relationships

TAILGATING PART 2 CODEBREAKING

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

CODE BREAKING (TAILGATING part 2)

As I sat in my office, overlooking the very country road where for the first time in my life I pulled over for a tailgater and let them go past, I thought about what had happened over those two days.

 

I thought again about Osgoode Village, the truck tailgater, my response, the next day sedan tailgater, and how I had pulled over to wish someone well who, only moments before, was a threat.

 

I thought of where in the body I feel it when such things occur. The racing pulse, shorter breathing, the tight gut and full threat alertness and physiological arousal as the wolf is summoned, just in case. I remembered the ways I might protest and curse at the interloper crowding my back end, the furtive back-and-forth glances at the road and rearview mirror, options running through my mind.

 

When else had I felt like that? Of course, every time I’d been tailgated, came the answer. And what about earlier than that, I pondered. What’s the earliest I can remember ever feeling this way?

 

I let that sit for a day or two, moving in and out of my office, hearing the cars whiz by the end of my driveway. I was unhurried, curious, exploring, imagining, seeking only to access an intuitive understanding of why this happens.

 

About three days later, it came to me:  the earliest time I can remember this kind of arousal was when I was a little boy, say, between age 8 or so and 11, sitting in the living room at my parent’s home watching black & white TV with my eight siblings, and dad would walk in and take his seat.

 

My dad had his own chair, centrally located in the room, directly opposite the TV. He’d arrive and someone would scramble out of his way, maybe two of us even, so he could take his place and watch with us. It was usually Bonanza, Star Trek, Walt Disney, or cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Donald Duck, and the odd time Superman, Spiderman, and their ilk.

 

Thinking back to those times I realized that dad’s arrival made me uncomfortable. So much so that in short order, sometimes in five minutes and at other times in ten, I’d make an excuse about having something to do and leave the room. I’d leave Dad and the TV to my brothers and sisters.

 

Why did I do that? I never even realized I was doing it at the time. The house was run by mom and backed up by dad. With nine kids to look after, ma was tireless and efficient and had little time for anyone stepping out of line. Morality at home was assumed more than it was taught.

And on those occasions where she felt the full weight of her martyrdom, your perceived transgressions fueling the “being taken for granted” caregiver’s dilemma, she summoned her husband as punisher. Mom gave a lot, and sometimes she took a little back.

Over the years of my early life dad had tried various lesser pieces of wood spanking his children and finally settled on a twenty-inch piece of maple hockey stick handle he called “the ruler.” He kept this on top of the kitchen door frame for all to see.

Typically, the progression of his ire was first a look that could kill, then a raised voice that froze you in place, often followed with a slap or a throw across the room, and finally, if he was sufficiently agitated, a spanking with the ruler. I held the family record for number of strikes.

One time a classmate and I were caught tossing a note back and forth in class. It was grade three and our teacher was a nun with the most beautiful face. My friend Jr. sent the first volley with “caca” written on it. I replied with “pipi” and sent it back.

An exchange or two later and, the aerodynamics of folded paper being what they are, my return landed on the desk of another student, the teacher’s pet. To my horror Miss Good-Goody-Two-Shoes promptly read the note and turned it in while pointed me out to the teacher. Since we lived just up the street, I was sent home with a note at lunchtime.

 

I tried to explain myself to ma, but she spied the envelope I was holding behind my back and demanded to see it. After reading it, all she said was “Wait ‘til your father gets home.”

I knew I was fucked.

 

That evening, I got the family record: seventy-two full adult swings on my backside while I held on to my bedpost with pants pulled down. After 30 strikes I’d fall to the ground and beg for mercy. “Daddy, no!” I’d say, “I won’t do it again.”  But he’d just reply with “Get up!” and keep hitting me.

 

My two older brothers listened from the other room and counted the total. It was said I screamed so loudly the neighbours all around us could hear. It wasn’t the first time the old man had yelled at me or hit me, and it wasn’t the last time either.

I’m not writing this to re-live difficult episodes of my early years. Rather, I share these experiences in the hopes others will understand the process I used to address a longstanding shortcoming. Keep in mind this is about tailgating, yes, but much more than that.

 

It’s enough to say that my nervous system was changed forevermore that day. I was a good kid, no real problems. In fact, I was attending French school as an Anglophone speaker.

Though I understood not a word in grade one, sometime in grade two I had gone to school in the morning ignorant and confused… and come home understanding a new language.

