Let the Fire Be Felt
Some loves arrive softly. They wrap around you like warmth in winter, like a whisper on a rough day. They tell you, without needing to say, you are still worthy, still mine, still held. That’s the love of a mother. It is the cushion. The constant. The healing salve for a world that wounds early and often.
Other loves are sharper. They do not soothe so easily. They come with weight, with silence, with a raised eyebrow that says you know better, so be better. That’s the love of a father. And though it may not always make you feel good, it works to make you good.
“Your mother’s love makes you feel better. Your father’s love makes you better.”
In our family, we were given both. The fire and the shelter. The embrace and the edge. And now, as the world shifts beneath our feet—economy tightening, hope stretching thin—we look at the next generation coming up, and the question becomes clear: What are we handing them?
Because it’s not just our children we’re raising.
“We are raising the parents of our grandchildren.”
That’s the long game. That’s the legacy. And we can’t afford to get it wrong.
To the men in our family—the fathers, the uncles, the brothers—you are needed. Not someday. Now. We don’t need you just as presence. We need you as practice. We need your consistency, your discipline, your voice that calls children into responsibility instead of leaving them to wander toward it.
“A father teaches us to endure the fire without becoming ash—to become strong by way of adversity, not in spite of it.”
That kind of love is not for the faint. It doesn’t come with applause. It comes with repetition. With correction. With the willingness to be misunderstood in the moment so your children understand the world later.
We need more of that love. Not less.
And to our women—our mothers, sisters, aunties, grandmothers—you’ve carried so much already. But this is a call, too: make space for this kind of love. Allow the men in our family to show up not just with affection, but with authority. Not dominance—but direction. Understand that just because love feels different, doesn’t mean it lacks depth.
We are not made whole by softness alone. And we are not hardened into strength without care.
“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
The storm will come. It always does. But our children don’t have to face it unprepared.
They need roots—real ones. Formed not only in love that soothes, but in love that shapes. And that starts with us. With the fathers who choose to stay. With the uncles who decide to lean in. With the mothers who understand that strength and softness are not enemies, but partners.
The future is not built by accident. It’s built in how we show up—in what we model, what we correct, what we repeat.
So the question sits with all of us now:
What are we passing down?
Not just to our children, but to the parents of our grandchildren.
And what might change if we chose, starting today, to give them not just love, but the kind of love that lasts?
