What It Truly Means to Heal as a Man: Sacrifice, Perspective, and New Love Skills | Fatherhood, Emotional Healing & Growth

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In this powerful opening episode of 15 Minutes with Dad, host Lirec Williams offers raw and personal insights into what true healing requires from men and fathers.

Learn why emotional healing often demands sacrifice, how “what once served you may no longer align,” and why many men struggle to balance growth with family responsibilities. Using a three-story-above perspective, Lirec invites listeners to reflect honestly on their lives, decisions, and the generational cycles shaping their families.

Through the lens of attachment theory, this episode explores how anxious-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant dynamics affect marriages, co-parenting, and parenting patterns—and how developing practical love skills can rebuild trust, emotional safety, and healthy masculinity in your home.

🎯 What You’ll Learn:

• How personal growth impacts family alignment and relationships
• Why attachment styles drive emotional distance or disconnection
• Tools to increase awareness and emotional presence in fatherhood
• How to begin building secure, resilient relationships with your children

This episode sets the tone for a journey of personal development for dads, helping you heal deeply, lead intentionally, and create a legacy rooted in presence and growth.

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• Instagram: @ToldbyLirec
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Thank you for joining us on this transformative journey! Together, we're breaking barriers and fostering a community of healing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to a very special series of 15 minutes
with dad.
I'm your host, lyric Williams,a father, artist, professional
and man walking through my ownjourney of healing, growth and
transformation.
This series is going to be abit different.
It's going to be raw.
It's more vulnerable.
It's going to be me invitingyou to walk with me as I ask the

(00:23):
question what does it trulymean to heal?
As a man?
Because healing is not aboutpretending we're fine or
ignoring the wounds.
It's about facing the hardtruths about ourselves, about
the people we love and about thechoices we've made.
Let's get into it.

(00:45):
In this first part, I want totalk about the weight of
sacrifice.
When you're a father, healingis never just about you.
Every decision we make ripplesout to our children, our
partners and our family.
Sometimes the thing that oncefelt normal, safe or even

(01:07):
necessary no longer aligns withwho you're becoming.
And that's where the pain lies,because to heal, you may have
to let go of people, places orpatterns that once served you,
and when kids are involved,those choices feel unbearable.
It makes you ask yourselfthings like am I being selfish?

(01:31):
Am I breaking something theyneed, or am I showing them what
real courage looks like?
Healing often looks likesacrifice, not because you want
to hurt those you love, butbecause you're finally choosing
alignment over appearances.
When we're inside the chaos,it's hard to know if things are

(01:56):
really good, really bad or justfamiliar, and that's why I talk
about taking a three-story aboveview of your life, like imagine
yourself stepping outside ofyourself and looking down from
above at your situation as ifyou were an observer and not the

(02:17):
one trapped inside it, and fromthat view, you will most likely
see the truth more clearly.
You'll see things like thecycles you're most likely see
the truth more clearly.
You'll see things like thecycles you're stuck in, the good
that you've been overlooking orthe pain that you've normalized
and the patterns you've passeddown without even realizing it.
That higher view helps youanswer the question am I

(02:47):
surviving or am I truly living?
And, as a man, as a father,that perspective could be the
start of your transformation.
Now, as we go in through thisseries, we're going to talk
about things such as attachmentstyles and things like the
cycles that we repeat attachmentstyles and things like the

(03:07):
cycles that we repeat.
So, if we're getting real aboutour relationships, a lot of us
are carrying attachment woundsfrom childhood, wounds that
shape how we connect love andeven argue.
And here's the clash.
I've seen and I've lived.
An anxious, avoidant attachmentstyle craves closeness but

(03:28):
fears rejection.
A dismissive avoidance stylecraves independence but fears
vulnerability.
An unstructured attachmentstyle is all of that.
And when you put them togetherand you get a cycle, one chases

(03:49):
closeness, the other pulls away.
The more one pulls, the morethe other chases.
Both end up feelingmisunderstood, unloved and
unsafe.
And this cycle shows up inmarriages and co-parenting, even
friendships, and if we as mendon't recognize it at all, we
pass it to our kids, teachingthem love means instability

(04:14):
instead of safety.
So through this series, we'regoing to work on learning to
love differently, to heal.
We have to ask what are myloving skills?
Do I know how to listen withoutfixing?
Do I know how to comfortwithout controlling?

(04:34):
Do I know how to set boundarieswithout shutting down?
And, just as important, whatare the loving skills of the
people around me?
Because not everyone can meetus where we are.
Some people can only love fromtheir wounds.
Navigating change means beinghonest about the love you need,

(04:58):
the love you give and the lovethat's missing.
It means building new skillsand teaching them to your
children so they don't inheritthe same broken patterns.
Now I won't pretend that I haveit all figured out.
I'm living it right now in realtime.

(05:20):
I've had to face choices I'venever wanted to make.
I've had to look at thesacrifices of people I love and
ask myself am I honoring them bystaying the same or by changing
?
There are nights I questioneverything.
Days I feel weight offatherhood in ways that nearly
break me, but I've only seenglimpses of what healing looks

(05:46):
like.
I know that I can be calmer, bebraver and be gentler with
myself, and being brave in mytruth.
This series is me inviting youinto that space, not as a man
who has it all together, but asone who's willing to do the work

(06:09):
, to ask the hard questions, tostep three stories above my own
life and finally see clearly.
Healing as a man is not aone-time event.
It's a process.
It's facing the cycles, namingthe wounds and learning new ways
to love.
And in this first episode westarted with the big picture.

(06:31):
We started with understandingthe sacrifice that healing asks
of us, the power of steppingthree stories above your life,
the reality of attachment stylesclashing in cycles and the
importance of learning andteaching new loving skills.
Today I have a challenge for youthis week.
Take a three story above viewof your life.

(06:53):
Write down what you see thegood, the bad, the familiar and
ask yourself what needs tochange for me to truly heal.
Next week we'll go intoattachment and how your
childhood shapes your fatherhoodand your being a partner and
being a man, and what it takesto rewrite the story for

(07:16):
yourself and for your kids.
Make sure you follow us onsocial media.
Follow us at 15 minutes withdad on all social media
platforms and let's walk thisjourney together, because
healing is not just for us.
It's for our children, ourfamilies and the legacy we leave
behind.