By grade six I was class president.

 

As I said, the day I got the family record wouldn’t be the last time I was spanked, but it seems that day he beat the emotion out of me. It took many years before I could feel again, at least the way I surmise others might feel in every-day situations.

 

And so it was that I learned to avoid my father at every turn. My instincts for self preservation honed to a sharp edge, if he showed up, I was out of there as soon as I could. Apparently, he noticed.

Probably when I was eleven or so, my folks tried family therapy at a local mental institution. I remember a session facilitated by two therapists where my father turned his attention to me in and accused me of avoiding him. I was so overwhelmed that I responded angrily and stormed out in tears. They found me later walking down Carling Avenue alone and pulled the car over and let me in.

Not a word was said that I recall. I don’t remember ever going back to therapy either.

 

Operating System

As I sat in my office remembering all of this, I saw how my physiological arousal while being tailgated dovetailed with the way I felt in the living room of my parent’s home watching TV when dad would come in: people all around, eyes on the TV, on my father, on the TV, on my father, on the TV…

 

That was it. A perfect match of fact and feelings.

The first time visiting with “Little Chris” years ago required a fair degree of compassion and understanding. Partly that was to make sure I didn’t just scare him off, sending that part of me into hiding again. I talk about this in Sipping Fear Pissing Confidence, my book about addictions.

In my experience, no one survives childhood emotionally unscathed under perfectly imperfect parenting. All of us have a Younger Self wandering the darkened hallways of the psyche, looking, searching, maybe holding a stuffed Teddy Bear and dragging a favourite blanket, looking for belonging. And that part of us always has a story to tell.

 

So, I asked myself given the circumstances and how I felt, what would I have to believe to make these facts and feelings true. I thought hard about that, re-imagining myself as a boy, barely double digits in age, in that setting with the matching beige pleather couches, every seat taken by someone, the movement of characters on TV, seeing through my eyes as if I were there again…

 

And it again, the messaging came to me: “I’m in danger. Something bad will happen.”

Looking at the TV, looping, “I’m in danger” and glancing towards dad “Something bad will happen” and at the TV, “I’m in danger” and over my shoulder at dad “Something bad will happen.”

 

Now, I imagined driving down the road being tailgated and saw that I was unconsciously ruled by these same two declarations. “I’m in danger” looking at the road, and “something bad will happen” while glancing at the rearview, back to the road and “I’m in danger” and to the rearview “Something bad will happen.” These were the irrational beliefs summoning the wolf.

This was a part of my operating system: nervous system coping from decades ago that had been superimposed on tailgaters all that time and had never been updated

 

It was like using Commodore 64 in a Windows 11 world.

I’d learned to manage that kind of physiological arousal as a child by leaving the room and avoiding my father’s wrath. I couldn’t do that while driving. I was stuck there not feeling safe and expecting something bad would happen. These were the same feelings I had at 8-9-10-11 years old. They were with me still.

 

Like learning to walk at an early age and doing it automatically ever since, I’d learned the danger of keeping my eyes ahead on a screen while a menace lurked around me outside my control.

 

It was my nervous system, trained by the body-mind long ago, and on occasions like this, still on autopilot all these years later. It was time to take over the controls and create new concepts my brain could use predictively next time someone decides to follow my vehicle too closely.

Conditioning

I’d experimented that first time with the sedan on my street and it had worked better than expected. What was needed was more opportunities like this to put in place new thoughts, new feelings and new behaviours because the predictive brain is trained by experience. If it learned one way, it could learn another.

 

I had done this enough times over the years so that I didn’t have to reach out and comfort, reparent, or father my younger self. In my Taming Shame course I teach a few ways of doing this. I did, however, keep him in mind, compassionately, just in case, as I went about watching for the chance to practice giving my brain new concepts to use in the future.

 

It wasn’t long before a chance came about. On the way to the local supermarket with my daughter one of those little Japanese cars with loud exhaust and a stylish racing wing on the back showed up and was impatiently hurrying me along.

 

I knew a left turn lane ahead had a right lane go-around for a hundred metres or so.

 

As soon as I reached that point in the road, I quickly signaled and moved into the slower right lane and let the little sports car pass. While doing so I thought to myself, “Here, allow me,” in highly polite-Canadian fashion.

 

Off they went, zooming on by and I could see them get stuck behind cars a ways up the road and finally stop at some lights. Meanwhile, daughter and I continued our pleasant conversation before we turned into the grocery store completely unbothered by the tailgater. Such freedom.

