A Year of Letters to My Son
Reflecting on a Year of Love, Growth, and Community
If you’ve been here before, thank you for coming back. If you’re new here, welcome! Today is a special day.
Ever since my son was born, I have been writing him letters. I took the idea of creating an email for your child and gifting it to them when they are older and ran with it—I decided to share these letters publicly. Admittedly, I wanted some gentle pressure to keep it up, but this quickly became a place to process the feelings I was going through as a new dad, and ultimately to produce the best versions of these letters to give him one day when he is able to read them himself.
Today, after a year of writing every Monday, I now have a letter for every week since he was born. With over 2,400 of you reading from all 50 states and 90 different countries, I have more than enough pressure to keep writing to him. My words have landed in places my feet have yet to step. I want to say thank you for the way you all receive these letters with such care and love.
The community we’ve built here has made this first year of parenting a lot less lonely. Many of you, through emails and comments, have shared your own stories of love, grief, and joy with me, and I feel honored to have created a space that you look forward to weekly and where you feel safe sharing your truth.
As year one is in the books and we just celebrated Myles’ first birthday, I have been looking at pictures and videos of him, reflecting on all his Mylestones and how much he has grown. But I have also spent some time reading what I have written to him and marveling at my own growth. At times, I read some letters, and it feels like I am reading a stranger’s words. This year has taught me that, as much as I am the parent, Myles has taught me so much about myself.
There’s a softness in me that has been able to emerge because of him. There’s a confidence that has grown and been able to live in me because of him. And there is a healing that has taken place for the version of me who at times felt broken, which now feels mended because of him. I am grateful for the One who sits high but looks low. God has given me a gift that makes me want to write—each letter feels like a testimony. The little boy in me used to cry for the things I have now.
I want to invite you to spend this week in reflection and celebration with me. Below, I’ll be sharing a piece I’ve written to him from every month, along with a small excerpt and comments from each one from the people who encouraged me to keep going—you all.
Meet me in the comment section and tell me which letters brought you here, which ones made you stay, from the ones that made you laugh to the ones that made you cry. In the spirit of Ubuntu, I am because we are. These letters could not have been possible without all of you.
Thank you for believing in me during the times I had trouble believing in myself.
Appreciation time: Thank you
for recently becoming a paid subscriber! Thanks to all of you who have contributed financially to this project. Because of your support, one day I will be able to put Myles through college!A gentle heads up : After this week, I’ll be keeping all poems to Myles open to free subscribers and his Monthly Mylestones too, but I will be slowly archiving past letters. Many of you have convinced me I should seek to publish these letters; putting them behind a paywall will help, but I will keep our most-read letters open to everyone.
These letters are a labor of love. All funds collected from writing these letters go toward Myles' college savings. A paid subscription will also let you keep reading older letters and these deeper letters I write every other week- ish, where I explore fatherhood more deeply, discuss my own upbringing, and reflect on what it means to be raising a Black son. Next week is a letter to Myles about the inevitable fear of him being pulled over by a police officer.
If you can’t commit to a monthly subscription, but still want to support, here is my Buy Me a Coffee page.
Ok, reflection, celebration, and appreciation time!
June - 7 Days Old
Drawing Lines
I am not really sure what I am doing here- writing letters to you, only a week old- not even able to hold up your own head without your mom and me supporting its weight with our fingers. I am hoping to connect the dots for us both where the lines do not exactly make sense. Like those perforated lines students use to write their alphabets; not yet knowin…
: I almost feel like I'm on a little time travel journey, where I can watch a new life emerge.
July - 7 Weeks Old
Tomato Baby and Baby Tomatoes
“It's important for me to save and share these moments with you. At times, I feel like I'm actively fighting a narrative surrounding masculinity and fatherhood that's not necessarily mine - I'll write about this more later. But I want you to know, I am happy to be your dad. I hope you never have to read fiction to find father figures like I did. I hope you never have to watch sitcoms of families that look like ours to see the love between your parents. I hope you never have to revel in jealousy over a friend's dad that's not yours.”
: It is awe inspiring how naturally some Mom's just do things, while some of us just bumble around trying not to screw it up too bad.
August - 9 Weeks Old
Your Name is Your Name
Listen, Myles, you are a Black child - welcome to a beautiful world of love but also resistance. Your first fight, before you understand what it means to be Black in this country, is getting people to spell your name right. Maybe you'll introduce yourself already anticipating the fault in the tongue of others like I do: "Hello, my name is Myles with a Y.
