The journey that brought me here.
I didn't become a father because I had it all figured out.
In many ways, fatherhood is what taught me how much I still had to learn.
My journey started differently than I expected. I became a father figure to an eight-year-old boy, learning that love, trust and connection aren't things you can demand. They're things you build, one moment at a time.
Today I'm both a stepfather and a father, and I've been both for years. Each role has taught me something the other couldn't. Fatherhood isn't one job. It's many, and every child asks something different of you.
All the while, I've been in the classroom. For fifteen years I've spent my days with teenagers in Surrey, and they've shaped the way I show up for my own kids at home.
Over the years, I've experienced the many chapters of fatherhood. The beautiful ones, the challenging ones and the moments that leave you questioning everything you thought you knew.
I've been the father trying to understand his teenager. The father sitting with difficult questions. The father who got things wrong and had to make things right.
And the father who learned that sometimes the most important thing you can do is simply be there.
Growing up in Haiti.
I grew up in a middle-class Haitian family in the 1980s and 1990s. My father was a civil engineer and a university mathematics professor. My mother worked in hospital management. In our home, education, justice, service and representing our heritage well were simply part of who we were.
Family life revolved around hospitality, food, music, celebration and community. Doors were open. Tables were full. People showed up for each other, because that's what people did.
My childhood was also shaped by Haiti's political and social history. I won't turn this into a history lesson, but growing up where I did teaches you something about resilience, dignity and the importance of community when life gets hard.
My parents separated, and my father stayed present. He kept showing up. That consistency, a father who remained a father even when the family changed shape, left a mark on me that I still carry into my own understanding of what fatherhood means.
Learning what fatherhood really means.
I became a stepfather before I became a biological father. I had to earn the trust and love of a child who wasn't biologically mine, and I learned quickly that those things can't be demanded or assumed. They're built slowly, through patience, consistency and showing up on the days it would be easier not to.
Years later, when my eldest son turned twenty-one, he chose to take my last name. No one asked him to. It remains one of the most meaningful moments of my life, because it was proof that the relationship we built was real, chosen and his as much as mine.
Raising children through their different stages has taught me that fatherhood is never one skill. What a toddler needs, what a ten-year-old needs and what a teenager needs are entirely different things, and just when you think you've learned the job, the job changes. Adapting, again and again, is part of the work.
I see teenagers as they actually are, not necessarily as their parents imagine them to be. That changes the conversation completely.
Fifteen years listening to the next generation.
For fifteen years I've worked as a high school educator in Surrey. My days are spent with teenagers: watching them form identities, navigate pressure, build and break friendships, and try to make sense of the world and themselves.
Somewhere along the way, my students affectionately nicknamed my classroom "Group Therapy." I take that as one of the greatest compliments of my career. It meant the room felt safe enough for them to be honest.
This gives me a perspective most people don't have. I see teenagers as they actually are: thoughtful, guarded, funny, overwhelmed and far more aware than adults give them credit for. Not necessarily as their parents imagine them to be. When I sit with a father who feels his teenager pulling away, I'm not guessing at the other side of that relationship. I've spent my career on it.
I don't ask fathers to do anything I'm not doing myself.
In 2022 I joined Arka Brotherhood, a men's personal development community. I joined because I wanted to become a better father and a better husband, to build genuine community with other men and, eventually, to be of service to others.
Men need spaces where they can be honest, vulnerable, challenged and supported. Not performative. Not competitive. Honest. Sitting in that kind of space, week after week, changed me.
Personal reflection, journaling, meaningful conversations and accountability have shaped who I'm becoming. This work isn't a role I perform for other fathers. It's the ground I stand on.
Why Craft Your Journey exists.
Fathers need more opportunities to understand themselves and the influence they have on their families. Not more lectures. Not more tips. More honest space.
I don't want to tell fathers what to do. I want to help them ask better questions, explore their own answers and take ownership of the father they want to become.
I'm still learning. I'm still growing. And I believe that's exactly how it should be.