Fathers
TAA 0035 – C. Travis Webb, Seph Rodney, and Steven Fullwood discuss fatherhood. Being sons and having sons informs their exploration of masculinity, pride, misfortune, and the culture’s ambivalence towards traditional masculine values.
| C.T. WEBB 00:18 | Good afternoon, good morning or good evening and welcome to The American Age Podcast. I am talking to Seph Rodney and Steven Folwood. Gentlemen, how you guys doing today? |
| S. FULLWOOD 00:27 | Good afternoon. |
| S. RODNEY 00:29 | I’m doing really well, I’m actually doing really well today. I’m coming off a really good conversation with my boss yesterday. And I actually, for the first time in my life, have been invited to a fashion show. A runway show, I should say. |
| C.T. WEBB 00:43 | Alright, alright. Awesome sauce. Great. |
| S. RODNEY 00:45 | Yeah, yeah, in my inbox yesterday. Yeah, so. And it’s some like– if you’re going to be invited to a runway show, of course it’s She She, but this is a brand I just looked up, I have never heard of before, but it’s like– |
| C.T. WEBB 00:59 | What is it? What’s the brand? |
| S. RODNEY 01:01 | Pyar Moss |
| C.T. WEBB 01:02 | Maybe they’ll sponsor the podcast cause they’ll– |
| S. RODNEY 01:07 | Yeah, Pyar Moss. I mean, it’s just– I’m like damn, that’s cool. So, I’m think I’m going to do that in September. |
| S. FULLWOOD 01:12 | Um-hm. |
| C.T. WEBB 01:12 | Alright, alright. Alright. |
| S. FULLWOOD 01:15 | Excellent. |
| C.T. WEBB 01:16 | Moving on up. |
| S. FULLWOOD 01:16 | Yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB 01:17 | Okay, so today, we are actually going to talk about something that came– now, were we recording when we had that conversation last week, or was this before we started recording? When you and Steven had the discussion about fathers, I don’t remember. |
| S. RODNEY 01:32 | I think we had stopped recording at that point. |
| S. FULLWOOD 01:34 | I think it was after we stopped, yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB 01:36 | Okay. Alright, so we decided to make the topic this week fathers, because sort of born out of a conversation that continued after last week’s podcast. And Steve and I are both fathers, right? I have two sons. |
| S. RODNEY 01:50 | Uh-huh. |
| C.T. WEBB 01:50 | Steven has an adopted son. |
| S. RODNEY 01:52 | Adopted son. Um-hm. |
| C.T. WEBB 01:52 | And Seph is currently fatherless, but you never know. |
| S. FULLWOOD 01:58 | Interesting way to put that, it sort of sounds like he’s barren. I was like, no. He has no children. |
| S. RODNEY 02:03 | Right, right, right. |
| S. FULLWOOD 02:08 | [crosstalk] be Ecclesiastical about that. |
| C.T. WEBB 02:10 | And in the lead up to the podcast, we talked briefly about it and it’s a deep topic for Seph and Steven because they have vexed and complicated relationships with their fathers. Of course, I am an only son and I have had many challenges with my father, but I– my relationship with my dad is great. My dad came from pretty fucked up circumstances but he– tremendous strength of character. He didn’t carry a lot of that baggage into his relationship with me. So, I know we had talked about framing a question, but I don’t know, Seph, Steven, do you want to jump in with some background a little bit before we get into it? |
| S. RODNEY 03:01 | You can go first, Steven. |
| S. FULLWOOD 03:03 | Oh, okay. I was actually going to tell you both, could one of you go first? But I will go ahead and I’ll leap in. I’ll jump in. |
| S. RODNEY 03:10 | Okay, okay. |
| S. FULLWOOD 03:11 | So, when we started that conversation last week, I think right after the podcast, recording the podcast, I asked myself, “What will I reveal about my father?” You know, personally, because my father’s a very personal, a very private man. And he can’t completely understand why I do what I do. One being out, or just telling my business. He’s like, “Why do you tell people your business?” I’m like, “Well, I tell my business because it’s kind of everyone’s business, in a way.” Just to tell you a little bit about him, he was born in 1939 in Louisiana and his family moved to a farm in Arkansas where he spent his formative years. And maybe a week after his graduation, when he was 17, he jumped a bus to leave Arkansas forever and only visited there maybe two or three times back. Just to see his family and to attend funerals unfortunately. But he was very intent on getting out to California, Compton, California, where we have relatives. But he met my mother in Toledo, Ohio and that’s where he stayed. The reason why I say what I would reveal about my father is because I’ve written about him extensively, and I even published a piece about him in a book called Be A Father To Your Child. And I was asked because I was the only black, gay person that the editor knew, and she wanted to know what that– if I had anything to say about my father. Basically, the title of the essay, which I could not find, it’s called Work and Travel, and those are things that my father valued most. As a young father himself, and the things I picked up as a lesson from him. In the essay, I recounted a story where I tell him that I want to bring my fiance, when I was engaged, to meet him. And he was like, “Well, you know–” and I don’t know what made me do it, but when he started the talk, I just started taking notes. And I was so happy that I did, because I wanted to capture it and then he goes, “You know, he goes, Stevie, I love you. I love you until they put me into the ground. And I support you, it’s just that I can’t abide by that. And I just don’t know why you have to tell people and–” and I kind of like– |
