Father Circle: Freedom [Session 5]

​Thank you for being here and taking a moment to read this. This Father Circle meets on Sunday, August 23 at 12pm ET, a 90-minute virtual gathering where fathers come together for honest conversation, explore the deeper questions that arise in parenting, share some music and art, and find a bit of stillness together.

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​WHO’S HOLDING THIS

​Hi everyone, I’m Carlos Rodarte, a single father to two daughters, ages 9 and 7. I grew up mostly with my single mother and a few father figures who offered guidance along the way. For me, fatherhood has become a way to reparent myself and reconnect with my inner child. I want you to know this circle is for me as much as it is for anyone. I benefit, my daughters benefit, and I truly believe society benefits when we create spaces like this.

​Being a father has reminded me that parenting isn’t something we do alone. It’s really a team effort, supported by friends and family if we let them in. It truly takes a village — not just because the work is hard, but because we’re all shaped by the people and forces around us, and so are our kids. The father figures who helped me, my mother, who took on many roles, and the friends, elders, and even strangers who leave their mark on a child are all part of that web. Learning to work with this, instead of against it, has changed how I see parenting. It’s taught me a lot about patience and accepting how little we can actually control.

​My path has been shaped most by my contemplative Buddhist practice. I grew up Catholic, but it never really became a big part of me. Over the years, spirituality and philosophy have stayed close to my heart. I’ve learned from many traditions and hold them with appreciation, not certainty. You’re welcome here, no matter what you believe or don’t believe.

​For over twenty years, I’ve worked where healthcare, technology, and contemplative practice meet. I’m a certified mindfulness mentor and a trained environmental and social scientist. I’ve also created retreats to support people with demanding lives. This circle comes from all of that, but mostly from being a dad.

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​HOW THE FATHER CIRCLE CAME TO BE

​When I talk with other fathers, I hear the same thing: we don't have many places to gather, talk, and reflect. Spaces where vulnerability isn't a weakness, where showing up fully, with all the tenderness and mess, actually matters. And spaces where we can sit with the deeper questions that fatherhood stirs up, the spiritual, the existential, the ones that don't have easy answers. What kind of person am I becoming through this? What did I inherit that I never chose? What does it mean to be truly present with my kids?

​That's why I'm opening this circle, for anyone carrying fatherhood energy. Real conversations about parenting, music, art, guided meditation, and honest company.

​There's another, more subtle reason for this circle. Personally, I've found it genuinely hard to make new friends during this chapter of life. My contemplative practice helps me sit with the outdated notions of going it alone or being tough, but even so, papahood can be lonely. I can't speak to how it was for generations before us, but I have a strong sense that the isolation many of us feel right now is real, and that it doesn't get talked about enough.

​Through friendship and connection, we can begin to feel lighter in spirit, which brings me to a question I've been sitting with lately: how do we create the conditions that allow us to fall into play? Play isn't something you can force. It shows up when the conditions are right, which is why we fall into it rather than make it. Some of those conditions live within us, like patience and a certain peace with not being in control. Others live outside us, in the pressure to provide and perform and have it all handled. Much of our time together is about setting that weight down, so play has room to find us.

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​WHAT YOU MIGHT LEAVE WITH

​There's plenty of parenting advice and checklists out there, but that's not what this space is for. Here, we want to create a sense of stillness and peace, so we can notice the stories we've picked up about fatherhood, look at them together, and see our own experiences in each other. We also want to recognize the different sources of strength, courage, and care that each person brings, whether that comes from a faith tradition, a cultural inheritance, a philosophy, or simply a hard-won way of moving through the world. All of it is welcome here. It's about learning to sit with the uncertainty of parenting, knowing that our struggles and joys are shared, and feeling free enough to bring them into the room. I hope you leave feeling less alone, and that we can move through fatherhood together with both confidence and humility.

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​WHO I’M HOPING GATHERS

​Anyone carrying fatherhood energy is welcome, by blood, choice, or love, whether or not you live with your kids. New dads, grandfathers, stepfathers, adoptive and foster fathers, or anyone who has shown up for a child. Whatever your spiritual or philosophical background, you are welcome here just as you are. This circle is a space for genuine presence, not for convincing or converting. It will especially speak to you if any of the following feel true:

​The joy of all this is real, and you have a feeling you don’t celebrate it nearly enough.

​You observe patterns from your own upbringing surfacing in your parenting that you’d rather not pass on.

​You’re present with your kids and quietly certain you still have more to give.

​You’ve been wishing for other fathers you could actually be honest with.

​You’re curious about the spiritual questions fatherhood keeps stirring up, from whatever tradition you hold or none at all.

​You don't need any experience with meditation or anything like "men's work" to join. Just come as you are, and if this feels right for you, join me.

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​Read on if you'd like more details on the arc of the six gatherings:

​THE JOURNEY — SIX SUNDAYS [JULY 26 | AUGUST 2, 9, 16, 23 | 30]

​Each session honors the many doors into reflection, whether a question, a prompt, a song, or a piece of visual art. For each one below, I've included a question we might sit with and explore together, just one of many that tend to arise.

​1.  Presence

​We begin by arriving, settling into the circle, and noticing what each of us carries into fatherhood, including the quiet belief that time with our kids is somehow separate from our 'real' lives. We invite ourselves to arrive fully, with whatever we’re carrying, and notice the quiet moments that often get overlooked. Presence is an act of kindness to ourselves and those we love.

​What has shaped my beliefs about fatherhood, and what would change if this time with my kids was simply my life, not time away from it?

​2.  Release

​We honestly look at what we inherited from those who raised us and the wider world, the patterns we repeat consciously, and those that run quietly below the surface. The work is noticing what we’re passing on before we’ve chosen it.

​What beliefs about being a father am I handing down, and which did I never actually choose?

​3.  Belonging

​We turn toward lineage and the communal web that shapes us, resisting the myth that we parent alone. We explore where we come from and how the village, seen and unseen, lives on in how we father. And we sit with a quieter kind of belonging, the sense that we are already enough, already at home in our own bodies, worthy of being seen without needing to earn it.

​Where do we come from, and who are the people and forces, named and unnamed, still shaping how we love?

​4.  Tenderness

​We sit with what we most long to give our children that can't be bought or scheduled, and with the ways everyday life can crowd out its full expression. Together we make room for the tenderness that usually goes unspoken, and for what words alone often miss.

​What does our love want to express that everyday life rarely makes room for?

​5.  Freedom

​We examine the water we've been swimming in, the scripts about manhood and strength we absorbed passively. We hold "fatherhood" itself lightly here, as one of the gloves of experience we wear rather than the whole of who we are, and open to the freedom of sensing beyond binary labels into something more spacious. This is also where we practice the pause, the space between trigger and reaction, where a different response becomes possible.

​What labels have we been wearing that we never chose, and who might we be beneath them?

​6.  Play

​We gather the threads and turn toward play and spontaneity, not as something to achieve but as what becomes possible once we’ve cleared the conditions, inner and outer, that block it. We close by naming what each of us needs to fall into play, by touching the deep time we belong to, and by lovingly recognizing the eternal present that play enables.

​What are we becoming, and what is the form and texture of a loving orientation that admits uncertainty?

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​If any of this speaks to you, I invite you to join me. Come as you are! curious, uncertain, or anywhere in between. There’s a place for you here.