Father Blessing Ceremony, Parenting, & A Life Update (Video) | #97
How a new ritual is emerging to support fathers + more
Hello!
It’s been a minute since my last dispatch, and wow, a lot has happened.
The biggest news is that I became a father and we welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world in May.
Kaia turned 2 months old today, and it’s been a total rollercoaster. So much love, so many diapers, so little sleep (mainly for Claire 🫢) but we are enjoying the ride.
Here’s what you’ll find in the 97th edition of One Percent Wisdom:
My Father Blessing Ceremony; what this is and why I think it matters
The Time Warp of Parenting — I’m re-sharing a short piece I wrote for Time Dorks reflecting on my first few weeks in this new job
Life Update — I feel like recording more videos, so I put up a 10-minute update on my YouTube sharing a few things happening in my life for those curious.
Let’s jump into it!
#1 | Father Blessing Ceremony
In March, I gathered with some of my closest friends to mark the transition into fatherhood.
There are many waypoints on the road to parenthood: discovering you’re pregnant, sharing the news (and deciding when that feels appropriate), going to see your doctor, getting printouts of the first scans, buying baby stuff, choosing a name, learning (or not, in our case) the sex, and often, a baby shower.
In my experience, most of the focus of this process is on the mother. And honestly, I believe it should be. She is literally growing a human being inside of her!
But as they say, it takes two to tango.
I personally believe there is a lot of unrealized value in acknowledging and celebrating the role of the father in this process, and as a society, we could do better to mark this transition.
Rites of Passage
When did you become an adult?
Was there a moment in your life that marked the transition? Or did you simply wake up one morning with an overdue phone bill, a job you didn’t particularly care for, and realize, damn, I’m grown.
When I look around, and I’m not the first one to say this, it seems like our culture has lost touch with the significance of marking major life milestones.
Of course, there are moments in my life that resemble rites of passage: my First Communion; getting confirmed in the Catholic Church (missed it); high school and college graduations; weddings; and so on.
These are all meaningful moments, or at least they hold the potential to be.
Take a wedding.
For those that participate, it certainly is a major milestone of life. Some people treat it carefully, spending time beforehand reflecting on the transition to come, perhaps even working with a counselor to prepare together with their partner.
For these people, you might notice a marked difference in their way of being before and after getting married. They have grappled with the weight of the moment, and it has changed them in some way.
But a lot of the focus around weddings these days is on the party and celebration. A massive wedding-industrial-complex has emerged to support this cultural shift, and make a neat profit in the meantime.
Collectively, we spend far more time picking out flowers and deciding on seating arrangements then thinking through how our life is about to change, developing our communication skills with our partners, or setting intentions for how we want to live in union, forever (!), with another human being.
And I see a lot of those same tendencies with the transition to parenthood.
For those who choose (and are blessed with the gift) of becoming a parent, there is not much to really hold the weight of this powerful moment of transition.
Sure, there are gifts, maybe a baby shower, perhaps a few books on parenting start piling up on the counter, and maybe you attend a few prenatal classes to learn some baby-CPR (or really just to meet other expectant parents) but I don’t personally know a lot of new parents who had much more than that.
And yet, having a child can be one of the most transformational experiences we will go through as an adult,
So when my dear friend Brandon reached out (on the heels of a newsletter I wrote back in January…another reason I love the synchronicity of writing online!), and told me about his new idea around hosting a fatherhood ceremony & celebration. I was intrigued.
What exactly is a Father Blessing Ceremony?
A Father Blessing Ceremony is a celebration of the transition to fatherhood.
Brandon puts it like this:
For expectant fathers - I facilitate Father Blessing Ceremonies. We gather your closest community together to honor your transition to fatherhood via a fully customized and unique celebration.
What I appreciated most about this was that it can really be anything you’d like!
He has a framework and structure, but most of the detail and creativity was a byproduct of our discussions and explorations as we co-created the experience.
Here’s a rundown my ceremony:
We gathered 5 of my closest friends, plus my father and brother, for the virtual ceremony.
