I Grew Up Hiding My Feelings. I Wasn’t Ready For What Fatherhood Would Do To Me

<div><img src="https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/69026dfb180000180003fedc.jpeg?ops=scalefit_630_noupscale" alt="The author when he was a boy." data-caption="The author when he was a boy." data-credit-link-back="" data-credit="Supplied" />The author when he was a boy.</div><div class="content-list-component text"><p>I remember sitting in the hospital pre-op room, minutes before my daughter was born...</p><p>I’d been told to wait 30 minutes. It felt like a lifetime.</p><p>My heart was pounding, the same rhythm I knew before rugby cup finals – adrenaline, control, composure. But underneath it, something else stirred. A quiet reckoning.</p><p>I’d grown up in 1980s Yorkshire, where strength meant silence. If you were a man, especially a mixed-race kid trying to survive the streets, showing fear or sadness was an open invitation.</p><p>You learned to lock it all away: anger, loss, even love. It wasn’t rebellion, it was protection.</p><p>So, I sat there in surgical scrubs, trying to steady my breathing, telling myself to stay calm. But as the clock ticked from 11:40 to 12:10, everything I’d buried began to rise: fear, excitement, doubt. Could I really break the pattern? Could I be the father I’d never seen?</p><p>And then, clarity: my fear wasn’t weakness. It was love in disguise, proof that I cared enough to change.</p><p>At 12:10, the nurse called me in.</p><p>When I saw my daughter for the first time, the world fell silent. She was perfect, half British and Jamaican, half Swiss and Italian – a tiny bridge between worlds.</p><p>The weight of her in my arms wasn’t heavy. It was anchoring. For the first time in my life, the word father didn’t sting. It felt whole.</p><h2 style="font-weight:400"><strong>The shock of feeling</strong></h2>