 

The idea is to have new thoughts, new feelings, while engaging in a new behaviour. In my case, in addition to “Here, allow me,” I’d think, “Sure, if you need the road that badly, here it is,” or “You must be in a terrible hurry,” or, “Here you go brother/sister, let me help,” as I pull over and let them pass.

 

I did a version of this seven or eight times at this initial writing. The emotional activation of when I first notice the tailgater through to the subsequent methods to deal with them has diminished in intensity each time. The rule is if your emotional response doesn’t fit circumstances, an update is in order.

 

By not rewarding the nervous system with my usual response to tailgaters, the old way of dealing with things will die out completely through behavioural “extinction” simply because it’s no longer being reinforced by the usual O/S behaviours, thoughts and feelings which sustained it.

 

And the more times I can use my new response to the tailgating situation and not use the old method that plagued me for decades, the more the predictive brain will put in place the new concepts to use in the future.

I am almost looking forward to tailgaters now. Nuts eh?

Sure enough, the day before Christmas Eve (men’s shopping days for sure), I had to travel into town during a snowstorm. On the way back, the roads were full of snow. No way you could see lines demarking lanes and cautious driving was the way to go.

Going through Findlay Creek some dude is six feet from my bumper and honking his horn because I’m driving down the middle of two lanes IN A SNOWSTORM instead of one. So I pull over enough to let him zip by me. I was a little envious of his traction, admittedly, nothing like my Elantra.

At the next lights I rolled up beside him and lowered my window, smiling, gesturing at the road while telling him if he needs to get somewhere I cede the road to him with pleasure. He yelled back thanking me and mentioning that there are two lanes there. I smiled and asked if he noticed THE SNOWSTORM laughing. The light changed. We moved on, him ahead, pulling in a half mile up the road at a used car place. I gave him a short honk politely as I went by. I assume we are friendly now.

 

That’s how you update your operating system.

©2026 CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
all rights reserved Advisor to Men™

ATM DEFENDER APP INTRO

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

One of the things that struck me as I grew into middle age was that no one ever told me it was up to me to create order. Seems obvious maybe.

I had to run into the order versus chaos dichotomy from sheer ignorance borne from curiousity.

Meaning, it’s a damn good thing I like to read.

I suppose it’s also because I’d learned to be a manager in that purest of sales endeavours, the door-to-door crew business.

I’d hustled jobs and extra money as soon as I hit double digits in age and benefitted from my buddy and neighbour Graydon’s work ethic, but working doors over the years taught me plenty more.

When it comes to setting goals and making steady progress, what I see is that most guys have good intentions, often better than mine, but often fail to systematize their efforts to win.

Or they are blocked somehow.

Though women are usually exceptional organizers, order is key if we are to keep the forces of decay from overwhelming us. That’s very much a male responsibility.

I fling dumbbells around to keep grip strength and have done wall sits while brushing my teeth for decades to protect my knees. I used Day Timer’s system to organize my priorities in college (and still do to some extent).

From this attitude the quadrant system was born.


DAILY QUAD TRACKING
I like to add day of week (M,T,W, etc.) and put something in daily under each quadrant. Here I was with a pulled abdominal muscle but checked off 100 Jumping Jacks and 75 Pushups daily just the same. Tracking did that.

The quadrant system exists to organize daily actions across physiology, piety, people, and production, so that effort can be observed over time. It’s the daily actions, you see.

Like the way I’ve made my bed each morning for decades to “put order into my world.”

Like how I say psalm 118:24 to myself first thing when I pull the window curtain open in my room.

Even as a comfortable agnostic, these set my intentions for the day. It’s the rituals then.

These lessen anxiety, build resilience, form character, and often help with belonging.

For example ma went to church her whole life. Dad didn’t.

I asked him about it in his eighties, and he said he’d wished he’d attended.

Felt he’d missed out on the community.

 

Some psychologists liken us to herd animals, and tell of how the emotional system is governed by belonging.
The beautiful part of belonging is shared causes, and how as men stand shoulder to shoulder with each other they can accomplish just about anything.

And so, retired engineer and Defender Board member Gary took our stuff and built the Defender App for the benefit of all men. Gary is an amazing guy…

The Defender App supports the quadrant system by providing a stable place to record daily activity and revisit that record later.

Writing actions down creates a reference point that persists beyond mood, fatigue, or temporary self-assessment.

