A FATHER’S LOVE

BY RAMONA ROBERTS

There’s always a conversation to be had when it comes to fatherhood in the black community. 24-Year-Old Kyshon Johnson used her story with her father to make that conversation more common and comfortable. Through her platform, The Other Halfs, Johnson created a safe space for black women and men to openly discuss the impact of a father’s love or the lack thereof. “Whether your relationship was positive negative or non-existent, this is a safe space for you to self-reflect, connect with likehearted people, and learn more about yourself.”

Kyshon explains that her father was incarcerated on and off for a total of 14 years of her life. “So we used to talk through the phone a lot. We wrote letters, and outside of our relationships in my environment I never really saw positive fatherchild relationships. My closest girlfriends, none of us had fathers that were really active in our lives, so it was almost as if I didn’t feel like I was missing anything by not having my father’s love present, because no one around me saw it...our mothers had given us everything we needed.”

As a result, Johnson didn’t always realize this space was needed, especially for her specifically... until she did.

“It wasn’t until I studied abroad in 2012 in Spain, and I had to live with a host family, and that’s where I met my host father. For the first time in my life I lived in a two-parent household and I got to see a positive father-child relationship between my host father and my two host sisters. They didn’t have a lot of cares in the world because they knew that they had this father that was a protector. Their personalities were solidified, they were so goofy with their dads so when they would go out into the world, they weren’t trying to be other people, they already knew who they were because their father had cultivated this personality in the household. They didn’t really seek or put too much emphasis on romantic relationships or their value and worth on these romantic relationships because they had this super-strong bond with their father.”

After returning to the U.S., Johnson was motivated to learn how her relationship with her father was impacting her. In the process of doing research, she struggled to find resources that catered to the black community and the topic of absent fathers. This was what pushed her to create her own resource.

Through The Other Half's platform, Kyshon has interviewed 100 different women and 50 different men all around the country. She described a few things that stood out to her throughout her interview series.

“The overall thing I would say I have learned is that children remember everything. One of the first questions that I ask in my interview is “what are your first memories with your father” and I think of the, I’ll say 150 people that interview initially, that everyone’s answer started at about two to five-years-old. And the things that they remembered, they may not have remembered all the details, but they remembered how their father made [them] feel.”

When talking to men specifically Johnson explains the word abandonment came out a lot. “They felt abandoned by their father. One if he wasn’t present, but also if he was present but he wasn’t emotionally present.” She continued to explain how this abandonment would show in their romantic lives. “A lot of them said that as they started to date they started to use women to fill voids, and they started to fear that the women would leave them or that people close to them would leave them. So one of the strategies they would have is that they would try and leave people before they leave them, or leave any relationship that in any way triggered or reflected what they saw growing up in relation to their father.”

The platform founder explains how she is in the process of rebuilding her relationship with her father. “My father and I had been rebuilding our relationship for about a year and a half. So one of the key things that I started to do is set my intentions, what do I want to gain from this relationship. Do I want to have the talk with him when I spill out everything that I felt about him being incarcerated for the majority of my life and kind of throw it on him, do I want to be heard? Or do I just want him in my life? And that’s what I really wanted, I felt like I couldn’t take back in not being there in the past and I didn’t feel like we would have a productive relationship or communication if we dove too much into that because it’s out of my control and it happened in the past.”

To those struggling with their own relationship with their father, Kyshon focuses on 3 steps to help start the process: Recognizing the relationship and how it has impacted you, having patience with learning your avenues of expression, and figuring out how you want to move forward.

also known for its events. “The events are very uniquely coordinated and it’s an opportunity to meet people. They are always open bar, especially because we’re having such heavy topics. The event can range to about 25 to about 80 people and they’re all very unique...at all of The Other Half events, you get a name tag with a color on it. Green is a positive relationship with your father, red is a negative relationship with him, and yellow is we working on it/we are figuring it out. It’s just a safe space for you to walk up to someone. Maybe you have a green and you don’t want heavy conversation so you go find someone who has a green name tag. The point is you’re able to meet so many like-hearted individuals and connect with them, and that’s the best way to learn about yourself.”

Through its genuine impact, this platform has received much press, and according to the founder, there’s still more to come. With possible celebrity interviews, more events, and purchasable merchandise for your personal journey, Kyshon will continue to impact, educate and normalize the conversations around a father’s love. And for that, we thank her.