The Greatest Gift: Why Empathy Belongs at the Heart of Father’s Day

By Kenneth Braswell

We spend a lot of time around Father’s Day asking what dads deserve. A grill? A necktie? A rare moment of peace and quiet? But maybe the question we ought to ask is simpler and more powerful:

What does it take to really see a father?

If we can’t care about how a father feels, we’ll never understand how he thinks. And if we can’t understand how he thinks, we’ll never shift how he behaves. And that’s the hard truth many of us who work with men have learned: Empathy might be the greatest gift we could ever give a dad, not just on Father’s Day, but every day.

Empathy isn’t a trending term or a soft skill. It’s the foundation. It’s the heartbeat of this work. It’s the reason I’m still here.

Let me tell you why.

I didn’t meet my biological father, Douglas Applewhite, until I was 23. And shortly after I met him, he passed away. For most of my life, I carried a story in my head that he didn’t want me, that he disappeared, that he didn’t care enough to stay. That story hurt, but I made peace with it, or at least I thought I did.

Then, decades later, my mother saw a documentary I made, Spit and Anger. Something in it cracked open a new truth for her. She confessed that it wasn’t him who left. It was her family that pushed him away, relocating us to New York and cutting off the connection. It was the 1960s — no Instagram, no search engines, just silence. Somewhere in that silence, there was a man who may have been trying to find me but couldn’t.

At his funeral, I sat feet from his casket and read his obituary: a decorated veteran, a deacon, a Sunday school teacher, a father of seven. And yet, somehow, I had been left out of his story. That contradiction crushed me. And it echoed.

It made me rethink everything I thought I knew about fathers.

We don’t talk enough about how many of our stories about manhood and fatherhood are based not in facts but in pain. And pain is a terrible author. It skips context. It omits truth. It tells you you’re unlovable when the real story is you were unreachable.

Here’s where empathy enters. It helps us rewrite our stories with fuller, softer hands. Empathy doesn’t erase wounds, but it invites us to understand the pain behind the behavior. It lets us stop punishing people for mistakes that life is already making them pay for.

And empathy is hard. It asks us to feel. And for men, especially Black men, that’s risky business. Most of us didn’t grow up in homes where our feelings were nurtured. Vulnerability was rarely rewarded. Often, it was punished.

So when a man says, “I haven’t seen my child in two years,” believe him. He may not be telling the whole truth, but he’s telling his truth. And that’s the doorway to the deeper truth, the one we only get if we walk with him, not ahead of him.

One of the fathers in our Gentle Warriors Academy showed up for every class. On time. Fully engaged. He was the model student. Then one day, in an interview, he said, “I haven’t seen my kid in two years.” I paused. Shocked. I asked him, “Why didn’t you check out?”

He said, “I can’t.”

That’s resilience. That’s what it looks like. And it doesn’t come from toughness alone. It’s built through community, connection, and the belief that someone sees you as worthy of redemption.

And that’s what empathy offers: the chance to be seen — not as what you’ve done, but as who you are and who you might still become.

This Father’s Day, let’s offer something more enduring than a card or a steak dinner. Let’s offer compassion. Let’s challenge ourselves to listen more closely. To believe more deeply. To hold space for the stories that don’t get shared on social media.

Because masculinity isn’t toxic. What’s toxic is the way we’ve shamed men out of their feelings, shunned them from their families, and silenced their cries for help. Healthy masculinity is strong, yes, but it’s also tender. Present. Protective. Rooted in care.

So instead of asking, Why didn’t he show up?, let’s ask, What happened that made showing up so hard? Instead of assuming the worst, let’s make room for his best.

Let’s give empathy.

It just might be the greatest Father’s Day gift we’ve never thought to wrap.

Kenneth Braswell is a nationally recognized leader in the responsible fatherhood movement, author of several acclaimed books including When the Tear Won’t Fall, Strength of the Father, Kwesi and the Ogre, and Too Seasoned to Care. He is the CEO of Fathers Incorporated and host of the I Am Dad Podcast.