Posted on

Joseph Wakim on widowhood and manhood

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/29/it-took-the-death-of-my-wife-to-realise-how-much-i-missed-out-on-as-a-dad

29 July 2015

It took the death of my wife to realise how much I missed out on as a dad

When my wife died, men suggested I find a new wife, women offered to help. But in becoming a single parent to my three daughters, I found my best self

‘I took my hat off to so many women raising their children alone, many with admirable grace. Why can’t men do the same?’

When cancer claimed the life of my wife 12 years ago, leaving me staring into the eyes of our three young daughters, my gender prism had to change. Nurtured in a culture where boys’ and girls’ roles were clearly defined, I was grossly ill-prepared for my widowed fate.

I suffered survivor guilt, struggling to understand why bad things happen to good people, struggling to understand why my life was spared when my daughters surely needed their mother more than me.

Men suggested that I reach out for a new woman, for single parenting manuals, for cookbooks, for dating websites, for hired help, even for sleeping tablets and psychologists.

Women offered to “give me a break” and care for my children.

“Thank you, but no thank you. They’ve already been robbed of their mum. I can’t do this to them.”

Instead of outsourcing, I reached deep within. I took my hat off to so many women raising their children alone, adapting to their new reality, many with admirable grace. Their children seemed well adapted. Why can’t men do the same?

Whoever gave women the capacity to perform full parental roles must have given the same to men. This was a fork in the road. But there was no way I was going to avoid the painful path to get closer to my daughters, and inadvertently closer to myself.

So I began my emancipation. I used be minister of foreign affairs (garden, garbage, garage). Now my portfolio expanded to home affairs, ironically sometimes “foreign” to me. I burnt the wok, ruined “hand wash only” garments, and bought the wrong sanitary pads. I felt like I was now jogging on one leg, from home to car to shop and kept telling myself: “Just do it!”

Paradoxically, when I failed, when I felt weakest, I actually became my strongest. Something dormant within had awoken: the capacity to do anything and the plasticity of the brain to adapt.

Like Uncle Martin (from US sitcom My Favourite Martian), I raised my antenna to full length to tune in to the rhythms and language of my daughters. For every “but you don’t understand …,” I responded “then make me understand!”

Fast forward 12 years, and I realise that they made me understand my capacity to embrace full parenthood – not just fatherhood or motherhood.

I swung my metaphoric sledge hammer to the rusty shackles around my ankles that defined masculinity – shackles that were more than a gender prism. They were a gender prison.

Nine months ago, I penned a frivolous column on my emancipation, egging on my “fellow man” to embrace his inner self (not his feminine self). Today, my book What My Daughters Taught Me is born to tell the tale in all its gory glory.

Some women I know vow to pass this book to their husbands “in case anything should happen to me, and he needs to look after our children”. But why wait until a tragedy dictates a steep learning curve? Why not enjoy the full fruits of parenting today?

When we talk about the crisis of masculinity that defines many of our debates around domestic violence or marriage equality, we ought look beyond gender to the bigger picture: the crisis of personality.

Boys need to be raised in a culture that expands their social vocabulary, where emotions are expressed rather than suppressed.

In their book Man (Dis)connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What it Means to be Male, Philip Zimbardo and Nikita D. Coulombe explore the “modern meltdown of manhood” which they attribute to absent fathers and the male addiction to screen gadgets. They argue that this trend towards “extreme escapism” has led to socially stunted males who glean fulfilment from the virtual world rather than the real one.

My children’s development wasn’t determined by the gender of their single parent, but by the quality of our love. Deep within, we’re soft-wired by nurture, not hard-wired by nature, to be affectionate, to tell bedtime stories, to help with school assignments, to hold our children’s hands when they are sleepless and sick.

Men need not be relegated to the one with the wallet and car keys. Their definition of manhood and strength need not be a stubborn word that will not be broken, and a similarly stubborn reluctance to say sorry.

