Fatherhood is not about perfection. It's about presence.
Push Me Dad Movement was created to celebrate fathers who are actively present and to support fathers who are still finding their way back into healthy connection with their children. We believe fatherhood is not about perfection — it is about presence, accountability, healing, and love.
Mission
To equip and encourage fathers to show up consistently, repair what's broken, and build the kind of presence their children will remember for a lifetime.
Vision
A generation of children raised by fathers who are emotionally present, accountable, and unafraid to do the work of healing.
Values
Presence over perfection. Accountability with grace. Healing in community. Family above ego. Action over performance.
It started with a poem.
Push Me Dad began as a poem written for one child — a way to say everything a young heart needs to hear from their father. Pushed on a swing. Pushed forward in life. Pushed toward becoming.
Friends started asking for copies. Then schools. Then fathers in recovery, fathers behind bars, fathers across town who just wanted help knowing how to begin again. The poem became a book. The book became a workshop. The workshop became a movement.
Today, Push Me Dad Movement works across Cleveland and beyond — and we are just getting started.
The data is clear. The lived experience is louder.
- Children with engaged fathers perform better in school and report greater confidence.
- Father presence is one of the strongest protective factors against youth incarceration.
- Healing the father wound breaks cycles that have lasted for generations.
- Communities with present fathers are more stable, safer, and more hopeful.