It’s also an app like none other.

WEEKLY CHECK IN 
It contains daily quadrant tracking and a weekly quadrant summarizing page.

It has place for a daily “to do” list and leaves room for a “one thing” to get done as this week’s priority.

Taking 15 minutes to review daily activity at the end of the week is really helpful, failing which I would need to assess how committed I am to progress in managing my life.

I like to review my daily activity and summarize them in a weekly “after action review” exercise every Sunday.

GOAL SETTING
Goal setting starts with a no-BS present time self assessment in each quadrant then it asks that you create goals in each for the next month, season, and year.

Firstly, it invites you to claim your identity by creating a Destiny Vision for each quadrant. Combined these make up a kind of deliberate masculine destiny path to follow.

This is critical for men.


We left room in seasonal and yearly goals to enter various levels of goals in each quadrant.

For example you can input a manageable goal, a slightly more challenging goal, a top end goal and a downright impossible or dream goal.

Having this stare you in the face each day helps you to decide what kind of man you want to be.

Ask: why be average when you can be amazing?

PRIVACY
In developing the app we thought about building an interface so you could also access your data on a desktop or laptop. I’ll tell you why we didn’t. We want your stuff to be fully private.

Besides, all of the goals and journaling entries can be saved to the journal section on the app itself or shared by email as a text file to keep in a file off the phone app itself.

Even though no one has time to look at your stuff, we didn’t even want the ability under any circumstance.

GETTING UNSTUCK 
A big reason for this is not just quadrant tracking and goal setting, but also the journaling functions which contain some of my best proprietary journaling techniques.

I refer to these as the “T Journals” as each can be described with a word beginning with T.

For example:

Option one is the open “free flow” journaling where you can enter whatever is on your mind. This is an important exercise where you can dump thoughts and feelings to find clarity.

Hence, “Talk Journaling”

Gratitude journaling encourages you to write at different intervals about whatever it is you have to be thankful for, a practice with profound effects on mental health in the way it reduces stress and depression, builds resilience, improves sleep, and enhances life satisfaction.

Hence, “Thanks! Journaling”

The blessings exercise follows that same idea and invites you to find three things that went well today, why those are important, and how to get more. I even get my kids to do this one.

Hence, “Tally! Journaling”

Caging the wolf will be familiar to those who have read Sipping Fear Pissing Confidence and has to do with refuting the “feed, fuck, kill, run, hide” lower order nervous system at play in addictions and general fear seeking. Instead, build your better character while claiming an identity you can be proud of.
A man must defend his confidence at all costs, I say.

Hence, “Temptation Journaling”

The 10R process is found in The Taming Shame course and has to do with identifying negative feelings but which may not fit the circumstances directly. These often signal an emotional trailhead of sorts. 10R provides a map so you can update your internal operating system.

Hence, “Trigger Journaling”

Lastly, the self care writing exercise is included so a man has a way of dealing with old wounds that might still be affecting his approach to life. This is the exact process I used to get past being beaten as a child, You may or may not make use of this deeper work, but it is there if needed.

Hence, “Trauma Journaling”

All of these can be saved into your personal journal library. The information stays on your phone where no one else can see. You can also send files to yourself.

I find that option particularly helpful when reviewing entries about temptation, being triggered, or about old traumatic events.

So, there you have it.
Daily tracking, weekly progress, goal setting based in facts and not in fiction and that build character and identity, as well as the most comprehensive journaling options possible.

The beauty of the system is if reluctance or inactivity interferes with intention it usually means there is work to do emotionally to resolve whatever is blocking a man’s progress. Combined, the various journaling options is like having an Advisor to Men™ in your pocket. Say what??

THE DEFENDER BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Ideally, you want a squad of men to whom you can turn to for feedback, like what we’ve created in The Defender Boards. The Defender App makes the whole process more efficient, and it’s gamification makes it fun too.


You have no doubt heard that what gets measured gets managed.

Life simplifies immensely with daily tracking because of its measurable progress.

The alternative might mean ten years go by only for a man to realize he did not, in fact, live a decade (or two), rather he lived a version of one year ten times.

Don’t be that man.

Set some goals, track your progress, defend your life.