On the contrary, such “strengths” are often the cracks of fear. True strength is the capacity to adapt, to flex rather than break in the face of a cyclone like cancer. True strength is the capacity to speak and listen to the many languages of silence, of touch, of facial expression.

When I was a social worker, many male clients would tell me, “I love my children, but it comes out all wrong!” Their fear and over-protectiveness comes out as anger and distrust.

Many females believe their father is a benchmark for their future partner, for better or worse. My daughters remind me of little things I have said or done that are etched in their memory but erased from mine. What they chose to internalise may be different to what we amplify or repeat.

While my choices resulted from circumstance, now I wish I’d made the choice to remove my shackles long before.

Joseph Wakim is the author of What My Daughters Taught Me, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99, on sale now.

Posted on

A family’s story of love, hope and courage

http://www.weekendnotes.com/what-my-daughters-taught-me-book-review/

1 December 2015

A family’s story of love, hope and courage

Amy Basha

Joseph Wakim‘s book, “What My Daughters Taught Me” is a moving memoir about raising his three young daughters alone in Sydney, after his beloved wife Nadia passed away from cancer in 2003. I was captivated from the moment I started reading the book, Wakim’s language is very vivid and I began to get lost in his world, always a sign that I’ve started a compelling read.

While reading this book I gained the perspective of a father who had three young girls to raise on his own. He faced judgement from others, many people telling him to remarry, that he wouldn’t be able to raise his girls on by himself.

He pushed these comments aside and stayed true to his heart, raising his daughters with love, strength and courage and lots of humour thrown in for a father raising three girls. Wakim does not sugar coat the experience, going into the details of the sometimes exasperating event of getting three girls ready for school on time, working full time, even making runs to the store to buy sanitary napkins for his daughters.

As a female reader, I really respected his viewpoint that after observing his three daughters as they grew up and seeing them communicate as teens, “uninhibited in sharing their fears and hopes, their likes and dislikes… always swapping seats to view life from different angles. Their definition of strength was based on honesty, not victory.”

Wakim was able to see the strength of women’s ability to talk and communicate, where he found the male mentors in his life saw it as a sign of weakness to talk about feelings or to talk too much.

He saw how much he could learn from the way women communicate. One of the best things about reading is seeing life from the author’s viewpoint, and reading this memoir taught me about seeing life from a father’s view raising his daughters, a window we don’t often get to see into. What My Daughters Taught Me is an eloquently written honest memoir about love, resilience, compassion and courage in one family’s life.

It is a great read for the holidays and helps us to appreciate the time we do have with our loved ones.

Posted on

My Child Magazine: What my daughters taught me

 http://www.mychildmagazine.com.au/blog/what-my-daughters-taught-me

http://bit.ly/1PWitpa

My Child Magazine

What my daughters taught me

No tea leaves could have predicted that Joseph Wakim would raise his daughters alone.

August 26, 2015

Once upon a time I lived in my hometown of Melbourne with my young family: my beautiful wife Nadia and our three little girls, Grace, Michelle and Joy. Ours was a house of music, dancing and laughter. And, as Lebanese Christians of the Maronite Church, ours was a house of faith. I was the hardworking king of the Dad-pun, and Nadia the ever-calm domestic queen. After all, we were ‘crowned’ during our marriage ceremony to have authority over our mini-heavenly kingdom of home and family.

After a career in psychology and social work, I was completing a Master of Business degree in the hope of becoming a better breadwinner. Nadia, a graphic designer, was studying to become a teacher and she taught at the Arabic Saturday school. We were both changing professions and pursuing our dreams. We loved and were loved. We were happy.

We dreamed of travelling together, making music together, even having more children.

But Nadia’s worst fear found its way into her bosom. She privately applied positive thinking that the small lump was normal during breast-feeding. In our culture, the C-word was unmentionable. It was as if by merely evoking the name cancer, we were stepping on the tail of this sleeping monster. By the time Nadia was diagnosed with this ‘death sentence’, it had reached her womb and our dreams crumbled. We clung to what we had and who we had like a life-boat in a stormy sea. My arms became my children’s life jacket.

