You Don’t Need to Prove Yourself Worthy to Your Father

How Barack Obama’s battle with identity and ambition helped me embrace authenticity and imperfections as a dad.

Image credit Pete Souza

Last year, I began reading Barack Obama’s post-presidential memoir, A Promised Land. President Obama is someone I’ve long looked up to. As a Black man abandoned by his Black father and raised by the white side of his family, seeing someone like me break barriers by adding a little color to the collective portraits of American Presidents was inspiring. I saw my story in his. Somehow I even ended up raising two daughters whose ages resemble that of his daughters, Malia and Sasha. For me, A Promised Land was a must-read book.

The book was released in 2020, an interesting year, to say the least. In addition to the pandemic and a contentious Presidential election, I had spent the year interviewing my biological father, Maurice, for a podcast I produced called Complicated Fatherhood. In it, I explore my experience with fatherhood through learning about the father I never knew.

Boy, it was heavy.

I spent the first five months of 2020 interviewing Maurice. During that time, I asked questions and went deep into his decision to leave our family before waiting seventeen years to contact me again. Though we’ve met once in my adult life, I knew very little about his background, family, and certainly his story. Some of that is my fault as since he’d come back into my life, I liked to keep an arms distance from the man who voluntarily missed every milestone in my life from my first day of school through graduation. As I got older and stepped further into my journey through fatherhood, his story was one I was more curious about because no matter how much I’d tried to say his absence didn’t affect me, in a way, his story will always intersect with mine.

Since Complicated Fatherhood was released, Maurice and I have had a good relationship. A few bumps in the road, for sure, though we still talk about once per month, and I’m happy to say I enjoy our talks. Most of the time, they’re light and easy, and he gives really good gardening tips, which I genuinely appreciate.

Producing the podcast helped me navigate my constant need to do more. The constant need to prove myself to Lord knows who. Since I was little, I’ve been searching for something of meaning. Something I can create and make that has fingerprints and holds weight in the world. One job wasn’t enough. Simplicity wasn’t sufficient. I had something inside me that desired to make an impact, and after hours of interviewing Maurice, I had an idea of where those desires came from.

When I thought of the idea for Complicated Fatherhood, I knew the story would resonate. I am far from the only person in the world who grew up without a father, and I am far from the only person who grew up without a father who is now trying to be a great dad. But as I navigated writing each episode, producing the music for each introduction, writing a children’s book, managing my ice cream business, managing my day job, oh, and taking care of the main thing in my life, my family, I eventually asked myself, “What am I trying to do here?” I was exhausted. I was burning out. And I didn’t have a clear objective as to why I was pushing myself this hard.

Eventually, I got around to the book I had purchased almost two years earlier. When I said I read A Promised Land, I actually mean I listened to the audiobook. I purchased the hardcover the day it came out, but when I saw it was 700 pages, I knew there was little chance I’d find 30+ hours in the coming weeks to read. But I did work from home, and I do take the dogs on daily walks. Plus, Libby moved me up on their waitlist, so I didn’t have to pay for a second copy.

I began listening to A Promised Land on a beautiful fall day in 2022. I like to take my dogs out through the trails and watch the leaves come down as I take in a good story. As I made my way through Chapter 4, just minding my business, I was hit with a few sentences that stopped me dead in my tracks.

While talking about his potential run for President, President Obama walked the audience through his wife’s, Michelle Obama, state of mind during what she made clear was his decision. Michelle, a woman who sacrificed much of her career for their family in that season, was less than enthusiastic about her husband’s ambitions which would require him to spend more time on the road, and less time with his family, as he chased a dream that she didn’t share in the slightest.

Why would I put her through this? Was it just vanity? Or perhaps something darker- a raw hunger, a blind ambition wrapped in the gauzy language of service? Or was I still trying to prove myself worthy to a father who had abandoned me, live up to my mother’s starry-eyed expectations of her only son, and resolve whatever self-doubt remained from being born a child of mixed race? “It’s like you have a hole to fill,” Michelle had told me early in our marriage, after a stretch in which she watched me work myself to near exhaustion. “That’s why you can’t slow down.”

In truth, I thought I’d resolved those issues long ago, finding affirmation in my work, security and love in my family. But I wondered now if I could ever really escape whatever it was in me that needed healing, whatever kept me reaching for more.

Barack. My man. That hit far too close to home. But, like any line from a book, movie, or song that pulls on the heartstrings this closely, there’s always truth in it.

I knew I struggled to prove myself to an imaginary Fatherhood review board, waiting for me to screw up to say, “See? We knew you couldn’t be a good dad!” Even though we had long since addressed our past, I knew that my father abandoning me still played a large part in my writing books, producing podcasts, and searching for respect in the online fatherhood community. I was an only child, wanting to honor my mom’s sacrifice by making something of myself. I was a mixed-race child, still navigating what that means in the wake of a racial reckoning that pulled the carpet from those of us silly enough to assume our communities would empathize with our history.

President Obama was dropping bars, and with every sentence, I felt a bit more vulnerable than I had prepared to feel on a September afternoon. But as I replayed those lines again and again, I went from feeling seen to feeling understood, knowing that if the former President of the United States can struggle with his identity as a husband, dad, and overall human being, my struggles seemed less foreign than they felt before that chapter.

As I approach middle age, I can only imagine that these types of questions will ring louder and sound more aggressive in our minds; “What am I doing here?” “What am I searching for?” “Is this vanity? Or Perhaps something darker?”

Every now and then, we face cold, unpleasant realities that force us to examine who we are and where we came from. If you think an annual job performance review is unbearable, try conducting one on yourself about your life.

President Obama doesn’t answer his question of whether he could escape whatever it was that needed healing or why he was reaching for more. I don’t know if anyone could answer that question — certainly not for anyone else. As an outsider, I’m sure that in the nearly twenty years since President Obama first considered his run for Presidency, he’s likely resolved these questions as best as possible. But when navigating life as a dad after growing up without one, some questions don’t have the clear answers we’d like. I asked my father why he left, and he gave me a clear answer. Though, as a dad who just spent the evening comforting my sick daughter and putting her back to sleep, I still don’t get why my dad didn’t want that with me. Regardless, no matter the impact of my father’s decisions, that’s not a question with a clear answer, nor do I need one to find healing. My future doesn’t need to be dictated by overcoming obstacles. In some cases, I have the ability to choose what an obstacle is and isn’t. Today, I choose to keep reaching for more to prove my daughters right, not anybody wrong.

What constitutes a father has drastically changed over the past few decades. Whether we’ve struggled with abandonment, indifference, unrealistic expectations, or anything else, this generation of dads has the freedom to question how we show up for ourselves and our children, unlike the generations that came before us. This freedom comes with challenges, as ambiguity often does, though challenges lead to solutions, and solutions lead to growth.

We may have a few holes to fill. I don’t know of a single dad who doesn’t. But we can address these holes with honesty and grace through vulnerability and self-reflection, taking our best self forward and leaving our unsure self behind.

Dads — be kind to yourself. Be patient and build your story. We can’t change the past, but our values and self-worth are rooted in so much more than our father’s approval. You deserve closure. You deserve to slow down. You deserve to escape whatever it is that needs healing.