Be an amazing guy…

Take the quad course, get the app, join the boards

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw

Don’t wait, get started today…

 Join us in building a Defender Destiny by taking this free course.
https://10mm.org/quad-courseVideo version of above: Defender App Intro video Dec,2025
https://youtu.be/4MhnQQWbuoo
🛡️ The Defender Board of Directors meets weekly in squads, daily in chat…
👉 Join here https://10mm.org/membership 
*Note Defender Board members get the Pro version of the app included.
Ask me for my special link to get in the board at less than the usual monthly app rate so you get both for less…

INNER WOMAN: INDIVIDUATION & THE ANIMA

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

The Four Faces of Her… Within You
Individuation, the Anima, and the Way Forward

Most men I work with are stuck. They are not broken. They are not weak. But they are stuck. Not because they lack willpower. Not because they do not want to grow. But because something inside is unfinished. In Jungian psychology, that unfinished business is often the anima.

My first psychology teacher, a Gestaltist, introduced me to this idea of leftover stuff, with its best practitioner Fritz Perls calling it a “gunnysack of anger” carried over the shoulder wherever you go.

Holy fuck did I carry a load! Maybe you do too… I felt the burden and I realized then and there I had plenty of work to do. I learned to let go of that weight over time.

Through my studies in Behavioural Science, in short order I was introduced to the archetypal psychology of Carl Jung.

Jung’s analytical psych mentions Individuation as the psychological process of integrating the conscious and unconscious parts of the self to become a whole, unique individual. This is integration at its simplest. It involves confronting and balancing inner archetypes, like the anima, to achieve personal growth and self-realization.

The work we do in the Taming Shame course using the Younger Self 10R process is all about understanding the unconscious motivations that drive us. Constructed emotion and the predictive brain alongside my behavioural training mesh well with this approach.

Look, I could go on and on about this stuff but I’ll stop here. THE WORK is about updating your operating system. I call it “using a Commodore 64 operating system in a Windows 11 world.” You may be old enough to get that reference.

Jung describes the anima as the unconscious feminine side of a man’s psyche, representing emotions, intuition, and relational qualities. It influences how he perceives and connects with women and his inner self, evolving through stages from Eve to Sophia as he matures (explained forthwith).

So the anima is the inner image of the feminine that every man carries. She is not a fantasy. She is not a wish. She is the psychic counterpart to your masculine soul.

If she is not integrated, she will distort your relationships. She will lure you into chaos or make you retreat into passivity.

If she is integrated, she becomes your guide to wisdom, purpose, and love.

Individuation means reconciling the parts of your psyche that have been split apart. It is not a goal you check off a list. It is a lifelong process of becoming whole.

One major part of that process is how your inner woman matures. Jung described four stages of anima development: Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia.

You will recognize yourself in one or more of these…


Eve is the mother. At this stage, a man seeks care, unconditional acceptance, and emotional security. Many men who were abandoned or smothered by their mothers are stuck here. They do not desire a partner. They desire to be soothed. Often, this leads to addiction, dependency, or an inability to lead.


Helen is the lover. Here, a man is captivated by beauty, youth, and sensual energy. He becomes driven by attraction. He judges women based on looks. He chases validation from women instead of leading them. He fears aging because his anima is still adolescent. This man can be charming but is often insecure.


Mary is the virtuous woman. This phase is marked by a desire for devotion and meaning. The man begins to look for a woman of character. He may idealize goodness. He starts to ask questions like, “What is a good life?” and “What kind of man should I be?” His anima is maturing, and his heart begins
to serve something beyond pleasure.


Sophia is wisdom. She is not beautiful in the youthful sense. She is radiant in the eternal sense. A man at this stage no longer projects fantasy onto women. He sees them as they are. He respects them, but he is no longer ruled by them. His inner feminine now guides him toward truth, meaning, and deep alignment with life.

Most men I see are stuck in Eve or Helen.
They are either looking for a woman to mother them or a woman to turn them on.

And get this: They rarely recognize that what they are seeking is already inside them.

That is the purpose of individuation. Not to find the perfect woman. But to become the integrated man.

You cannot skip these stages. But you can stop getting stuck or bouncing around from one to the other.
Your anima will grow with you if you let her.

It is only with the anima that a man blesses others with his King energy. That’s how it works.

Start by asking yourself honestly: Who am I really drawn to, and why? What do I want from women? What do I fear they might see in me? What kind of woman do I want beside me when I am dying?

Let her grow. And you will grow too. Reverse the flow…

If this stirred something in you, share it. Join the Defender Boards. Learn what it means to walk shoulder to shoulder with men committed to becoming whole.

