Father’s Day in prison always prompts much reflection, sadness, rage and questioning all in equal measure. For fathers in prison, it is a time when the experience of separation can no longer be met with denial, its pain seems to break through even the hardest defences. Evidence I guess of an experience, an identity and a connection which sits deeply in the human spirit of every father.
All this has been brought to me over the years in the days and weeks following Father’s Day by those courageous men who seek out therapy whilst in prison, many do.
The pain of a father in prison is not the only emotion. It is nearly always accompanied by anxiety. I honour and respect those men who recognise this vulnerability and name it for what it is. It’s often expressed as a question “Am I turning into my father?”, “Will I be like my father?”, “Can you stop me becoming my father?”, “How do I stop being like my father?”.
The same questions are also asked on a regular basis by the fathers I work with in my private practice outside of prison. They too will be prompted, following another Father’s Day, to ask me in hope and in despair for an answer.
For many fathers in prison and out of prison, Father’s Day is not an occasion to be celebrated. Such a day is a reminder of an experience of fathering defined by tyranny, by violence, by violent misogyny, by homophobia, by absence, by hatred, by toxic masculinity, by a father unworthy of celebration no matter what day.
Such anxious questions emerging from these experiences of human failure, far from being hopeless and cause for despair, are I have come to realise, questions of hope. Such questions even before the answer emerges make conscious all that has previously not been said. Such questions make conscious the deepest fears and vulnerabilities which have often, for generations, remained unasked and therefore only communicated in horror after horror.
The fact that a man, a father, can ask such questions is the first indicator that a cycle, a history, a legacy is being broken and need not be repeated. It is the first indication that a happy Father’s Day can be possible.
Br. Stephen Morris fcc