| C.T. WEBB 05:21 | Abide by that being your coming out? Is that–? |
| S. FULLWOOD 05:24 | Oh, being actually engaged to a man. |
| C.T. WEBB 05:26 | Oh, okay. Right. |
| S. FULLWOOD 05:27 | He went on a very long, seemed like he was reading from a script, it was just so beautiful and so complex, and so wonderful. And what he said was, “You took the hard road. You decided that you would come out and you would make it a platform,” he didn’t use the word platform. Not like what [inaudible] used then. And, he says, “But you know, I’m selfish. I wanted you to get married to a woman, I wanted you to have children, I just wanted a bunch of little Stevens running around.” He says, “You could’ve been president, but you took the hard road.” And he kept repeating that. And I was like, I don’t recall cause I had the [inaudible] in front of me, exactly what I said, but it was something to the effect where, I’m just being myself. |
| S. RODNEY 06:14 | Wow. |
| S. FULLWOOD 06:14 | And then I went to where I thought he could understand, I said, well think about Rosa Parks and then I started naming others, figures that he knew. I said people didn’t stop and do what they thought was right, we wouldn’t be here doing certain, and living in certain kinds of ways. But I remember feeling like my father’s listening, but I’m not sure what he’s hearing, but he’s starting to become like, I feel more like a concept to him than a son at times. So I float in and out of a space where when I left home, at the age of 18, I put myself through college, which he really admired, he was going through a divorce with my mother. But that I started to go, I just don’t know, I just don’t know who this man is. I spent my life with him, he wasn’t an absentee father, in fact, he worked two or three jobs at a time. Went from being a cook to a paramedic, back to a cook, and was always picking up jobs here and there. But I realize that for this particular podcast, it invigorated me to think more about the quality of the life that he’s lead. He’s retired, lives in Ohio, has all kinds of grandchildren, and has suffered through a lot of deaths within the recent two decades. Of his parents, his siblings, his former wife, his children, and friends. And so there’s a sort of isolation that I feel he probably experiences, like a lot of other men and women, who get to a particular age where people are just dying around them. And they’re there, and what do they do? I’ll start there, cause I just wanted to give, yeah, I’m just trying to give some sensibility, a perspective on me still learning who that man is. Yeah. |
| S. RODNEY 07:55 | So when we had discussed, yeah, we had this meta-discussion about having this discussion around fathers. Before we started recording, Travis laid out basically an argument that in high-brow culture, in the sort of circles that we all spend time in, professionally, and in our leisure time, personally– |
| S. FULLWOOD 08:22 | In our leisure as well, yeah, yeah, probably, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY 08:25 | In our personal relationships, we spend time around people who think about ideas, a lot. |
| S. FULLWOOD 08:30 | Talk about ideas. |
| C.T. WEBB 08:33 | Too much. |
| S. FULLWOOD 08:34 | Maybe. There’s never too much. |
| S. RODNEY 08:34 | But, within this cultural circle, Travis is arguing that fatherhood, in general, and the practices and conversations around how to be a man in the world don’t get a lot of respect. In general, the conversations we have, and I think Travis is right about this, look at the ways and means of marginalization and oppression that get shunted through gender, ethnicity, class, and we’re very, very concerned about these things, and rightly so. But we tend not to have a lot of respect for the, what’s the word, the role of fatherhood, of being a father. And I wanted Travis to use that, to frame that up as a question to lead us into this conversation, and I think giving what Steven has said, I think the question might be: In what ways have each of us learned, if we have, to sympathize with our fathers? And what have they done to bring us to that point? And I think giving what Steven’s just said, I think what I heard is that, what your father has done in order for you to be able to sympathize with his world view, with his plight, is he’s shown you love. |
| S. FULLWOOD 10:10 | Oh, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY 10:10 | He’s shown you love, he’s given you support, he’s given you respect, and he’s let you in to how he processes things. |
| S. FULLWOOD 10:21 | Absolutely. |
| S. RODNEY 10:21 | And when you have that conversation with him, he lets you in. And these things are really clear to me, because I have to say, that these are things that my father absolutely does not do. Like he does not do with me, he’s never done. And I think I’m finally at a point in my life where I am able to recon– and this is after how many years of therapy? |
