How the Scars of the Past Forged the Father I Am Today

These are the battles that shaped me: the ones that taught me how to father, how to fight for my children, and how to endure rooms that once silenced me.

Most people picture a childhood in Devonport as idyllic, filled with barefoot kids playing until sunset, safe and free. My childhood was not carefree. If home was unsettled after my parents’ separation, hospitals became my constant. My calendar was filled with appointments, and I endured twenty-six MRIs by the time I reached adulthood. The sharp, chemical smell of an operating room became as familiar to me as my schoolbooks. I learned the choreography of care early: the names, the routines, the particular scent of disinfectant.

School offered little escape. Placed in an all-boys class at age eleven, I became a target. My stutter and weight made me a punchline, and speeches became rituals of humiliation. I can still feel the sting of my skin as laughter filled the classroom. I learned to scan rooms for danger, not friends. Silence became safety; disappearing became a skill I perfected in library stacks and empty hallways. These experiences, along with the locker room cruelties and a sexual abuse I carried in wordless silence, taught me what happens when no adult steps in to protect a child.

It was in those rooms—of hospitals and schools, of isolation and fear—that a promise began to sharpen into a vow. If I ever had children, I would be the adult who steps in. I would be present before things went wrong. I would not call cruelty a joke or tell a child to be brave while leaving them alone. I would make space for difference and call it normal. This is how I would rewrite inheritance.

Years later, when my own son Finley was diagnosed with cancer, that vow was tested. As we walked the familiar corridors of Starship, the past rose to meet me. Signing the consent forms for his treatment felt like signing for myself all over again. My hand shook as the phantom smell of chilled gel and the rhythmic thump of an old MRI machine echoed in my memory. I was once again the boy who knew that a signature could mean pain and silence.

But this time, I was also the father. My past did not just haunt me; it armed me. The hypervigilance learned in childhood rewired itself into fierce advocacy. I knew how to read a room, how to track doses, and how to speak up earlier than most. These were not quirks; they were the ways I keep my boys safe in a world that once proved it would not keep me safe.

This is the vow I live by now, born from an unprotected past. I will stand between my children and harm, even at my own cost. I will be there at 3 a.m., and I will read every line before I sign. I will hold them through the pain and demand better pain relief when they need it. When the world tilts, I will steady the room.

If something must break, it will be me, not them.