: Love this story of the naming of your son! One of my daughters is Juliette Frances--middle name after her uncle’s middle name, Francis. But now I’m wishing we would have had the insight/courage to go with the masculine version instead of just trying to conform to social standards!
September - 14 Weeks Old
Just in Case God Pulls the Plug and Presses the Stop Button
"Let these letters serve as my eulogy. Not that boring two, maybe three-page spread you get at funerals printed on cheap paper. There is a permanence to ink that outlives every man’s life. I’m trying to write myself into a future I cannot guarantee I’ll be in. I never cared to be remembered until now.
If I don’t see it through, and the shoe drops, I hope these letters, the email I created for you where all the pictures and unpublished letters go, along with the words of those who knew me, help you understand who your father was at that point in time."
: …don't hide the tears, ever. Let that boy know that we're allowed to cry, that it's okay for us to express ourselves that way. There are plenty of other ways for us to exhibit strength for our sons. In fact, allowing ourselves to be open emotionally is one of them.
October - 18 Weeks Old
Cooking in the Bathroom
"This is exhaustion. My showers have doubled in length, not because I’m dirty, but because I’m hiding... Making sure to hang the car keys by the door, not on the bottle drying rack. I've never eaten this much fast food in my life – I now remember why people love McDonald's again; a Big Mac is poisonously delicious. We're on autopilot. One night, Mommy forgot to remove your socks during your bath. I'm surprised we haven't accidentally cooked in the bathroom."
: Love this. You’ve brought back memories of Raising Ben, born in the last days of 1971. Back then most dads, including my husband, could sleep through new-baby squalling without a moment’s guilt. Moms like me took it all on ourselves and felt guilty for being irritable and confused. Your story is proof that things have changed for the better.: They try to scare you, tell their first jokes or suggest you quit your job. Then it’s beautiful. Those moments outshine anything else and you find yourself looking back on those sink baths and blowouts with some fondness and humor. That time now looks simple. Every so often you do that and for me, I love them all the more because I can always enjoy where they’ve been and hold on that much longer.
November - 22 Weeks Old
How I Met Your Mother
"Her words flowed together like her tongue Milly Rocked through the consonants—they had a flavor to them like someone took all her vowels and dipped them in butter. I’ve only read in books where women sounded like her - I just knew her grits had to be better than the watery ones my Haitian mother made at home."
: You've relit a fire that went out inside me. Hearing you and your son talking to each other did something to me. I'd lost my empathy. It calcified and was close to desolving. That's all it takes, I guess? A few soothing sounds and my world opened again. Thank you, young man. Thank your Mom for me. She must be an angel?:Isn’t it heartening & inspiring to know that God makes time and takes the trouble to set us up for such endless blessings like this? In the midst of caring about & gently working with and gently leading anyone else really looking for Him... His eyes were on both of you that day. 🙏🏽
December - 26 Weeks Old
Last week you met your Grandfather
“When you met your grandfather last week for the first time, I desperately didn't want him to show up. I wanted to keep him in the same dim light where I had confined him. But he showed up. He held you, smiled with you, and even though it was just for a moment, I had to remind myself that he wasn't holding me in his arms – he was holding you. My inner child is still healing. To be honest, the more I write to you, the more I realize these letters are more for my healing than for your benefit."
: This story really took me back to my own reunion with my Dad. My Dad was incarcerated for 15 years and lacks major social skills. He’s never hugged or kissed me or embraced me. He got out when I was 17. So when I brought him my daughter for a visit he was so loving and gentle and sweet towards her. She slept in the bed with my dad. And a part of me was like wow, I never had this. I longed to be her in that situation.: - This is beautiful. The complexities in watching our parents be what we needed to our kids is such a beautiful, hard, joyful, and grief filled experience. I am so glad your brother nudged you to introduce your son to him. I’m glad you listened. And I’m glad Myles got to meet an extension of you. Because even though there are disappointments and much childhood trauma, you’ve chosen to not allow that to keep you from being the excellent father you are.
January - 32 Weeks Old
Balm for Wounds: Apologizing in Advance
I wish someone
wrote me letters
when I was young.
I would have used them as mirrors
For all the times people professed to love me with their lips,
but failed to show me in their ways
: My son is about the same age as Myles - and your beautiful letter showed up this morning after a pretty raw night for me emotionally. I still haven’t fully processed why I was in tears last night after putting the baby to sleep, but I know it has a lot to do with what you’ve written here. About my own path as a human, now as a father, and thinking of my own experiences with my parents and what I needed and didn’t get from my own dad while he was alive and when I was younger. Complicated and heavy, but man, you really capture the emotional tone of this experience incredibly well.
