Who Are We If We Cannot Protect Them?

Stand between our children and the dangers of the world

Republished with permission.

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When my son was born, I tore open my hospital gown and pulled him against my chest. He was trembling, fresh from the only home he had ever known, and I held him close to my heart, letting him feel the steady rhythm of life outside the womb. He did not yet know the world, but in that moment, he knew me. He knew my warmth, my breath, my unshaken presence. And in that first meeting, I made him a promise:

I will always keep you safe.

This is what it means to be a father—to shield, to guide, to carry the weight of protection so that our children may grow in innocence a little while longer. Fathers are not made by law, nor by ceremony, but by this vow written deep into our bones: to stand between our children and the dangers of the world. We are their first refuge, the steady arms that hold them before they ever learn the meaning of fear. But what happens when the world itself becomes the danger?

I moved countries to keep him from harm. To start a family in a place that would be safe for them, to ensure they would never be subjected to the kind of violence I grew up with. I left behind a homeland soaked in pain, where people are not just killed, they are tortured. Where hate is not just felt but acted upon, bodies broken and lives discarded as symbols of revenge. Where suffering is so deep, so inherited, that it turns men into monsters, unleashing their rage upon those who resemble their past oppressors, as if harming another could ever undo the harm that was done to them. I carried my family away from that world, believing I had found sanctuary. Believing I had finally given my son a place where he would be free.

But what happens when safety is an illusion? What happens when the harm does not come with weapons or fire, but with soft voices and gentle hands, reshaping him into something I do not recognize? What happens when the very structures meant to protect our children begin pulling them from our arms, reshaping them into something foreign, something fragile, something that serves not their own becoming, but an ideology that does not see them as children—only symbols? What happens when the hands that should nurture them instead twist their sense of self into something they do not yet understand?

I am losing my son.

Not to illness, not to violence, not to fate. But to a slow and deliberate unraveling of the bond between parent and child. To a movement that claims to offer clarity but only sows confusion. To a system that does not listen, does not care, does not see the sacred thread that binds a father to his son. I see him slipping away, his innocence distorted into a battleground where he never asked to stand. I watch as words not his own begin to shape him, as beliefs he is too young to hold are handed to him like a script he must follow. I see the subtle ways in which he is told to trust strangers over his father, to replace the wisdom of my arms with the cold authority of a system that does not love him.

This grief is not a dull ache—it is flesh torn open, a wound that refuses to close. It is the raw, unbearable sensation of a body trying to hold itself together while something vital is ripped away. Grief is not soft. It does not arrive like a whisper. It crashes through you like a blade through muscle, fiber by fiber tearing apart, each strand snapping under the weight of loss. The body knows before the mind does. The heart recoils before it understands. And yet, the world tells me to be quiet, to let go, to pretend that I do not feel my own son being taken.

I am not alone in this grief.

I see fathers everywhere, fighting battles they were never prepared for—courtrooms where their voices are dismissed, schools where their children are taught to distrust them, co-parents who rewrite reality itself, brick by brick, until the child no longer knows the ground they stand on. We are being asked to surrender. To step back, to nod along, to relinquish our role quietly while the world decides who our children will become.

And what choice do we have?

If we raise our voices, we are called hateful. If we grieve, we are dismissed as relics of a past that has no place in the future. If we fight, we are punished—not just by law, but by a culture that has made fathers the enemy of progress. And so we stand, silent, watching the unthinkable unfold. We watch, as grief turns into resignation, as resignation turns into a quiet despair, as our role is eroded not in one great battle, but in a slow, relentless wearing down of our right to protect our own children.

This is a grief like no other. It is the grief of knowing your child is slipping away, yet being told it is not happening. It is the grief of seeing innocence repurposed into a banner, a message, a movement. It is the grief of hearing your own child say words that are not their own, speak beliefs that are not yet theirs to hold, look at you with eyes that no longer trust the arms that have carried them since birth. It is the grief of knowing that even though you are still here, you are being made to feel like a ghost in your own child’s life.

It is a grief with no funeral, no ritual, no recognition. There is no public mourning for the loss of a father’s voice. There is no moment of silence for the erasure of his place in his child’s world. There is only the quiet, endless ache of knowing that something sacred is being undone, and no one is coming to stop it.

But it is real.

And it must be spoken.

Because grief unspoken does not dissolve—it festers, it hardens, it turns inward. And fathers cannot afford to become hollow. Our children need us to remain whole, even as they are being pulled from our grasp. Even as the world tells us to disappear.

So I write this not to fight but to illuminate.

For the fathers who do not have words yet. For the fathers who feel the ache but cannot name it. For the fathers who have been made to believe they are alone.

You are not alone.

And though the world may try to strip us of our role, it cannot strip us of our love.

We were the first to hold them. We were the first to whisper the promise of protection. And though the world may try to silence us, we are still here.

Waiting. Watching. Holding space for the day our children find their way back.

Because a father’s love does not yield.

Not to the courts.

Not to the culture.

Not to the forces that seek to rewrite the sacred bond between parent and child.

And not to this grief.

Take heart,

I’m not giving up.