Customer Reviews

Becoming the Kind Father: A Son's Journey

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a passionate, heart-felt call for an expression of manhood that is open to feeling one's feelings, and being kind and gentle to oneself rather than being harsh and critical. The author's message is a life-saving one and every man who has issues with anger and wants to change will find encouragement in the chapter of the book dealing with anger issues. I would love to have a mentor like Calvin Sandborn to assist me in becoming a kind father to myself. I highly recommend this book!

I was really touched, softly, by this book. The author has a clear understanding of what a kind father really is and what he does. It is clear this attorney has a deep understanding of cognitive behavioral therapy and can write about it in ways that are easy to understand and motivational to apply.

For men who are religious, it is easy to convert one line of his thinking to Deity in a very effective way. For those not religious, they won't notice or shouldn't care.

There are a lot of mothers and grandparents out there who should buy this book for the father's of their children and grandchildren if they want those fathers to soften.

The reality of the stories, attitudes and circumstances make the book totally creditable.

A soul baring, inspiring story of one man's search to battle the rage within and become a better father in the process. After losing all that he cherished in the world Calvin Sandborn examines himself and the demons that led him to losing his wife and being seperated from his kids. It is a courageous look at oneself and the world he had created for himself. A quick read of a book but lessons in here that will last a lifetime. I found it especially poignant.

A must read for anybody with an interest in understanding the modern males world. Dealing with anger issues and finding out we have a lot more in common that society allows us to express.
An amazing book sadly one of the very few dealing with male issues in a human and compassionate manner.

I had the good fortune to discover your book in our public library and the pleasure to read it. It is a very fascinating book that helped me in two areas with which I have struggled for much of my life: anger and a poor relationship with my father. Thanks for the courage to write this book.



I am amazed you were able to overcome and reverse the negative input you received from your father. Tremendous!



I also imagine you carry much guilt about the way your father died. If you have not already done so, I think it is important to ask God to forgive you for your youthful anger towards him. When I converted from Judaism to Christianity, the missionaries I had met told me that the Holy Spirit informed them that I needed to repair my relationship with my parents in order to escape from a Biblical curse. I have found it true that even when I am absolutely sure that I am in the right and my parents in the wrong on some issue, if I oppose them in a disrespectful way it usually brings a calamity upon me. It is very hard for me to walk this tighrope, so now I focus on trying to be positive about things I can and ignoring areas that they are not willing to address with me.



I also was amazed at the suffering your own father experienced in his life, and I cried when I read his prayer on p.92. This was a very beautiful prayer, that I am sure he said in total sincerity. Have you ever considered that your book is an answer to your father's prayer, in that by using him as an example by which to instruct people to avoid the pitfalls and tragedy that overcame his life you have raised him up as a kind of memorial? I am sure his prayer helped that process. I also was amazed to read that your dad's father was a missionary! Wow! His life truly was heartbreakingly adverse.



I liked your dad's photo from 1957 (the year before I was born). He looks like a very dignified person. And I was struck by the irony that on the day he died he was so infuriated when the car broke down in his efforts to get you to your school on time. He sounds like a man who struggled so hard to do things right and was so frustrated. I also think, judging from his prayer that you record, that he was a very spiritual person whose anger was prompted by his sense that the blessings of God were eluding him. I don't know why his father died in Cuba or why your dad had to run away from home, but it seems that a curse was operating against him. Perhaps somone in Cuba had invoked a voodoo type of curse against your grandfather (the missionary) that afflicted your father particularly. I felt a lot of pity for him. He seems to have had a positive destiny that kept eluding him because he did not know how to tap into it or how to cry out for God's help.



I also was very moved by the words your mother said on her deathbed: "There are so many things in the world to love, children. Look for them." These are remarkable words. Your mother must have been a very saintly woman, especially to live with your father all those years. (If it is any consolation to you, I imagine that had your own wife possessed even a small portion of your mother's virtue, she would not have sought a divorce from you.)



I thought the quote from Gibril on page 102 is very profound: The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Awesome! If any quote can foster more understanding and tolerance by Christians for Moslems, this is it!



I would like to ask if it would be possible for you to email to the Jewish member of your anger management group my testimonial. It may prove interesting to him. It is here online, but I can send him a more readable PDF version as an email attachment.



I also would like to recommend that you try your hand at fiction. I think you have great writing gifts that could be more freely expressed in that form. Are you familiar with this book I just discovered at the library: Monkey Dancing, by Daniel Glick, the story of a father and son who travel to environmentally stressed areas around the world seeking to heal their own broken relationship? It might appeal to you.



When I was part of the Breslov Chassidic group, we followed a practice of private meditation where we would go to a secluded place like a park or beach and speak to God openly as though to a friend. Your example of how you pray in the mornings on the beach reminded me of this very powerful practice. Rabbi Nachman advised people to be utterly frank with God. As we pose our questions, complaints, thoughts, and feelings verbally, He will send ideas to us that amount to words of prophetic power for our lives. The key is to verbalize everything and to hold nothing back, no matter how embarassing or trivial it might seem.



I imagine that Jesus followed this practice in the many accounts in the New Testament that report Him going off to pray in seclusion.



God Bless you for this wonderful book!!!



Sincerely,

Michael Korn



PS I wanted to ask you about one statistic you cite, that half of all men suffer from depression. If this is true why do psychiatrists maintain that women are four times as likely to suffer from depression as men? There seems to be a contradiction here!