| S. FULLWOOD 10:45 | Wow. |
| S. RODNEY 10:46 | Four or five, maybe? Finally at the place where I can say, okay, right, I can say to another human being, I can say to you two, I can say to whoever’s listening, okay my father is a narcissistic asshole. He just is. He’s just not very concerned with people other than himself. And in a lot of ways, he actually does– Trump actually does remind me of my father. In that, his pettiness and his vindictiveness comes out of the sense of, him never being sure that he actually belongs in this world. He’s not convinced that he’s– |
| C.T. WEBB 11:34 | He’s not surefooted about it. |
| S. RODNEY 11:34 | No. He’s never convinced that he’s actually valid, legitimate, worthy of respect. So he’s constantly looking for ways to shine the light, other people’s light on himself, so that he can feel like he does, he’s worth something. And I remember this when I was a child, and my father told me lots of stories growing up, he wasn’t absentee either, but he was present in a way that was, I think, from where most of memories are, at least my memories biased. It felt like he was angry, at least half the time he was in my home. He was angry at his wife, he was angry at us. I have a sister who is mildly autistic, that really made our family dynamic super contentious and resentful, and they had a bad marriage so there’s that and my father cheated on my mother a lot. Which my mother deeply resented. One of the stories he told me when I was a child was, he said that, he grew up in Jamaica, he grew up dirt poor in Jamaica. And I think, in fact, I did some research on this, and I think when he came over to the United States, which would have been late sixties, I think the unemployment rate in Kingston, where he was from, was around 20 to 25%. So that means that one in five, one in four people were not working at that point. Right? So he came from desperate circumstances. He told me that it wasn’t until he was an adult that he actually owned a pair of long pants, is how he said it. So he didn’t have trousers, he had just shorts or whatever until he was 18 or 19 or thereabouts. He said that he remembers being the skinny kid and thinking when he spoke to women, who he was interested in, how could they ever love me? I just didn’t understand how they could, essentially. He didn’t say it that way, but that’s how he saw himself, and I think that, not sure that he ever actually moved through that or past that. And my father came from a place of really deep hurt from his own father, and this is a story that, here’s another story that he told me, constantly. I’m going to tell this story and then hand it over to somebody else to speak for a while, but I think this is the only point of sympathy I have with my father, because he’s such a– I think a mean-spirited and vain man. I know that he comes from this deep hurt in that he told me the following story a lot growing up. He said that his own father, called him G, was messing around with some women in town and my father had to go by to see him for something. And his father saw him, and he said he was with this woman who was not his wife, he didn’t want my father to– have it get back to anybody else through my father, that he was messing around with this woman. So he said to my father, “Don’t tell her that you’re my son, say you’re my nephew.” And he told me this story, I think my fathers told me this story at least fifteen times over the course of my life. |
| S. FULLWOOD 15:09 | Wow. |
| S. RODNEY 15:09 | Yeah. And he said, it hurt me so bad and my father denied me and– it’s like out of a Russian novel, it’s like the thing that makes the hero fall apart. So the whole novel is about the slow sort of crumbling of this person because of this one decisive act. That’s the only place I can muster up any sympathy for my father, just knowing that, essentially, that origin story. But other than that, my fathers the kind of person who, if he wasn’t my father and I met him, I would think, “Oh, wow, you’re someone I want to have nothing to do with.” |
| S. FULLWOOD 15:59 | Word. |
| C.T. WEBB 16:00 | So, I have a few things, I’ve been trying to keep mental notes here. So, one, in a kind of ironic way, Steven. You mentioned how you’re Dad couldn’t quite understand why you told everyone you’re business. |
| S. FULLWOOD 16:15 | Yeah, mm-hmm. |
| C.T. WEBB 16:15 | And your Dad was a very private man, but in a lot of ways, both of those strategies, rather than say a strategy to dissimulate, or to lie, not to lie, but to tell, to puff one’s self up. These come from a place of strength, right? So if you hold everything in so that no one knows your business, no one can hurt you, right? On the flip side, if you tell everyone your business, there’s nothing that anyone can hold over you. There’s nothing– |
| S. FULLWOOD 16:47 | Yeah. Exactly. |
| C.T. WEBB 16:50 | No one can say anything to you, no one can say, hey I heard you were doing– it just doesn’t matter, it’s all out there. There’s no– |
| S. FULLWOOD 16:54 | Exactly right. |