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw

Father Custody Rights

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

The Marriage Contract Solution: A Father’s Case for Cultural Renewal
(A reflection on Stephen Baskerville’s argument for restoring marriage through father custody)

There’s a conversation we’re not having in the west, one that makes even the strongest men uncomfortable. Professor Stephen Baskerville of Warsaw University in Poland believes he’s found the key to unlocking not just the family crisis, but the west’s broader decline.

His solution is both simple and radical: make marriage legally binding again, with a presumption of father custody in divorce.

The Heart of the Matter:

Baskerville argues that our current “no-fault” divorce system has created what he calls a fraudulent contract. Imagine signing any other agreement where the other party could walk away at will, take half your assets, and remove your children from your life. You’d never sign such a document. Yet that’s exactly what marriage has become.

His proposal isn’t about fathers being superior parents—it’s about keeping families intact. When mothers know they can’t simply leave with the children, they’re far less likely to initiate divorce. When fathers know their parental rights are secure, they’re more likely to invest deeply in marriage and family life. Because that’s how it works.

The Ripple Effects:

What strikes me most about Baskerville’s argument is how he traces seemingly unrelated social problems back to this single source. Consider these connections:

Young men today lack motivation because they see no secure future in family life. Why work, save, and improve yourself when any family you build can be dismantled at will? Father custody would restore that fundamental incentive structure.

The welfare system becomes largely unnecessary when families stay together. Single motherhood, with all its associated poverty and social problems, becomes the exception rather than the rule.

Crime and social decay in our cities trace back overwhelmingly to fatherless homes. Restore the father’s role, and you restore order to communities.

The Deeper Philosophy:

There’s something profound here about authority and responsibility. Our current system has created what Baskerville calls “emasculation”—not in a crude sense, but in the deeper meaning of removing men’s authority as leaders of their children and families.

When a man cannot be certain his investment in family will be protected, when his role as father exists only at the discretion of others, we’ve fundamentally undermined the natural order that built Western civilization. Given human evolutionary history shows and still shows human children are best raised by a mother and a father and a series of helpers (alloparents) — see Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at University of California Davis and her book, Mother Nature — subverting father’s role is nothing less than unnatural.

This isn’t about domination—it’s about responsibility. A man who knows his family depends on him will rise to meet that responsibility. Again, because that’s how it works.

The Political Reality:

Baskerville suggests that even strong leaders like Trump avoid this issue because it requires confronting forces that have made careers out of the current system. The family court industrial complex, the welfare bureaucracy, the entire apparatus built around broken families—they all have vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

But here’s what I find especially compelling: this solution requires no new government programs, no massive spending, no complex bureaucracy. It simply requires restoring one principle: that marriage means something legally binding.

The Strategic Insight: Feminism’s Achilles’ Heel:

Baskerville makes a crucial observation that goes deeper than policy reform. Drawing on the work of scholar Daniel Amneus and activist Phyllis Schlafly, he argues that feminism’s entire power structure rests on one foundation: mother custody after divorce.

“The linchpin in the feminist program is mother custody following divorce,” he writes. “Pull that pin…and the feminist structure collapses.”

This isn’t just about family law—it’s about understanding the source of feminist power itself.

According to Amneus, feminism’s central impulse is “the demand for unlimited sexual freedom and female-dominated reproduction.” As he put it: “A woman’s right to have a baby without having the father around is what feminism is all about.”

The historical progression reveals the strategy: after securing the vote, feminists’ first major achievement was the welfare state, followed by no-fault divorce. Both innovations served the same goal—transferring authority over children from married fathers to single mothers.

The National Association of Women Lawyers (USA) proudly called no-fault divorce “the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken.” Are you kidding me?

This creates what Baskerville, and others call a climate of fear that extends far beyond individual families. When women can divorce at will, take the children and assets, and consign men to “state-enforced servitude,” it doesn’t just affect divorced men—it makes all men fearful of marriage itself.

Government officials learned from this matriarchal model how to create other bureaucratic tyrannies, understanding that “ordinary men heading families pose the principal impediment to their power.”

The Marriage Strike as Leverage:

Here’s where the whole argument becomes particularly interesting. We see that conventional political methods—lobbying, protesting, organizing—won’t work for men seeking to restore family stability. But men already possess a powerful form of leverage: they’re increasingly refusing to marry, date, or start families. No one is born aspiring to become an Incel.

Rather than seeing this “marriage strike” as merely a symptom of social decay, Baskerville views it as potential ammunition. Men are already voting with their feet. The question is whether this spontaneous boycott can be directed toward specific legal reforms.