From singing and dancing on our timber floors, our children learned to whisper and tip-toe as mummy’s medication meant that she needed silence. From going to mummy for their everyday wants and needs, I ushered them to my bosom, turning on the valves in my heart to make up for their mother’s heart that slowly stopped beating.

It was suddnely time to progress as a parent from an L-plater to a P-plater, but without an experienced driver by my side. I pretended to know exactly what I was doing.

As I rushed the children to school (and myself to work) every morning, Grace and Michelle quickly learnt to be self-sufficient. I only helped them with their school ties, but like most men I could only do this while standing behind them as if it were around my own neck, not while facing them.

Little Joy needed more help. Grace taught me how to tie Joy’s hair in a ponytail and secure it with a hair tie. It took me a while to realise that this morning routine was faster if I put the elastic around my wrist in preparation, rather than trying to reach for it with one hand while holding Joy’s hair in place with the other.

To my surprise and relief, this did not cut off my circulation and my hand did not turn purple as my mother had once warned. In time, I also learnt that the ponytail looked smarter if I tied it high on her crown; too low and it seemed to sag with gravity as the day progressed.

This was not information I could glean from textbooks. It was more like rock climbing up a cliff face on the Discovery channel—there was no time to look down and I was scared of heights.

‘Dad!’ echoed Joy from the valley below. ‘It’s not straight!’

I pulled on her ponytail as if it was my climbing rope.

‘Ouch!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Straightening it?’ I guessed.

I stood behind her, with my head above hers, and looked into the bathroom mirror—which she was too short to look into without standing on tiptoe. Sure enough, this morning’s ponytail was slightly off-centre. Rather than redo the entire routine from scratch, I tried to wriggle it to the middle by fiddling with the hair tie.

‘Ouch! You’re hurting me!’ Joy reached back, undid the ponytail and handed me the hair tie to start again.

I tried to defuse her mood and cover my confusion by neighing and imitating a flustered horse, having trouble with a ponytail, see? But she was in no mood to laugh. How was I supposed to know that you cannot drag a ponytail like a desktop icon without torturing the child?

The solution was staring at me: the water taps. I remembered that Grace and Michelle usually splashed some water on their hair when they were tying it into ponytails or plaits. Water was the gel that gave the hair a defined shape. So that’s why Joy’s silky blonde curls always ended up making a golden halo!

But I didn’t quite get the water thing. I pumped some liquid soap into one hand and added some cold running water, then tried to turn it into a game. ‘Have you washed your face, Zuzu?’

No answer meant no, so I gave her a face scrub, also splashing some water on her hair.

‘Aagh! It’s cold!’ she shuddered.

I tempered the water to warm. ‘The cold was to make sure you’re awake!’ I explained, pretending it was deliberate. Then I asked her to blow her nose into my hand, cupping her mucus so it would not squirt all over the washbasin, just like my mother used to do with each of us, lovingly, each morning. She used to say it would unblock our ears so that we would be able to hear the teacher. Now Joy would hear the teacher too.

‘Yum! Organic hair gel,’ I mused.

‘Eeuw!’ she protested, grossed out. ‘Don’t you dare!’

I washed it away with another dollop of liquid soap and now made sure that the sleep was removed from her eyes.

‘Aah, Dad!’ she cried, pushing my hand away. ‘It stings!’

But the more I added warm water, the more the soap bubbled up around her long eyelashes. She squinted in irritation and I kept splashing and rubbing in frustration. Her eyes tightened, her mouth opened and her cries for help echoed throughout our home.

Maternal Grace came charging in. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, just some soap in her eyes,’ I shrugged.

‘Haram (poor thing). Use the towel, Dad!’

Despite the tears and drama, in the end the soapy water did give Joy’s hair a crisper contour and removed the halo. On special occasions, I graduated to plaits and braids, but only once I’d qualified for my hairdressing P-plates. When we shopped together next, Joy and I looked for blue hair ties to match her eyes and her uniform.