| C.T. WEBB 16:56 | They both come from a place of strength. They’re just flipped strategies, and so I would definitely see some parallels there. You actually ended up anticipating the question that you’d asked, for me to come up with a question is, what type of wound do you think your father or fathers or our fathers suffered in order to inflict that pain on the people that they love? And it reminded me of something that Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk, says, which is that people who are in pain can still love, I’m paraphrasing, but the love that they offer is hurtful because they themselves are wounded, and so they don’t– they’re wounding you the way that they also are wounded. It recalled for me, what both of your situations recalled for me, is that it’s very difficult for us being shaped by the kind of culture that we’ve been shaped by, and having the kind of space to explore and grow as men. It’s difficult to fully relate or appropriately empathize with men that did not have that same space. And in fact, that encroachment on space, on cultural, intellectual, psychological space, I think, permeates American culture right now. The example that I was going to give to try to keep things concrete is The Sopranos. So, Tony Soprano being maybe one of the most famous fathers of the Aughts. Obviously, essentially a sociopath, a murderer. But also, completely feckless, and ineffective in his own family. The opening scene of The Sopranos is Tony Soprano sitting in a waiting room, the indignity of a waiting room, waiting to go see his female therapist. This is a man that is– this a man of power, that is, in fact, actually gelded. And that image of the father– now, you can read it in a white male way and I think that’s completely legitimate, I don’t think that that should be– I don’t think we should take that out of the conversation, but as a culture, as a civilization in the 21st century, I don’t think that we have a very good map for how to be a man. |
| S. FULLWOOD 19:48 | Oh no, not at all. I completely agree with that. In fact, I think, in some ways, the men that we’re talking about, I’m waiting for you, Travis, to talk about your dad, is that there was a certain, the word sacrifice doesn’t really quite do it because of the emotional terror of being known, or the emotional terror of not being considered a man and all these things that ravage a person who may not have any access, or want any access to the internal life. That’s how it is. That’s just how it is. You know, that kind of guy. So, yeah, please talk about your dad. You know, again, you can, yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB 20:28 | Yeah, yeah. My dad was also very angry growing up. I don’t suspect in the same way that Seph’s was, my dad is not narcissistic at all, but he was very angry. His father was a philanderer, probably a polygamist, very abusive to my father, probably sexually abusive to my aunts. I mean, just a real piece of shit, son-of-a-bitch. Bad enough that I don’t really care how bad his father was to him, it’d be okay if he had gotten hit by a truck, after my dad had grown– I don’t want to interrupt– no weird Terminator storylines, I don’t want to undo my lineage. But as a human being, just bad enough that– he was as bad as Seph’s father was, this man was a real– he was a predator, essentially. |
| S. RODNEY 21:27 | Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB 21:28 | And my dad, right? So my dad got in a fight with his father, left home at 17, joined the army. Grew up in Arkansas, deep Arkansas, like no plumbing Arkansas. |
| S. FULLWOOD 21:38 | That kind of plumbing, gotcha. Damn. |
| S. RODNEY 21:39 | Until later, obviously, later in my dad’s life. And you know what, my dad never in his life raised a hand to me. Never once, and that took a tremend– I mean, so one of the reasons my dad was angry so much when he was younger, was cause he had so much anger that got stored inside of him from this situation of powerlessness when he was young. And the thing that he could do to break that was to never raise a hand to me. We had plenty of contention, I was strong-headed as a teenager and mouthy and disrespectful and all this kind of stuff, and my dad never raised a hand to me. The amount of emotional force it took for him to break that cycle, is something I can never repay my dad for. Right? |
| S. RODNEY 22:25 | Mm-hm. Yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB 22:25 | It’s my obligation to take care of my parents, I’m an only child, I feel that obligation. That obligation doesn’t wear me down, I’m happy to do it, but I can’t repay that. My dad literally through force of will and character, ensured that I wouldn’t be just some other statistic in that line of assholes going back to Adam. So I have a tremendous amount of respect for my father and thereby, probably, maybe a tincture of sympathy when I hear these other stories of even your own fathers. And of course, in that story, I’m always on Seph’s side, of course, I would always be on your side Steven, if there was some wound that you suffered as a result of that. But at the same time, man, those are tough circumstances you guys just described, your fathers, making their ways out of. How many of their friends didn’t do any of the things that they did to bring both of you into the world and give you the opportunities that you have to be sitting, 1:20 in the afternoon on a Thursday, talking about stuff like this. I’ve said this [crosstalk]. Yeah, fair, fair, fair. |
