When I Realized It Was Okay to Be a Dad and Stopped Trying to Be a Mom It was 1997 and it was time for me to figure out how to take charge of this unimaginable situation I was in. I was the primary – correction, sole and […]
Going through a divorce can be one of the most traumatic experiences anyone can have. For men in particular, there is little support available and many men feel emasculated if they seek help. I had no one that I could ask for guidance, and I didn’t even know where to look.
I remember looking at them back then and imagining a future when all of them had graduated from college. They would all be on their own, financially independent, married and with children. I thought of them scattered across the country…
It’s hard to believe that a whole year has passed since they were married last December in Israel. I recall sitting on the 10 hour flight reminiscing about what happened over the past 19 years of caring for her and her 4 siblings as a single and sole parent.
Celebrating mom is as American as apple pie and it has been for the past 101 years since Woodrow Wilson proclaimed mother’s day a national holiday. I remember the joy I felt when I would bring my mom breakfast in bed, flowers, a present and a hand-made card on mother’s day.
I think it’s fair to say most of us were shocked when we saw the Nationwide 2015 Super Bowl Commercial, “Make Safe Happen.” It’s pretty risky business to have a child in an ad who speaks about missing out on the best moments of his life because he died in a preventable accident.
My oldest daughter Michelle got married two weeks ago at a scenic venue overlooking Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea. I know destination weddings are now trendy, but that had little to do with the choice to have the wedding there…
No, it’s not the beginning of a joke. Yes that really happened. This past fall I was sitting at the bar of a Manhattan restaurant next to my friend, Adam Jacobs, who is a Rabbi at Aish Center, New York. We were having a cold beverage to celebrate the premiere of his documentary.
The urgency I felt when my own children were suffering, unproductive and unhappy was greater than keeping my own job. This was a real creative problem unlike anything I knew before because the solutions are not linear. I had significant problems occur every day. They had to be solved.
I got my get-out-of-jail-free card by just following the advice of the famous philosopher, Nike: “Just do it.” I couldn’t quit my job. There was no one else to do it, so I just put my head down and worked my ass off all over the place. I needed to be a dad, and dads do things with children that are perfectly good and are perfectly acceptable to me.