February - 36 Weeks Old
How I Proposed To Your Mother
I’m not a planner, but as much as I wanted to put a string around the moon just to pull it a little closer for a moonlight dinner, this Airbnb would have to do. And because I am not a cook, I hire a chef who said, for a heaven of a price, he will make a meal for us both—6 courses, 3 for me and 3 for your mother...When you’re in love, people will conspire and enroll themselves to make sure that love is captured and framed—your money will do no good to them.
: Who knows, maybe Myles will write an award winning novel someday with his loving parents as the main characters. There's no telling what your words will set in motion, but I have a feeling it will be as wonderful as your marriage. 💙: I do love me some words and I love all of these, but those two minutes makes me understand why moving pictures have taken over the public imagination and are not going to yield. Too fucking good. Thank you.
March - 40 Weeks Old
Sons of California and Palestine
I understand I can not write the hate out of this world by loving you, because one day you will ask me, “What did you do when the world was burning?”
April - 43 Weeks Old
Pictures Can’t Hold Full Stories
"There is a pleasure in watching the person you love, love what you created together after nights of watching them yearn for what they could not have. I love this version of me, softer, tender, being the father I never had. This is my own conception, raising you and my inner child—one from a womb, the other from my heart."
Marc, every time I read your posts I think this child is so lucky. Not just for all the beautiful things you say but that you are showing him your self, and that is something that in all the busyness of life, parents forget to do. As kids, we end up watching them and feeling them without knowing their personal thoughts. It always feels like a special way in when we do. : Every new story that asks for a new pen was prayed for. Begged for. Made space for. And look at all the chapters you've already written. They wouldn't be if not for the adventure you lived before. Cheers to expansion.
May - 48 Weeks Old
10 Things I Love about Your Mother
It’s not that I’m hard to love, but when I met her, it was the first time someone made me feel like I was easy to love.
: She's good looking, puts up with YOUR nonsense AND she bakes deliciousness? Damn!
June - 52 Weeks Old
Happy Birthday, Son
That week almost broke me. Maybe some kind of death happens when you become a parent. The thing you thought you could never do, you figure out how to do it. The moment in despair turns into a testimony, and you realize that the capacity you didn't know you had, you somehow find it because there is no choice.
Let me know your thoughts:
Should I keep titling the letters weekly? (Week 56, Week 57) Or the month will do?
Which letter resonated with you the most with you?
Have you shared any of these letters with anyone? What has been there response?
I love the community we have here. How has the community around these letters influenced your reading experience?
What are you looking forward in Year Two?
Say anything you want ❤️
Appreciations:
, thank you for believing in this work from the beginning. and for being virtual aunties. , for giving me the confidence to call myself a writer. convincing me to take a leap of faith. , , for giving me hope and examples for the men I want to surround Myles with. signing up to be a first paid subscriber. for being a friend and nerding out with me. for speaking so highly and lovingly of this work. , for reminding me of my gift. for letting me copy his approach when I first started writing on Substack. , , , , , , for being great dads. A major shoutout to paid subscribers and the lovely people who contributed through buy me a coffee. I am going to put Myles through college one day because of you!I love you all!
Looking for more writing from Black, Global Indigenous, and People of Color on Substack? Earlier this week Earlier this week, the Locked In community published its first issue of Unlocked | BIPOC Reads . This issue was beautifully curated by my friends Zefan and edited by Shivani Kumar.
.
Hello Marc! I just became a paid subscriber so count me among Myles' "aunties" and a benefactor to his college fund. I don't want to miss a letter in future. To your questions: I think the month will do rather than numbering them. I love them all but in particular "How I Met Your Mother," "Pictures Can't Hold Stories," and "Happy Birthday Son." I have shared my response to your letters on Notes and will continue to spread the word. Community is everything. For me, it has been the most rewarding part of creating a Substack myself. I am honored and still a little surprised every time someone subscribes; it's a beautiful thing, to find your community in this way, virtually distanced and yet so intimate. As for Year Two, I am looking forward to more of the same!
Time flies so quickly. As always I'm grateful to be able to witness yours and Myles' journey. And I'm grateful to be mentioned as part of the pantheon :) cheers to the work and to life in total! Onward to many more years!