We had some beautiful, calming music playing as everyone arrived, followed by a a moment for Brandon to set the context
I also said a few words to welcome folks, and then introduce a song we all listened to collectively that is a meaningful song to me
Then, we opened up to group sharing. This was such a beautiful, transcendent experience for me. I had no idea what to expect, but each guest shared something from the heart, and it was wonderful beyond words.
Finally, we closed the ceremony.
Simple, yet transformational.
More than just a moment
Looking back, the ceremony itself was extremely powerful, but I also have a deep appreciation for weeks and months leading up to the ceremony where Brandon and I met on Zoom and exchanged emails about what I wanted the ceremony to look like.
Having Brandon there to lead this preparation gave me the support I needed to truly reflect and take in this major moment I was preparing for.
As I live in a separate country from so many of my closest friends and family members, Brandon brilliantly suggested a physical symbol to mark my support network, so I would know they were with me, even if not physically.
With the help of Claire (thank you, again!!), we designed a bracelet with different stones with different meanings that each person picked out. I wore this in the days leading up to the birth, throughout the birth experience itself, and still put it on after.
It’s a reminder to me of the people I can lean on when I need it, so I loved this aspect.
All in all, I believe the world needs more writes of passage like this. More moments where we can pause, take stock, and appreciate what has passed and what is to come.
A Father Blessing Ceremony was just that for me, and I hope many more vehicles of transformation and transition like this continue to emerge.
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I’m incredibly grateful for Brandon’s invitation to participate in this ceremony, and it’s certainly something I’d recommend to any soon-to-be-fathers reading this. Brandon did not ask me to write this piece btw :)
If you’d like to learn more about doing a Father Blessing Ceremony with Brandon, check out this one-pager he shared with me.
#2 The Time Warp of Parenting
FYI: This is a re-post from a Make Time “Time Dorks” newsletter. I know we’ve welcomed many new readers to One Percent Wisdom from that list, so sorry about the repost! Maybe you’d like to check out one from the archives. May I suggest Little Defeats | #90?
Hey friends,
I’ve been quiet for a minute because...I had a baby! Well, my wife Claire had the baby but I became a father to a sweet baby girl on May 8th.
As a self-proclaimed time dork, I've never experienced a time warp so peculiar as the first few weeks of parenthood.
Each day cut up into 2-3 hour increments, with a consistent flow of activities from feeding, to changing diapers, to putting the baby back to sleep. You blink, and the sun is setting.
And while the days flicker by like a stop-motion animation, I simultaneously feel that we've had this baby in our lives for months, not weeks.
Have you ever traveled to a new country and experienced the feeling that each day feels way longer than your average day?
There is something peculiar that happens to our experience of time during novel or intense experiences. There is so much new sensory and emotional information flooding in, that it somehow makes the experience of those moments richer in your memory.
This is akin to what I've felt in these first few weeks of parenthood. It's a strange sensation that I'm still wrapping my head around. Maybe other parents reading this can relate.
As the time flows by, I'm trying my best to soak up each moment and bask in the beauty of our little human being evolving by the day.
I'm trying to remind myself to pay attention and be there in the moments that matter.
I'm grateful that the practices I've picked up through Make Time have helped me recognize the value of paying attention.
P.S. if you enjoyed reading this, you might like to subscribe to the Make Time newsletter. Sent by yours every other week.
#3 | Life Update
Here’s a little off-the-cuff update on things in my world as of Summer 2024.
Timestamped:
00:00 — Intro
00:53 — The time warp of parenting
03:15 — Parental leave as an entrepreneur
06:25 — The year of Make Time (business update)
09:47 — The worst office tour you've ever seen
Also…1,000 Readers!
About a month ago, we passed a little milestone. Slightly more than a thousand humans are reading and enjoying (hopefully) these occasional dispatches.
I wrote the first issue of OPW on March 26, 2020 and 96 others since then.
It’s fun to know other people read these thoughts, and it’s part of what keeps me coming back and putting words on paper. So, thank you!
💌 If you’ve been enjoying this newsletter, the best way to support it (and keep me motivated to keep writing) is to share it with a friend.
Words of Wisdom
"Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.” — W. H. Auden
Thanks for reading!
— Connor
Super read as always. You’re an innovator and that’s now extended to Daddy-hood. Congrats to you and Claire.