| S. FULLWOOD 23:36 | Yeah. I know, fantastic. Well said. |
| S. RODNEY 23:42 | I want to push it back [crosstalk], back up a little on that. I actually think that, and I’m going to say this with the appropriate preambles and provisos. I actually think that I’m more self-made than that. I think that my father and my mother maybe gave me the raw materials to become the person I am, but I did the mixing and baking. I really did. Mindful of it being useful for people listening to have stories, to have anecdotes. I remember when I was 13, and I went to Christian schools my whole life because my parents are died in the world religious people. Church. |
| C.T. WEBB 24:34 | You can see the pain on Seph’s face as he tried not to reach for some other adjective to describe them. |
| S. RODNEY 24:35 | Yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD 24:35 | Yeah. Yeah, pejorative. Pejorative, yes. |
| S. RODNEY 24:41 | Yeah, I’m trying to be generous right now. Church two or three times a week, Christian school, the whole, I mean– indoctrination. It was full on. But I remember coming home from school at 13 and being upset about something and trying to talk to my mother about it. And realizing how bumbling she was, emotionally, she just didn’t have the tools to actually deal with getting me to talk about my hurt and how to move through it and past it. And in that moment, I could not have been more than 13 or 14, I’m not sure. I thought, oh, my parents are not able to raise me. They don’t know how to do it. |
| C.T. WEBB 25:29 | Good gravy. |
| S. RODNEY 25:33 | And it was roll-y poll-y from then on. At 17, I had a physical fight with my father, left the house, never came back. It was actually Lawrence who came and got me in his car, my old friend, Lawrence Harding. I never went back to the house after that to live, I visited. I was done and then I didn’t speak to my father for several years, and then he called me up. We made peace for a while, this is when I went back to college, did undergrad. Basically from then on, it’s just been intermittent bouts of ridiculousness and cruelty, and me trying to reach out from this place of being this very sensitive and, what’s the word? |
| C.T. WEBB 26:27 | That’s true, I know that that’s tr– we’ve been friends for a very long time and I know you put a lot of effort into that for years. It’s true, that’s very true. |
| S. RODNEY 26:32 | Right. Right, but it, right. But my point is that I don’t think that my father– I can’t give my father credit for getting me here. I really did most of the heavy lifting. I think that he– if he could, he would want to take credit for me, he really would. |
| S. FULLWOOD 26:53 | Of course. |
| S. RODNEY 26:54 | He would love that. |
| C.T. WEBB 26:56 | Of course. |
| S. RODNEY 26:57 | But he can’t. He never had the tools and he never cared enough to get them. |
| S. FULLWOOD 27:04 | Do you think he knew that there were tools? |
| S. RODNEY 27:08 | I don’t know, that’s a good question, Steven. I don’t know. |
| S. FULLWOOD 27:11 | It’s a question. So, you both said things I really enjoy. Travis, I want to say this about your dad. That any time a man is gentle with his son or sensitive and just thinks outside of his own needs, I think it makes– he not only made your life better, but he also made the world better. And I’m not being facetious about it. |
| C.T. WEBB 27:33 | I believe that. No, no, I believe that. |
| S. FULLWOOD 27:35 | So the fact that you’re here and able to talk, and to recognize what he was able to do in terms of what he inherited, that’s really beautiful and necessary. And I hope that our listeners pick up and pull at what I’m trying to get at. And when I think about your father, Seph, I think of what– whatever he’s dealing with, I wonder if people have internal lives that they have access to or that they want because it could just become to, to follow up on something I was saying earlier around, the internal life is so complicated. And so, when you talked about your father, it made me think of Paul D, a character in Beloved by Tony Morrison. There’s a really lovely moment where he’s telling her, a man ain’t a God damned ax, just go around hacking and I think I have it right here, yeah. “Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a God damned ax, chopping, hacking, busting every God damned minute of the day. Things get to him, things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.” And I’ve always loved that line, I’ve always liked Paul D cause I feel like, yeah, if I ever get married, I would want a Paul D around. Somebody who has seen something and didn’t let it kill them. Or use it as an excuse not to be better because I still think that and I don’t think that it’s a wonderful way to think at all, but it’s still in my head. It’s like you can choose to better but I don’t really, fully believe that anymore. After being on