On weekends, we used her fancier selection, which included ties decorated with butterflies.

When Joy’s long hair became knotted, I knew it was time to untangle it with a nice hard brush. I ran a warm bath and added some bubbles, hoping to make it a pleasurable rather than painful experience.

‘Turn around, Zuzu, and close your eyes,’ I instructed. ‘First, we crack the eggs!’ I squeezed some shampoo onto her head and lathered it into her scalp with both hands. ‘Second, the waterfall.’ I poured bucket after bucket of water over her head (warm this time) to wash away the soap.

Then I held her head up with my left hand and brushed her hair down with my right hand. I had expected the shampoo to make the brushing easy, but if anything the knots seemed worse. The only solution, then, was to apply force. But the firmer I held her head, the more she screamed. I gritted my teeth and brushed harder and faster, all the way down, so that her pain—and mine—would be brief.

‘Ouch, Dad!’ she cried. ‘You’re killing me!

I added more shampoo and rinsed thoroughly but it made no difference.

At this point, Michelle rushed in and gasped, ‘Grace, have a look at this!’

As Joy heard her rescuers arrive, her cries became hysterical.

‘Stop, Dad!’ Grace exclaimed. ‘Can’t you see the red lines down her back?’

I lifted her hair and indeed there were scratches on her back from my vigorous brushing. Luckily, her skin was not bleeding, or I could have been arrested! Maybe our neighbours had heard her screams and already called the police. That’s all I needed in my situation!

‘But I used heaps of shampoo to make it smooth!’ I pleaded innocently, shaking the now nearly empty bottle.

‘No! You need conditioner to make it smooth!’

How was I supposed to know this silky-smooth secret? From that day on, Joy’s hair would forever be an effortless pleasure to brush.

Whenever I washed it, I cracked emu eggs of conditioner on her head.

Was I too paranoid, too protective or too private to take ‘driving lessons’ from experienced mothers? I could have asked my extended family or many others in the mothers’ club who were always obliging.

But at the time, I did not want to give anyone any ammunition to gossip about my family. I would imagine them chattering as soon as I walked away, or hung up the phone .

‘Oh, Joe phoned me the other day. You wouldn’t believe what he asked me. He said, “Sorry for the stupid question, but do I use

shampoo or conditioner to remove tangles?” So cute, but those poor girls. How will they turn out with only a man to bring them up?’ . . . Blah, blah, blah.”

Yes, I was probably too paranoid and too private, but I soon learnt not to underestimate the wisdom to be gleaned from the treasures under my own roof—my daughters.

It took some time for me to progress from a P-plater, proving myself, to a B-plater, being myself. My car became a mini-bus for picking up and dropping off their friends.

My daughters and I all resisted the offers for someone else to step in and ask me to step aside. They knew that a man suddenly hopping on one leg was going to fall and fail more often. But they were there to pick me up, with their silent smiles that spoke a thousand words.

It was not me stepping up to the sacred stage of their mother, fearing failure. It was my daughters stepping up to the mother roles, trusting me with their lives, trusting that I had it deep and dormant within me to paddle our life boat to safety.

I used to whisper bed-time stories in their ears to lull them (and myself!) to sleep. Now they whisper reassurances to me, or is that Nadia speaking through them?

My inflated fears have been conquered by their piercing love.

When my eldest two daughters were overseas, I asked my youngest child Joy why she missed them so much.

‘Because we are much more than sisters, Dad. We are best friends.’

This is an edited extract from WHAT MY DAUGHTERS TAUGHT ME by Joseph Wakim, published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99, on sale now

Posted on

Book review: Emotional journey – Widowed father tells his story

http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/news/emotional-journey-book-review/2754941/

Emotional journey: Widowed father tells his story

John Grey | 30th Aug 2015 12:00 PM

THIS is not a how-to book about raising daughters – though there is much to be learned here. What My Daughters Taught Me is a deeply-felt, emotional family journey told by a single father.

