Occupying space
I am currently experiencing my first dose of TikTok virality. As I write this, a video I put up on TikTok last night just before I went to bed has been viewed 24.5K times, gotten 2611 likes, 52 comments, 151 saves and my profile has received over 170 new followers.🤯
(I am sending this newsletter 18hrs after I wrote this and the video is now on 80k views, has 10k likes, 152 comments and 777 saves…let’s not even talk about the follows)
For context, the most I had received on a video on TikTok was 564 views and that was about a recent trip to Watamu I took.
So, why was this video different? What about it makes it elicit such a huge response?
Let me take you on a trip
I do not remember my father being there for the mundane things in my life. I don’t remember him taking me to hospital. I have few memories of him at any school functions, despite my stellar school record. I don’t remember him helping me with homework, or him taking us out for lunch, for a swim, a hike, a playground…anything. In fact, I can’t remember him being there for birthday celebrations when I was young. He travelled for work a lot, but surely at some point there had to have been some opportunities.
My mother was always there for all of these moments
Now, I recently found myself asking. Is it that he didn't want to be there or was he simply not invited? I don’t mean being formally invited to do these things, but was his space not defined, was it implied that he wasn’t needed?
Was he taught that he wasn’t needed?
He probably appeared to one of these things occasionally, but his absence stood out more.
When we first became parents, I really didn't pay too much attention to what was going on in my husband’s life. I had gone through too much, barely noticing the hours move or the days change. It was only when he came home one day, days after our daughter was born and broke down. He seemed angry and defeated at the same time.
He had gone out to do a seemingly simple task-exchange masks that we bought because they were defective. It was at the height of the pandemic and in those days, masks were very expensive. With a newborn we had to take as many precautions as possible, one of them being buying a stupidly expensive packet of ten masks from Miniso for 3000 bob. The problem was we couldn’t really use them because the straps would break each time. So one day, he decided to go back to that shop and get a refund or a new packet.
I don’t remember if he actually came back with anything but he told me that he had a breakdown at the shop. My husband is not they type of person to seek out or cause trouble, but on that day, he did. He stood in that shop and yelled at anyone who tried to tell him that he couldn’t exchange it. He called for the manager and anyone worth calling, shouting and yelling and possibly scaring a lot of customers.
This was unlike him and I knew something was wrong. That was the first time I took a step back and look at what the past few days had done to him.
He had just watched his wife go through 24 hours of labor, go into surgery and delay in coming out because of complications, all while waiting alone because of COVID restrictions. He was handed his daughter and had no idea how to feel about it. His wife was still in there and nobody was telling him why.
He had to be up early each morning so that he was at the hospital when the curfew lifted at 5 am to be with us. There were nights he slept on the uncomfortable chairs in my room waking up over and over again to help me out with our daughter and tend to me.
He watched me experience excruciating pain as I suffered from post op constipation and watched me go through a procedure to flush my digestive tract in a not too cute way.
Life was changing right before his eyes. Nothing changed for him physically, but his life was turned upside down. Everybody was concerned about how I was doing and how my daughter was but no one bothered to check on him. Two weeks later, he had to go back to work.
Talking to him afterwards in the first Father’s Day episode I did, he talked about his feeling of hopelessness, of immense fatigue and of being extremely overwhelmed. He was meant to be the pillar of strength and but he found himself being crushed by all this expectation. That day in the shop, surrounded by strangers saw him release all the pent up stress and anxiety that he was carrying around
With all that was going on, he didn’t know where he would fit. He did his best to insert himself in various moments of our days. He handled late night feeds, he changed diapers, he was there for all clinic visits and he played with her every chance he got. All that he did drew a lot of praise from people. It felt like he was doing something extraordinary, and not just being the parent he was.
We are quick to praise fathers when they do mundane things that mothers do all the time, but also quick to excuse them from certain things that we consider as odd - like change diapers in public. Quick question, how many changing stations have you seen in a men’s restroom?
We tend to exclude dads from the mundane tasks or decisions about our kids like what our baby is eating, what they will wear, what time to give them a bath. It starts small, but before we know it, we will slowly exclude them from taking active part in our kids life.
They will sit there as the provider or disciplinarian, but not the caregiver who takes them to hospital, makes them a snack, takes them to their friends parties or actively takes part in school or extra curricular activities. Soon enough, they might fade away and we are left asking why they can’t step up, yet we slowly pushed them away.
And this is why it was hard for me to see my husband struggles.
The world of parenting has been focused mostly on the mother that dads barely have a space. They can’t confront their fears, talk about their struggles or the things that they lack. Please note, I am not talking about stereotypical things like provision for the family but rather the struggles of parenting.
Showing up every day for your kids, sacrificing your time and your body, changing your dreams to accomodate the reality you are in. We cannot ignore that life changes for them too and I think that we are a long ways away from understanding just how to handle this.
There is a lot to say about this topic and I am barely able to grasp it. Fathers are different. Some don’t want to be present or care to be, but others just don’t know how to be.
In that TikTok video, Ced talks about handling rejection. He was kicked out of spaces where he thought he needed to be in but the last straw was facing rejection from his own son. He talks about the struggle he faced trying to be a dad to a son who wanted nothing to do with him, which sent him into a dark place.
👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉WATCH IT HERE
🎙️Episode Highlight: A Dad Talking About Fatherhood
I cannot even begin to explain how powerful this episode was. I really admire Ced and I learnt so much about not only his journey, but his ideas around fatherhood, something he says is easily mistaken for manhood 🤯
I am so excited about this series of episodes. I believe more fathers should speak, talk about their reality because we are experiencing a new generation of fathers, and I love that for us!
This issue has been long enough (I feel like I say that all the time 🙈) so I will end it here….but not before I say a big thank you to all the people who came to the first Mama Tales Podcast event! To say I was anxious planning and hosting that event would be an understatement, but it was everything it needed to be.
Video and audio episodes on it will be out in the near future as well as possible dates for the next one! I really hope writing it here will make it actually happen
There is so much more I still want to share here but I have to stop now.
Till next time
Sal ❤️