this earth for 52 years. The very last thing I want to say very briefly is that, Seph, my moment of– the two moments, very briefly, one moment was I wrote a letter to my mother telling her to leave my father, and I left it on their bedroom, their bed. I was looking for the letter, what I remember about the letter, I was probably around 10 or 11. And of course, he found it, of course, he confronted me about it. And I was just like, I would’ve loved to have had that letter today. What was I thinking? But I remember how I felt, I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember just feeling like we’re in a terrible situation. And I blamed it all on him. I blamed it on him and felt like she could do better. Woman with five kids, high school education, I’m not sure, Toledo, Ohio, we’re on this side of the beginning of all the factories closing and that kind of thing. The other thing is I remember telling– some adult rebuked me for something, but I remember saying to myself, “They’re bigger than me but they’re not smarter than me.” And that was the unraveling for me thinking that adults had your best interest at heart. I think it was a teacher. But I was really angry, I was going, this injustice! You how kids get, injustice. |
| C.T. WEBB 30:27 | Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD 30:27 | And then you realize, oh, it’s a much more complicated story, who gets justice, who doesn’t get justice and so forth. But, yeah. Yeah, that’s all I got to say, Paul D. |
| S. RODNEY 30:38 | So I want to preemptively, somewhat, put a pin in this and say we should do a part two, because I really think that we’ve only begun to unearth some really good things. And I do want to say, also, I really appreciate the– you guys are always candid with me, and you’re always deeply thoughtful. But I think I really needed this today with this particular subject because it’s hurtful for me. It’s difficult for me to talk about my father. And it’s difficult for me to go back and, in some ways, re-experience all the ways that I feel like that relationship didn’t prepare me to be in the world. And hearing how your fathers did that for you, at least I feel like it’s possible. So that’s really helpful. |
| C.T. WEBB 31:35 | Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. |
| S. RODNEY 31:36 | So I appreciate that. |
| C.T. WEBB 31:38 | Yeah, before we close, I wanted to say, I appreciated actually, your push back on that stuff. What you telling your story reminded me of is where I would place my father in that chain of events. His own father, I found irredeemable, and my dad really just had to figure out stuff on his own, or what I felt like was on his own. He was in Vietnam and lived through a pretty rough time in the country, not that there aren’t other rough times in our history. And that I think my dad would say something similar to what you said, Seph, which is that he had to just figure that shit out on his own. Unlike you, he had the advantage of my mom. My mom is very strong, she’s no nonsense, she’s about the business. So, and, I know that they helped each other and so, what I said, I don’t think is carte blanche for a lack of responsibility for any father in their willingness to inflict pain on others. But at the same time, we have the tools that we have, as Steven said, and if you don’t– the unknown unknowns, right? If you don’t know those tools are out there to do those things, it’s hard to deploy them. |
| S. RODNEY 33:13 | Well, and this I think we should pick up next time. So how do the people who don’t have the tools ever figure out that they are such things as tools and go get them? What is it that turns the corner for them, right? |
| S. FULLWOOD 33:30 | Oh, I got the best answer for that but I will wait. I will wait. |
| C.T. WEBB 33:36 | Okay. So we have to promise to re-listen to this end so we can pick it up. So next week though, for our listeners, cause I know that we have a few people that tune in regularly, I look at the podcast metrics. Next week, I will be solo again because both Steven and Seph are traveling, so next week we will not talk about fathers. I’m not sure what but I promise to keep next week short just like I did last time. But when we pick back up second week in September, we will pick back up with fathers part two. |
| S. RODNEY 34:06 | Sounds good. |
| C.T. WEBB 34:07 | Seph and Steven, thanks very much for the conversation. |
| S. FULLWOOD 34:09 | Thank you. |
| S. RODNEY 34:09 | Thank you. |
| C.T. WEBB 34:11 | Take care. Bye. |
References
First referenced at 16:56
The Sopranos
Tony Soprano juggles the problems of his fractious family with those of a “Family” of a different sort – the mob. He sees a therapist to deal with his professional and personal problems, which bring on panic attacks.
First referenced at 16:56
Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk, a renowned Zen master, a poet, and a peace activist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1967, and is the author of many books, including the best-selling The Miracle of Mindfulness
First referenced at 27:35
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free.
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