Author Joe Wakim’s soulmate Nadia was killed by cancer in 2003, leaving him with three girls to raise.

With honesty, courage, imagination, self-deprecation and humour, Wakim tells of his efforts to be mother and father to the girls, while remaining their friend and keeping their family culture strong.

Fighting against gender and cultural stereotypes all the way, he deals with grief, community expectations and guilt, while encountering a daily slew of challenges which will be familiar to many parents.

He deals with the tyranny of the television (which he dubs “His Majesty”), the distraction of devices (“serial text offenders”), the dance lessons, the sanitary pad shopping experience, the medical dramas, the parties, the fashions and the formals, the first jobs and the driving lessons.

Nadia’s memory is always there with him, manifesting several times in Wakim’s occasionally filmic storytelling to help him sort through issues. These are moving moments, as are those when he recalls her last days.

The wonderful friendship that Wakim engenders with his daughters reaches a timely and mutually frank maturity when the girls begin dating.

Dad expresses his fears about other drivers at night, and strangers trying to spike their drinks. His middle daughter archly responds: “You think we’re that naive? I’ve raised you better than that, Joe Wakim.”

Posted on

Raising daughters as a single dad

http://www.hillsnews.com.au/story/3307118/humour-helped-in-dads-great-challenge/?cs=1454

Hills News, 27 August 2015

 

Baulkham Hills author publishes autobiography about raising three daughters as a single dad

By Flora Cauchi

Aug. 27, 2015

For the past 12 years, Joseph Wakim has laughed, cried and learnt a lot from his daughters.

Exemplary dad: Father-of-three Joseph Wakim said in his family he wears the pants. “But my daughters choose them,” he said and laughed. Here he is with his personal stylists Grace, Joy (front) and Michelle.

FOR the past 12 years, Joseph Wakim has laughed, cried and learnt a lot from his daughters in what he says has been an eye-opening experience.

The Baulkham Hills author recently published an autobiography, What My Daughters Taught Me, based on the “massive task” of raising three daughters who were 4, 9 and 11 when his wife Nadia died of cancer in 2003.

“It was very easy to feel overwhelmed about being a single parent,” he said.

“I was increasingly aware that the answer was in spending more time with them.

“Perhaps not enough men have been able to tell their stories and with the book I feel like I raised the sledgehammer and smashed the rusty shackles”

“But it was a massive learning curve; I didn’t know how to cook, look after their hair or do other domestic things.”

Mr Wakim, 52, a logistics manager, learnt the most important thing was to keep a sense of humour and laugh at moments like the washing gone wrong or taking their pet rabbit out for a walk on a dog leash.

The idea for the book stemmed from an article written for The Hoopla website.

“I wrote about what it’s like for a man to buy sanitary pads for his daughter and it went viral,” he said. “Perhaps not enough men have been able to tell their stories and with the book I feel like I raised the sledgehammer and smashed the rusty shackles.

“There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be a man but we need to have an open mind about it.”

“There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be a man but we need to have an open mind about it”

He admits his perception of what it means to be a strong father has changed.

“Now I know that being strong really means to be able to say sorry when you make a mistake or to be adaptable.

“When we get together, we have an honest laugh and humour’s a very big part of the book.”

Where to catch Mr Wakim talking about What My Daughters Taught Me:

■ Glenhaven Clinic: Book signing at the Father’s Day Forum on September 1, 6pm (corner of Glenhaven Road and Jerrawa Place). Details: Christine Hanna, 0433 655 555.

■ Dymocks Castle Towers: Book signing on Father’s Day eve, September 5.

■ Castle Hill Library: November 27.

 

Joseph Wakim’s top three tips for single parents:

■ Remembering that parents are the first teachers — therefore we have a massive head-start in terms of moulding and shaping our children. No point blaming school or technology later on.

