Dear Rhu,

Becoming your dad has been the best and hardest experience of my life.

You are nearly three years old now, born during the full blood moon eclipse in November 2022. An auspicious timing for a magical boy. Those first few months were beautiful but also came with a crushing of my old identity, a redefinition of our family unit and the beginning of the hardest year of my life.

I was one of the first to become a father in my circles and in the blink of an eye, immediately felt the separation from all of my closest friends. Holding you in those first couple of days, I quickly realised – this is forever. You can’t understand it until you’re there. The concept of the word ‘constant’ becomes so visceral, you can taste it. No space, little sleep, new life.

Then came integrating back to work, it was suddenly like I was living two contrasted lives, both deeply understanding, but asking for very different things from me. Crushing anxiety, feeling like I couldn’t breathe, mush between states of being, I didn’t know who I was anymore.

Living in a world that didn’t have a break to process the constant feelings of despair while telling myself I was a bad father, partner, son, friend, leader and colleague. As I look back on that time, I can see more clearly now after conversations with your beautiful Mama, that it’s likely I was experiencing postpartum depression.

Less common in new fathers than mothers, but still 1 in 10 that report it. Every health meeting I was in about the pregnancy and postpartum focussed on your mum (as largely it should), every book I read had two token pages on the role of the father and I didn’t have many mates who were dads too.

I thought it was just the adjustment, and I needed to deal with it as it’s what everyone experiences in the transition. The irony is not lost on me, co-founder of The Man Cave, unaware I was moving through such a struggle.

In my role at the Cave, I spend much of my time thinking about the world boys are born into, and the men they are becoming. Fatherhood has added a new layer to that, not just analysing the past or preparing for the future, but learning to meet what arises each day with presence and focus.

We have a saying at the Cave: “These are the days.”

It’s a reminder to not wait until we are old and grey to look back on the chaos and beauty of our lives. It’s a call to slow down now, to suck the marrow out of each moment while we’re still in it. For both the enjoyment of presence, but also the richness of the memory we look back on. It’s like we get to view it again in high definition because we actually took it all in.

Too often, I can stand outside my own life, observing it like a movie that I’ll one day retell. But ‘these are the days’ drops me back into the experience itself, piercing the film and pushing me from observer into being. So that I’m not just preparing how I might feel in the future or thinking about how I’ll talk about it later, but actually living it.

As your dad, I can fall into the trap that it’s my responsibility to help you grow up every step of the way and that I know best, but the deeper truth is that I get to learn life again through your eyes. And that I’m growing up with you too.

You, Rhu, have given me your own version of ‘these are the days’.

At this age you speak in simple declarations: “I like this music.” “I like being lions.” “I don’t like chilli.”

My instinct is always to ask, “Why? Why do you like or not like that?” Part of me is wanting to understand what makes you feel the way you feel so I can create or avoid those conditions again.

But your response to the ‘why’ is always the same: “I just is.”

My inner facilitator often finds that statement an opportunity for growth, to build emotional intelligence and literacy, to unpack, to help develop your inner world. But then I realised one day that you’re not analysing your experience. You’re simply having it. You’re not observing life from the outside. You’re inside it: present, honest and complete.

Something us grown ups try so desperately to get back to or just pointedly avoid because it’s inefficient or scary to feel how we really feel and express that. The time will come to build your internal landscape with structures and language and awareness, but the truth is, I would be robbing you of life’s most precious gift if I pushed that on you too early.

In a world that is data, tech, automation and efficiency obsessed, I fear that our humanity is being slowly siphoned away from us until we turn around and can’t recognise our own hearts or the hearts of others. Becoming gradually mechanic and forgetting we’re organic, cogs in a machine rather than plants in a garden. To grow is to simply be, to feel, to connect in the mess and the magic of being human; rather than optimising and measuring everything within an inch of its life.

So, I still love the phrase ‘these are the days’, It anchors me in the significance of this season of life. If someone asks me why I love fatherhood, I could give endless answers, but the truest and simplest answer that keeps me present is yours:

“I just is.”

I love you Rhu, thank you for all the lessons so far and all the ones to come. 

I can’t wait for your new sibling to join us in Summer. 

You’re going to be the best big brother.

We got this.

Love, Dad.

Al Green is the Chief Experience Officer and co-founder of The Man Cave. He and partner Ness are parents of Rhu, nearly three years old. 

Published Sat 6th September, 2025.