My Story...
Since 1997 I have been a single father to three daughters.
The year before, my children’s mother and I decided it was best to divorce and we agreed to share the physical and financial burdens between us. We agreed on equal parenting time. It would turn out that I would have almost all of the Fridays and Saturdays in our sharing arrangement. This would be a significant thing later as they entered their teen years.
My daughters were 6, 5 and 3 years old.
My children’s mother had been a stay at home mom and I was out of the home everyday trying to build my business and support us.
I voluntarily had taken the steps to divorce. In my heart, then and now, these difficult steps were the best thing for all of us. Although it seemed dramatic to completely remove the children from the home and life that they knew, in the long run, the life they deserved lie elsewhere.
This “elsewhere” was not a fully formed vision in my mind, but I knew that I could not continue to expose them to a loveless spousal relationship. My gut told me that could hurt them emotionally in the long run.
I knew that getting divorced would allow me to become the father that my daughters deserved. This would allow me and their mother to create homes that truly reflected our parenting styles.
Then suddenly, it became a reality. I was parenting these three precious lives on my own in our new home. I tried to continue and expand upon my fathering philosophy that I had lived since my first daughter was born.
This book is the culmination of my day to day fathering since 1990. My advice is direct, clear and never sugar-coated. I always found the best parenting advice I got was given this way. I have given it to you the same way here. It is not a flowery how-to book. It is a field manual for fathers.
Why Foxhole Father? That is the only way to describe how I felt suddenly parenting my daughters on my own.
Dictionaries Define a Foxhole as:
My fathering mentality became exactly that. I had always been a fully participating parent when I was married, but I became truly hyper-aware and hyper-vigilant about my fathering role.
I believe my daughters have benefited from this Foxhole Father mindset.
March 16, 1997, the first night that I had officially moved us into our own apartment, was when I became the Foxhole Father.
Let me take you back to that night.
I am lying in a strange bed, at 2am. I am 30 years old. I have never lived alone. In their new bedroom, my 3 daughters, all under 7 years old, are quietly sleeping for the first time.
I spent the day with daughters and my friends, moving us out of my marital home and into an apartment.
All day I maintained my happy facade, but now, I lay there, crying and shaking uncontrollably. I tried to be as quiet as possible, and had to push my face into a pillow most of the time.
What if they walked in my bedroom? What kind of emotional damage could have been inflicted on my daughters had they seen me like that? What if they saw the reality of the emotional wreck their father had become?
Three beautiful children in the next room and I was completely responsible for them for the first time. I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to breathe and almost passed out. I had never had an anxiety attack at this level before. My tears were running down my face and I was gasping for air. I tried to stand up and the room started to spin. I fell into the wall.
I laid on my back and closed my eyes. For three hours this went on and I was careful to not wake them. There would be many more nights like that, alone, in the dark, trying to conceal my sorrow and fear from them.
At 6am the sun started to rise. I sat on the edge of the bed again, exhausted, but breathing ok. The sun’s first rays came past my window sill and into my room.
It was then that it came to me. All of my fathering fears were suddenly crystallized into one fathering mission; to put my children’s needs and feelings first and to remove my feelings from my parenting decisions.
I have never stopped fathering that way.
It changed my life.
I hope that you find fathering tools that you can use in Foxhole Father.
The year before, my children’s mother and I decided it was best to divorce and we agreed to share the physical and financial burdens between us. We agreed on equal parenting time. It would turn out that I would have almost all of the Fridays and Saturdays in our sharing arrangement. This would be a significant thing later as they entered their teen years.
My daughters were 6, 5 and 3 years old.
My children’s mother had been a stay at home mom and I was out of the home everyday trying to build my business and support us.
I voluntarily had taken the steps to divorce. In my heart, then and now, these difficult steps were the best thing for all of us. Although it seemed dramatic to completely remove the children from the home and life that they knew, in the long run, the life they deserved lie elsewhere.
This “elsewhere” was not a fully formed vision in my mind, but I knew that I could not continue to expose them to a loveless spousal relationship. My gut told me that could hurt them emotionally in the long run.
I knew that getting divorced would allow me to become the father that my daughters deserved. This would allow me and their mother to create homes that truly reflected our parenting styles.
Then suddenly, it became a reality. I was parenting these three precious lives on my own in our new home. I tried to continue and expand upon my fathering philosophy that I had lived since my first daughter was born.
This book is the culmination of my day to day fathering since 1990. My advice is direct, clear and never sugar-coated. I always found the best parenting advice I got was given this way. I have given it to you the same way here. It is not a flowery how-to book. It is a field manual for fathers.
Why Foxhole Father? That is the only way to describe how I felt suddenly parenting my daughters on my own.
Dictionaries Define a Foxhole as:
- a hole in the ground used by troops as a shelter against enemy fire or as a firing point.
- a place of refuge or concealment.
- a hole dug for a soldier to sit or lie in for protection from the enemy
My fathering mentality became exactly that. I had always been a fully participating parent when I was married, but I became truly hyper-aware and hyper-vigilant about my fathering role.
I believe my daughters have benefited from this Foxhole Father mindset.
March 16, 1997, the first night that I had officially moved us into our own apartment, was when I became the Foxhole Father.
Let me take you back to that night.
I am lying in a strange bed, at 2am. I am 30 years old. I have never lived alone. In their new bedroom, my 3 daughters, all under 7 years old, are quietly sleeping for the first time.
I spent the day with daughters and my friends, moving us out of my marital home and into an apartment.
All day I maintained my happy facade, but now, I lay there, crying and shaking uncontrollably. I tried to be as quiet as possible, and had to push my face into a pillow most of the time.
What if they walked in my bedroom? What kind of emotional damage could have been inflicted on my daughters had they seen me like that? What if they saw the reality of the emotional wreck their father had become?
Three beautiful children in the next room and I was completely responsible for them for the first time. I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to breathe and almost passed out. I had never had an anxiety attack at this level before. My tears were running down my face and I was gasping for air. I tried to stand up and the room started to spin. I fell into the wall.
I laid on my back and closed my eyes. For three hours this went on and I was careful to not wake them. There would be many more nights like that, alone, in the dark, trying to conceal my sorrow and fear from them.
At 6am the sun started to rise. I sat on the edge of the bed again, exhausted, but breathing ok. The sun’s first rays came past my window sill and into my room.
It was then that it came to me. All of my fathering fears were suddenly crystallized into one fathering mission; to put my children’s needs and feelings first and to remove my feelings from my parenting decisions.
I have never stopped fathering that way.
It changed my life.
I hope that you find fathering tools that you can use in Foxhole Father.