■ Have an agreement that you’re always approachable. I think the opposite of love is fear. You don’t want the kids to be scared of making mistakes.

■ Sense of humour. Especially during puberty and adolescence. If you’re going to correct your children at everything they do, you’ll exhaust yourself. The only way to calm the seas is with the humour hormones. Smile, let it go and move on.

■ The Hills-based non-profit social group called Single with Children offers an opportunity for single parents to meet and support each other.

 

 

Posted on

A widowed father on the life lessons learned by raising 3 girls

http://www.debriefdaily.com/inspiration/what-my-daughters-taught-me/

21 August 2015, Mamamia

A widowed father on the life lessons learned by raising 3 girls

When Joseph Wakim’s wife died of breast cancer in 2003, his three daughters were 11, 9 and 4 years old. Despite well-meaning friends, family and even strangers telling him he would need help to bring up his daughters, Joseph followed his heart and did the job his way, trusting that he – and the girls – would know what to do. In this exquisite extract from his memoir What My Daughters Taught Me he describes the precious life lessons they taught him along the way.

In my mind’s eye, I lifted the sledgehammer and swung it over my shoulder. It was time to smash the rusty shackles that had tied my feet for so long to prescribed gender roles. They held me back from the intuition mothers exuded when they entered a room. Without a word spoken, mothers effortlessly read a room, gauging its temperature, scanning their children’s faces and measuring their heartbeats.

They glanced at the gap between a child’s lips and realised that child was seething. They watched the chest rising and falling, how fast and how deeply, and realised that a sibling tiff had just finished. They noticed if there was no eye contact between the siblings and how slowly they blinked. They saw one vertical line on a brow and realised that a child was worried. They sensed discomfort by how the children crossed their legs.

This was the language of love, a language that should not be the monopoly of mothers. It is a language that we men can reclaim and relearn, as it lies dormant within us, waiting to be brought back to life. I was sure that whoever gave women this gift would not have bypassed fathers, in case they ended up like me.

My fellow man and I were not predestined to enter our family home as dopes. Our intuition antennas are inbuilt and just need to be raised. All we need is to learn how to turn on the switch.

This is not getting in touch with our feminine side. This is getting in touch with our inner self. We are not shackled to Banni Adam, but have always been part of Banni Hawa (the children of Eve). It is odd that we fathers see ourselves as men-tors to our daughters. I was so hardwired that I spent years thinking it was me doing the teaching, but in fact it was often the reverse, just as Michelle had intimated.

My daughters stretched my imagination to straddle not only traditional gender boundaries but also generational boundaries. They gave me permission not to act my age. They gave me permission to be childish and not to suppress our ageless yearning for play and story-telling. This is not getting in touch with our inner child, it is getting in touch with our inner self.

We men miss out on so much if we remain shackled in the prison of traditional gender roles. I have discovered all this by circumstance and by accident, but other men can discover it by choice and live a richer life. It does not mean becoming less complimentary to one’s spouse. It means sharing more and being more of a well-rounded role model for one’s children. Sure, I could have outsourced the traditional women’s work to a paid maid from the start, but this would have been skirting the real challenge. ‘In-sourcing’ within myself not only completed my family, but completed me. Freed from my shackles, I could now spread my wings and emancipate myself.

It was time for a mishwar to celebrate . . . everything. My three ladies fought over the mirror in their bathroom. Yes, even a trip to a restaurant was a special occasion. I grabbed the keys and yelled, ‘I thought you were “flawless”!’

As the chorus yelled back, I bolted out the door and waited on the front lawn.

When they emerged and strutted onto the ‘green carpet’, I asked, ‘Where am I driving you?’

‘Who said you’re driving?’ asked Michelle.

‘I’m driving,’ offered Joy.

‘You’re on your Ls!’ replied Grace.

‘So what, I need to learn, don’t I? That’s why they’re called Ls!’

