Well the beauty of 'Iyanla: Fix My Life' is that men are in every show. To our surprise, some of the deepest healing demonstrations have been with the men - the sons, the fathers, the husbands - because they agree to participate with the wife or the daughter or whatever it is we are looking at, and it is there.
We talk about building young men so they can be productive husbands, fathers and citizens.
Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.
I think that my experience as a single mom getting into relationships in an impoverished district with men that don't have options resonates with people. I don't get into the deadbeat dad thing. I don't think men innately decide to be irresponsible fathers. I think there's a backstory. They're given really bad choices. It's less deadbeat dads and more unemployed fathers, and some fathers decide to sedate and give up.
There is a falsehood that some are born with an attraction to their own kind, with nothing they can do about it. They are just 'that way' and can only yield to those desires. That is a malicious and destructive lie. While it is a convincing idea to some, it is of the devil. No one is locked into that kind of life. From our premoral life we were directed into a physical body. There is no mismatching of bodies and spirits. Boys are to become men-masculine, manly men-ultimately to become husbands and fathers. No one is predestined to a perverted use of these powers.
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.
They err, who say that husbands can't be lovers.
Speaking to the Heart is a great encouragement to men who want to be better husbands and fathers. It is both a practical job description of fatherhood-showing how fathers build strength in their children-and an inspiring call to family leadership. Any father who takes this book to heart and puts its wisdom into action will be known to his children as a great man.
All fathers are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye.
No marriage or family, no ward or stake is likely to reach its full potential until husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, men and women work together in unity of purpose.
Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with.
I think, on the whole that scientists make slightly better husbands and fathers than most of us, and I admire them for it.
I want to congratulate all the men out there who are working diligently to be good fathers whether they are stepfathers, or biological fathers or just spiritual fathers.
Are we a people who put politics over integrity? Or are we a country of voters and leaders, men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, colleagues, humans who care about treating each other with basic dignity?
When I'm talking to groups that are all men, we talk about how the masculine role limits them. They often want to talk about how they missed having real fathers, real loving, present fathers, because of the way that they tried to fit the picture of masculinity.
Mothers play an important role as the heart of the home, but this in no way lessens the equally important role fathers should play, as head of the home, in nurturing, training, and loving their children.