatherhood has taught me just how strong of a person I am, it has taught me that life is a series of
constant moments that we have to treasure because it can be all over in a blink of an eye. I have never
known love like the one I feel for my daughter. From the moment she opened her eyes when I first held
her and her beautiful face was an epiphany that showed me that I was at a point of no return. See you
will not always be a good parent, you can even spend a long time trying to provide like you should but
the adversity you face in life just deters you from becoming what you envision in your mind. It is not all
roses, it can get really rough, and you can find yourself very broken from the inability to provide for your
child like you should. Even so, every time you think of your seed you will realize you are past the point of
no return, that you have to make do with what you have, you have to learn to be patient and believe
you will come out of this better than you ever were. It may take years for you to accomplish, it may take
a day but your determination to always be there for your child will be the driving force of everything you
set out to do. Fatherhood is not a thing for the faint hearted, it is not like we see it on tv or read in the
magazines. You are literally there shaping someone’s life, teaching them right from wrong, trying to
balance the scale between being over protective and just being a cool dad.

Fatherhood for me has been a benchmark, a measure of what a man is supposed to be. I usually thought
it was about the money you have, the things you can afford to buy your child but it’s not. Fatherhood is
being a dad even when you are down, it’s the connection that you feel in your heart and cannot explain to anyone else, it’s the appetite loss from knowing you couldn’t give her the best, it’s the you risking your life to secure her future, the waking up early without a plan to provide and going to sleep one step closer to securing her future. This is not a manual of fatherhood, just my experience so far of being a dad to my little star. It’s the journey so far that has been both debilitating and blissful. The smiles from
hearing her laugh for the first time, the physical form of my DNA. There’s a saying that goes “a father is a
son’s first hero and a daughter’s first love” and nothing holds true more than those words. Once you
cross the parenthood bridge you will realize just how little you knew, you will realize you have reached a
point of no return. You will realize what the meaning of life really is.