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Still Standing
Barkim Boone
September 26, 2025
Fellas,
Picture this; a notebook sits open on the table. Its pages aren’t neat. Some lines are circled, others crossed out. There are smudges where a hand dragged across wet ink.
A few sentences trail off mid-thought, as though the writer was called away before he could finish. Some pages are torn out completely.
On one page you see bills stacked, numbers written, circled, then underlined twice. On another you see, schedules that read like math problems.
Nine months gone, six summer weeks penciled in, every other Christmas traded back and forth, heavy black lines marking what’s his and what’s not.
But just behind the red line, in the margins, jotted in small letters. You see the things that tell the real story.
A scribble in all caps “SHE CALLED ME FIRST WHEN SHE GOT THE PART.”
A note “Read two chapters even though I was exhausted.” “Watched her fall asleep on FaceTime.”
The underlined word “milkshakes” three times because it became their Saturday thing.
A line written sideways up the page: “She said, “I know you try.”
We all know the man with the notebook. Some of us are him.
He is the father who never wanted his story told in fragments but finds himself living in fragments anyway. He is the one who sits awake at night, wondering what his children will remember.
Will they remember the black lines. The missed days, the gaps in time? Or will they see the notes in the margins, the scratched attempts at presence?
Will they whisper, “He failed too much,” or will they say the words that keep him climbing: “He never gave up”?
That’s the question this notebook asks on every page.
Dreams
Flip a few pages in, and you’ll see dreams written in messy ink. They don’t look clean. But they’re there.
This father once dreamed wide. He remembers his son running across a soccer field, waving when he scored, looking to the sidelines to find Dad cheering loudest.
His daughter in the school play, spotting him in the second row, smiling because he was there. He saw family road trips where the car was stuffed with snacks, bad singalongs, and the kids asleep in the backseat with their heads tipped together.
He dreamed of Christmas mornings without countdown clocks, birthdays where the whole cake was theirs to share, graduations where he’d stand proud with both parents in the same row, no tension, no court orders.
But after separation, those dreams got edited. Whole paragraphs about future college visits, walking his daughters down the aisle, family vacations circled on the calendar are crossed out in thick ink.
Now it’s just a few summer weeks. Christmas every other year. And Phone calls measured in minutes, not memories.
And that’s where discouragement creeps in. When a father flips through the pages and sees what was once a full story shrunk to pieces, it’s easy to believe his legacy will be written only by absence.
He starts to believe his children will define him by what he couldn’t give, not by what he still brings.
Why does the dream even matter?
Because legacy isn’t measured in neat blocks of time. It’s measured in what sticks.
Children remember the one time you fought through exhaustion to be there. Or the phone call when you told them a story from your childhood.
They remember the late-night walk to Mcdonalds.
Those fragments are enough to form a dream: the dream of being remembered as “the dad who never quit.”
How to Keep the Dream Alive:
Create a “Month Box.” Every visit, bring out a small box of things collected during the month. A photo, a postcard, a song lyric. Tangible proof you were thinking of them.
Step | What to Do | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
Choose or decorate a box | Pick something durable and meaningful a small wooden box, a decorated cardboard box, or even a tin. Let your child (or children) help decorate it. | The box itself becomes a symbol a “container” for your presence even in absence. |
Decide on items to collect | A printed photo, a ticket stub, a lyric from a song, a handwritten note, a shell from the beach, a leaf from a walk you did together, a small toy, a drawing, a voice-recorded message on USB. | Each item triggers memory and carries emotional weight. |
Attach context or stories | With each item, include a small note or label: “Day we walked by the river,” “Said this line in the car,” “When you laughed at this …” | Helps the memory remain vivid. Without context, items may fade or feel random later. |
Present it at visits | When you are physically together, bring the box. Open it together. Let your child pick an item to talk about it. Add a new item each visit (or on calls). | It becomes ritual, moment of connection, and a bridge between time apart. |
Use it as storytelling tool | Use items as jumping-off points to tell stories about you two, your past, hopes, lessons. | Converts physical items into narrative threads in your bond. |
Allow it to evolve | Over time some items may rotate out, new ones come in. The box is alive, growing. | Mirrors how your relationship grows. |
Respect emotional weight | Some items may bring tears or sadness. Let that happen. Be present and talk about emotions. | Healing and connection often come in vulnerability. |
Every page of the notebook filled with scratched-out dreams is still worth reading.
Rewriting Failures
Turn the page, and you’ll find failures written in bolder ink. Arguments circled. Apologies scrawled underneath. Whole sentences crossed out, rewritten, crossed out again.
The notebook doesn’t hide the times he yelled. Court dates he lost. The nights he was too tired to listen. Days he chose work because bills had to be paid.
These pages don’t flatter him. He walked into court with strikes already written against him. A history of drinking. A record that trailed him like a shadow.
A stretch of instability when he couldn’t keep work or steady housing. All of it laid out in black and white, the kind of past that makes judges skeptical before a word is spoken.
But he didn’t flinch. Behind those strikes was a man who had started rewriting his story. Rehab, finished and documented.
Pay stubs from steady work. Letters from teachers noting his presence at conferences. And every week, without fail, he showed up for his kids.
What had once been evidence against him became proof of growth. Failure doesn’t erase effort. It highlights the struggle, and effort is what children feel most.
Plan for financial strain
Stability isn’t glamorous, but it’s what steadies the ground under your child’s feet. Start by figuring out your “floor number” the essentials you need every month just to keep the lights on: rent, food, transportation, utilities.
Cut one expense. Track every dollar for thirty days, even the small ones. $10 on the food truck doesn’t feel like much until you see it multiplied across a month.
Cook instead of ordering out. These aren’t flashy wins, but they’re habits that build foundations. And children don’t remember what your paycheck they remember that you kept them steady. “Dad always made sure we had what we needed.”
Organize for court
Custody battles and co-parenting disputes can drown you in paperwork and “he said, she said.” The key is to build order into the chaos. Keep every text, email, school note, and doctor’s visit documented.
Use tools like AppClose or Custody X Change, which timestamp communication so nothing gets lost or twisted later. It’s not just about convincing a judge it’s about keeping yourself sane when the conflict feels endless. When stress rises, you won’t waste energy scrambling. You’ll already have your story written, neat and ready.
Protect your energy
Exhaustion steals patience. It makes small annoyances feel like insults and turns little mistakes into fights. That’s why you need rituals of rest. Ten minutes of breathing before you pick your kids up. A walk after work instead of heading straight into the house.
A simple stretch routine, a short workout, or a quick journal entry. Even a coffee with a friend you trust can reset your mind. Studies show these small breaks lower stress and help you regulate emotions which means you show up calmer, steadier, more present.
Closing the Notebook
Every notebook ends the same way… with a last line.
Some fathers let the pen slip early. The pages stay half-written, the sentences unfinished. Others keep writing, even when the ink runs dry, even when the words blur, even when the story feels like it’s already over.
What matters isn’t how many pages were smudged, rewritten, or torn out along the way.
What matters is the line you leave at the end the one your children will read back long after the noise fades.
Make sure it sounds like, “Dad kept showing up.”
Because if that’s what they carry forward.
Then no matter how messy the notebook.
The story was worth writing.
Until next time,
Barkim
Quotes:
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” – Maya Angelou
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford
“Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next.” – Denis Waitley
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