While they were debating, I sat in the driver’s seat and started the car. They fought for the front passenger seat and Grace won. I crossed myself and reversed the car out of our driveway, looking in the rear-view mirror. I saw my past. I saw my children. I saw myself. Was the man in the mirror their driver, their mentor, their teacher? So I once thought, before my emancipation. Now I knew they were mine.

This is an extract from What My Daughters Taught Me by Joseph Wakim, published by Allen and Unwin, .

 

 

Posted on

On Raising Three Daughters Alone

http://www.culturestreet.com/post/joseph-wakim-on-raising-three-daughters-alone.htm?

http://bit.ly/1NZ4D7c

Culture Street

August 19, 2015

Joseph Wakim is a widowed father of three daughters. From psychologist to social worker, he founded the Streetwork Project in Adelaide, the Australian Arabic Council, produced TV documentary Zero to Zenith: Arab Contributions Down Under, wrote four satirical comedies that were staged in Melbourne, founded Australia’s first Arabic Festival (Mahrajan), was appointed Victoria’s youngest Multicultural Affairs Commissioner, and composed music for his band The Heartbeats. He was granted the Violence Prevention Award by Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1996 and the Order of Australia Medal for public campaigns to redress the roots of racism in 2001. He has had over 600 opinion pieces published in all major Australian newspapers and was finalist at the United Nations Australia Association – Media Award 2014 for creating a ‘voice for the voiceless’.

By Joseph Wakim

Without a word spoken, mothers effortlessly read a room, gauging its temperature, scanning their children’s faces and measuring their heartbeats.

This is the language of love, a language that should not be the monopoly of mothers. It is a language that lies dormant within men, waiting to be awoken. I was sure that whoever gave mothers this gift would not have bypassed fathers, in case they ended up like me. Twelve years ago, cancer claimed the life of my wife when we were both aged forty and our three daughters were all in primary school. As her candle flickered, a flame was ignited within me.

I grappled with grief and guilt: why was my life spared when my daughters surely needed their mother? Men suggested that I reach out for a new woman, for single parenting manuals, for beginner’s cookbooks, for dating websites, for hired help, even for sleeping tablets.

Women offered to baby-sit my children if ever I felt like flying away, but I felt instinctively protective and spread my wings over our precious brood who had already been robbed of their mum.

Instead of outsourcing, I searched for my in-tuition. If women have the capacity to raise well-adapted children alone, where is it written that men cannot do the same?

I began my emancipation by unblocking the valves of my heart which raised my antennas to read different wavelengths and rhythms. I used be minister of foreign affairs (garden, garbage, garage). Now my portfolio expanded to home affairs, ironically sometimes ‘foreign’ to me.

No, I did not find my feminine self or become ‘Mr Mum’ because this implied that the nurturer was intrinsically a woman’s domain. I had found my inner self and opened the flood gates to a wellspring within.

Once we unblock our valves, we discover that we are perfectly capable of telling bed-time stories, consoling them after nightmares, nursing them when they feel sick, helping with school assignments and reading their faces like a book.

In many cultures, the stereotype of a strong man is often associated with a clenched fist. Strength is equated with stubbornness, having the last word, never saying sorry and never having our word broken. But these are often the cracks of fear, not love and definitely not strength. They show insecurity about losing control over one’s ‘kingdom’ as the one who wears the pants.

True strength is the capacity to flex rather than break in the face of a cyclone like cancer. True strength is the capacity to speak and listen to the many languages of silence, of touch, of faces. True strength is the capacity to express emotions rather than suppress them in fear of being unmanly.

My book What my daughters taught me is a testimony that masculinity is not hard-wired by nature, but soft-wired by nurture. As men, we cannot hide behind these traditional excuses that we are incapable of being primary carers and nurturers. In my book, I swing a sledgehammer at these rusty shackles of gender stereotypes as I realise that they are a prison, not a prism.

My daughters not only taught me to write a story about the emancipation of my heart, but also taught me to read their language of the heart.

Joseph Wakim is the author of WHAT MY DAUGHTERS TAUGHT ME, published by Allen & Unwin,