I Thought I Knew Love.
Then She Arrived.
Harper didn't need to ask me to be present. Her arrival demanded it. Her presence alone pulled me into emotional places I had spent my whole life avoiding—a love that lives in depths I did not know how to access. She showed me that love isn't something you think about. It's something you surrender to.
The Moment Everything Changed
Fatherhood felt like something that might happen for other people, not necessarily for me.
And then Harper came. A beautiful surprise. Unplanned. Something I know now that God wanted me to experience. A love that would break down the walls I had built to protect myself.
And when the nurses placed her in my arms, I was overwhelmed. Emotions I didn’t know I had poured out of me.
In that moment at the hospital, I realized I had been loving on the surface my entire life. Harper was about to teach me what it meant to love from the depths of who I was.
The Moment I Realized I Needed to Listen
Why I Shifted from "His Lips" to "Her Lips"
For fourteen years, I ran an initiative called “From His Lips to Her Ears”—a space where I, as a man, spoke to women about relationships and love. I thought my perspective mattered. I thought I was helping.
But when Harper was born, I quickly realized I did not know how to do everything she needed. I didn’t know how to do her hair, care for her when she was sick, or meet her feminine needs in ways she deserved.
So I did something I hadn’t done before: I sought out the women in my life and asked them to teach me. Not my brothers. Not my male mentors. Women.
The Man Behind the Work
I hold a PhD—a degree that less than 1% of Black men in the world hold. I’ve spent over twenty years working in education, leading schools and teaching future leaders.
But those titles don’t tell you who I really am.
I love to paint. Sometimes it’s with Harper on Saturday afternoons, both of us quiet at the table, working on our own canvases. Sometimes it’s just me – late at night when the house is finally still and I can hear her breathing down the hall.
I love concerts. There’s something about being in a room full of people, all of us feeling the same music, that lets me disappear for a while. The energy. The way the sound moves through me. I need that from time to time.
I love to travel. For renewed energy. For rest. For new perspectives. For the kind of learning that only happens when you’re somewhere unfamiliar. When Harper comes with me, it’s about her seeing the world with wonder, knowing she belongs in all of it. Feeling confident wherever she goes.
And what I’m most grateful for is being Harper’s father.
She’s taught me to communicate openly, to not be afraid of talking about the emotional things, the hard conversations. Her love for me is something I feel every single day. She wants to be around me. She chooses me. And I know that’s something many young girls desperately want from their fathers, but don’t always receive.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m still learning from her every single day. But I know this: when we center the voices of women, when we listen to what daughters need, when we let go of the idea that we already know how to do this—everything changes.
I paint and create art
I lose myself at concerts
I live for hosting family during holidays
I've traveled to five of seven continents
Let's Do This Together
If you're a father, your daughter is teaching you every day. I invite you to lean in and listen.
If you're a woman, you hold wisdom that fathers desperately need. I invite you to share it.
This journey requires both of us. Fathers willing to learn. Women willing to teach. Together, we can change how daughters are loved, how they see themselves, and how they move through the world.
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