Happy Father’s Day, dads.
Andrew here. And I’m going to say something you probably won’t hear anywhere else today.
Today is yours. Receive it. Let your kids make you breakfast even if it’s terrible. Read the card they made at school. Sit in it for a minute. You’ve earned the celebration. Don’t deflect it or minimize it or spend the whole day focused on everyone else. That’s not humility. That’s habit. Today, break it.
But here’s the thing about finish lines. The best athletes in the world don’t stop at the tape. They run through it. The finish line isn’t where the work ends. It’s where you find out what you’re made of next.
Father’s Day is the finish line of a year of effort. And tomorrow, June 22nd, the next rep begins. A new week. A new set of chances to show up, to follow through, to be the dad your kids are going to remember. Not because of today, but because of every Tuesday and Thursday after it.
So enjoy today. All of it. You’ve earned it. And when tomorrow comes, show up like a dad who’s just getting started.
Let’s get into it.
And if you’re new here, welcome to The Dadder Dispatch. You picked a good weekend to show up.
Today is Father’s Day, which means the energy all flows toward you. The cards, the breakfast, the “happy Father’s Day” texts. Receive all of it. But today’s two challenges ask you to flip the energy back. Not because you owe anyone anything today. Because the dads who leave the biggest mark aren’t just celebrated. They reflect, and they give.
Sometime today, not right now, after the breakfast, after the cards, sit with one question for two minutes. What kind of dad do you want your kids to remember when you’re gone?
Not someday. Today. The dad they’ll describe when they’re 40, and someone asks about their childhood. Write one sentence answering that question. Then read it back. Then go be him for the rest of the day.
The answer to that question is the only Father’s Day gift that actually matters. The cards and the ties fade. Who you were doesn’t.
Most of the energy today flows toward you, and that’s great. Today, send some of it in the other direction. Sometime today, write your kid a short letter. What you love about them. Who you see them becoming. What being their dad has taught you.
It doesn’t have to be long. Three sentences are enough. Hand it to them today, or save it for their graduation, their wedding, their 18th birthday. A letter from you, on the day about you, telling them what they mean to you. They’ll remember that long after the ties get donated.
You don’t have to be a writer. You just have to be honest. That’s all it takes.
The DadderUp app drops a fresh Dad Flex daily, built for the kind of dad who doesn’t wait for the new year to level up. Download it and start tomorrow.
I want to be real with you today, on Father’s Day of all days.
For a long time, I was making the whole journey of fatherhood unenjoyable. Not because I was a bad dad, but because I was so hard on myself that I couldn’t see what I was actually doing right. One late pickup, one moment where I lost my patience, one night where the bedtime routine went sideways, and suddenly my brain was running the whole tape. I’ve ruined their lives. They’re going to remember this. I’m failing them.
That’s not accountability. That’s self-destruction. And it was getting in the way of me actually being present for the moments I was trying so hard to show up for.
What changed everything for me was redefining what failure actually meant. Failure isn’t making mistakes. Every dad makes mistakes. Failure is giving up, staying down when you get knocked down. The dad who loses his patience and then apologizes and tries again tomorrow isn’t failing. He’s doing the work. He’s in it.
So today, on Father’s Day, I want to give you something different from what you’ll find in every other email in your inbox. I want to give you permission to enjoy this. To actually sit in what you’ve built with your kids this year, the good moments and the hard-fought ones, without the dad guilt and the second-guessing. You’re here. You’re trying. You haven’t given up.
That’s not a small thing. That’s everything.
“How do I balance being proud of what I’ve done as a dad while still pushing to be better?”
— James, dad of four, DadderUp community
This is actually the question I’d want every dad to be sitting with today. Not “did I do enough this year,” but how do I hold both things at the same time. The pride and the push. Because a lot of dads can’t. They either beat themselves up so much they can’t enjoy what they’ve built, or they get comfortable and stop growing. Neither one serves your kids.
Here’s what I’ve found. Pride and hunger aren’t opposites. They actually fuel each other when you get the relationship right. Being proud of where you are doesn’t mean you’re satisfied with where you’re going. It just means you’re giving yourself credit for the reps you’ve already put in. And that credit is important, because dads who never acknowledge their own progress eventually burn out or give up.
So today, Father’s Day, let yourself feel proud. Not arrogant. Not done. Just proud. Look at what you’ve built with your kids this year. The moments you showed up for. The hard conversations you had. The times you got it wrong and came back anyway. That’s real. That deserves to be acknowledged.
And then tomorrow, you run through the finish line. You start the next rep. Not because today wasn’t enough, but because you love your kids too much to stop here.
Pride today. Push tomorrow. That’s the balance.
A while back, I took my daughters to Kalahari, the big indoor water park in Pennsylvania. Upgraded room, early entry passes, the VIP lounge, the whole thing. I did it right. Or at least I thought I did.
On the drive home, they couldn’t stop talking about the trip. But none of the things they were raving about had anything to do with what I spent money on. It was the car ride up. The songs we sang. The games we played. The fact that I wouldn’t let them on their iPads so we actually had to talk for four hours. And something that happened in the bathroom that I won’t get into, but it became a legendary story.
That drive home changed how I think about this whole thing.
I had been operating under a definition of “great dad” that my kids never actually signed off on. I thought it meant providing, planning, showing up, doing the big things. But what they actually wanted was simpler and harder at the same time. They wanted me in it, really in it, not just physically there. They wanted to feel heard, not fixed, just listened to. And here’s the one that surprised me most: they wanted me to do the opposite of what they said was okay. Because when a seven-year-old says “it’s fine, daddy,” it usually isn’t. They just don’t want to make you feel bad.
I’m sharing this today because I think most dads reading this have their own version of Kalahari. The vacation they planned perfectly. The game they showed up to. The gift they spent too much on. And somewhere in the middle of all that doing, the actual moments slipped by.
So today, on Father’s Day, ask yourself what your kids are going to remember about this year. Not the things you paid for. Not the plans you made. The moments you were actually in. Those are the ones they keep. And those are the ones that make you the dad they’ll talk about when they’re grown.
How are you actually celebrating yourself today?
Dr. Pruett has spent four decades studying fathers at Yale, and one thing he said stuck with me more than anything else in this conversation. There’s a habit almost every dad has that’s quietly undoing the connection he’s trying to build. I had to ask him to repeat it.
I took my daughters to Kalahari, upgraded room, VIP passes, the works. On the drive home, none of that was what they talked about. That trip taught me that what my kids actually want has almost nothing to do with what I thought being a great dad meant. This one changed how I show up.
We’ll keep showing up with the emails. All we ask? If this hit home today, there’s a dad in your life who needs to read it too.
