Ray Mingo is the father of three beautiful, bright, talented young women. Ray worked as a residential counselor for 30 years, mentoring preadolescents, adolescents, and young adults with behavior issues. He also worked as a site mentor for Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violent Network (PAAN) under its founder, the late James Mills. Ray taught a martial arts class for an after-school program in which I focused not only on the physicals of martial arts but on discipline, self-esteem, self-respect, and respect for others, even if others don't align with your social or religious convictions or beliefs. Ray has said:
"My strongest desire is to be in my children's lives, so I pursued fatherhood with all diligence. What man wouldn't?"
Ray is also a self-publish author of a book in 2013 entitled “Who’s Your Daddy, “a book about fatherhood, specifically fathers who don't live with their children. In this book, Ray chronicles some of his life experiences as a single father, his life without the presence of a father, and living with his two siblings and his mother. Who's Your Daddy is where Ray gives his personal story, his philosophy generated by his experience as an involved father on the topic of fatherhood.
Ray has a specialized associate degree in commercial arts and advertisement. He also created a trademark t-shirt brand called “do you” with the subtitle “If you don’t do you, then who will?” He is a certified personal trainer, massage therapist, and an accomplished martial artist with 30 years of experience obtaining a black belt in Karate/ Japanese jujutsu, a blue belt (one stripe) in Brazilian Jujitsu, years of Muay Thai training, Catch Wrestling. He has taken his many years of training and developed a hand-to-hand combat system called NO SECOND CHANCE or N2C, a Combat & Self-defense System.
Ray says:
"With everything that I have done or pursued, my greatest achievement, bar none, is my three daughters. I receive my greatest joy and rewards in being involved and spending time with them. Seeing them grow into the fullness of what God has for them is the most fulfilling thing to me. They are and will always be my reason for living."
FATHERHOOD
Welcome to FATHERHOOD! This is not just another site that tells men how to be a father; it reaches much deeper than just that. I believe that the act of fatherhood, or what I call "men actively engaged in their child's life,"; is as natural as a human growing from childhood to adulthood. If having a child is a natural phenomenon, shouldn't rearing a child be as equally natural? And why are animals who have no marriage or parenting counseling, no religious institutions, no psychologist, not privileged to a plethora of parenting books and organizations; why are they able to bring their children up in the way they should go? Hmm? Could we have fed into a system that causes us to ignore our natural abilities and allowed that system to think for us as parents? Back in the day, parents helped children to become good parents. Mothers helped daughters to become good women by teaching them how to be mothers. Fathers helped sons become good men teaching them how to be fathers. Both mothers and fathers and to the raising of daughter and son.
Today's society tells us that we as men don't have it in us to be fathers or women to be mothers and that we can no longer learn this ability from our natural parents. It tells us that people who don't know our children and don't even have their own children can tell us how to raise our children. Parenting skills are universal, and at the same time, it is individualized. We live in a society that tells us that if we want good children to pay attention, be more respectful, and be less defiant, we must give them pills instead of our involvement. FATHERHOOD seeks to change, challenge, and reeducate the mindset men have about women and women have about men in this society, communities, and homes. And that role is not a bad word. This society has systematically pitted women against men through the entities said to have been created to assist and empower men and women. But these entities, with their covert and overt ideologies, have been slowly destroying and dividing men and women for centuries. Ideologies that have made the woman view their role are belittling and subservient when it is the complete opposite of those two things. So, they abandon their much-needed role for something else, leaving the man without his help-meet, help-mate, helper, partner, and comrade, thus, leaving the man unable to reach his full potential. And, unfortunately, leaving the woman without her protector, friend, or emotional, mental, and spiritual augmenter. While also systematically pitting the man against the woman by allowing the man to view his role in an extremist way by seeing himself as a ruler, dictator, or owner of the woman, which in return causes the woman to rebel against the man, thereby taking on her own extremist ideology about her role in order to protect her own self-worth. So, the cycle continues men and women, when put at odds, become governed by a societal system instead of their natural God-given synergy. Make the relationship between man and woman the greatest civil war of humanity.
Fatherhood has become polluted and watered-down by a system with no heart, ability to feel, or spirit. This society has taken fathering from a natural organic thing and filled it with unnatural things. Fatherhood is not an organization; it is an organism of celestial origin. We, as fathers, must begin to find our way back to this natural/celestial ability. We can no longer shortcut our way through parenting; we have only given our children the short end of the stick by shortcutting. Fathering takes extensive involvement until our children can go out on their own, and even after that, our involvement is necessary. It is a lifetime commitment until the father or child's life has expired. And then the residuals of fond memories left behind will carry them on through life.
When men cleave to fatherhood as much as they do to their social, political, & religious agendas, only then will we secure a future for our children and our communities. The only thing a man needs to be a father is the relentless desire to be one; everything else will fall in line. As men, we are linked by a common cause and bound by a common duty: fatherhood. There is no greater cause for which we as men should sacrifice ourselves, and there is no greater duty we will ever perform than fatherhood. With all our imperfections and human mistakes, to them (our children), we are the closest thing to God.