Think about the logic: if women derive power from their ability to control access to children and sexual relationships, then men’s withdrawal from those relationships removes that source of power. It is economic pressure applied to the most fundamental human institutions.

The Path Forward:

The beauty of the father custody solution its clarity. Instead of getting lost in a dozen different battles, we are better to focus on this single, achievable goal: Make marriage contracts enforceable with father custody as the default. Watch as the incentives align to strengthen rather than destroy families.
1-2…

The claim is that this one change would accomplish more than any collection of smaller reforms. Why? Because it strikes at what he sees as the root of the problem rather than its symptoms.

Would there be challenges? Certainly. Would some bad fathers gain custody they shouldn’t have? Possibly. But Baskerville argues—and I find myself agreeing—that these costs pale beside the wholesale destruction of family life we’ve accepted as normal.

Look, she is the burdened female creator of life. He is the expendable male powerful defender of life. Together, with plenty overlap, they are Team Human.

As creator, one side has more chaos, while the other defends with order.  The culture has become so feminized and chaotic that it now requires drastic masculine order to restore balance. Enforceable marital contracts with default father custody honours children with two parents while also respecting our evolutionary history. It’s what brought us this far.

A Personal Reflection:

Reading Baskerville’s argument, I’m struck by how it connects to something deeper than policy—it touches on what it means to be a man in modern North America, Australia, Europe, and likely the West in general. We’ve created a society where a man’s most important role, as father and protector of his family, exists only at the pleasure of others. This is fucked up.

I remember arguing with my first wife about her egregious behaviour as she planned yet another overnight trip out of town to see her gal pal. I protested and she whirled about to face me on the front steps of our home. “If you don’t like it we’ll divorce and I will make sure you never see your son again!,” she said… with such vehemence I believed her. She knew I’d never leave him.

And every time I nudged her closer to marital counselling she’d provoke a fight and refuse to go. The custody issue meant she held all the cards and could pursue her dysfunction at will.

No fool, in his late teens the boy asked me why I hadn’t divorced her already. He saw, he knew. I finally left when he was 20 or so.

Perhaps that’s why this conversation makes us uncomfortable. It forces us to confront not just failed policies, but failed assumptions about human nature, family, and the proper ordering and sustainability of society.

The question isn’t whether Baskerville is completely right about every detail. The question is whether we have the courage to admit that our current approach has failed spectacularly, and whether we’re willing to try something that might actually work.

Males are taught to be men by generations of men around them — most important of which is the father. An externality of the capitalist system — that began in the Victorian era as men left home to go to work — is that this critical contact has been lost. Now, most men grow up confused, left longing for maternal acceptance learned from being over-mothered. It’s all they know.

Though the danger of nuclear war looms large on any given day, it is not global warming or communism or authoritarianism that is the biggest threat. The biggest problem is weak men. The world desperately needs powerful rank and file prosocial defender males running families… lest we continue to be led by Dark Tetradians and their hybristophillic followers.

We ought to build our cultures with the underlying premise that children have the right to both a mother and a father. We need Team Human in balance. Honour the marriage contract and you restore the foundation upon which healthy society rests.

Let yourself imagine how that might be…

Questions? Comments?

True and free…
cw

©2025 ATM NEWS
Christopher K Wallace
|Advisor to Men ™

Join us in the Defender Boards today:

Defender Board of Directors link

_________________________________________________

The Case for Father Custody Reform: Legal Talking Points

  1. The Marriage Contract Has Been Legally Nullified Marriage is now the only civil contract in which one party can walk away unilaterally, seize half the assets, and take custody of the children—with the full enforcement of the state. No other contract permits this level of one-sided breach with legal reward. That is not a contract—it is entrapment.
  2. Parens Patriae Is Overreach Masquerading as Protection The doctrine of parens patriae gives the state ultimate authority over children, not parents. It’s sold as protection, but functionally it means the state—not the family—decides what’s best. This inverts natural law and erodes the integrity of parenthood.
  3. Custody Law Ignores the Child’s Right to a Father Family courts systematically violate a child’s birthright to be raised by both parents. They treat the father as optional, conditional, and replaceable—often using vague or unproven standards like “best interest” to mask biased rulings.
  4. The Primary Custody Standard Is Institutionalized Sex Discrimination Awarding custody to mothers by default is sex-based discrimination. Imagine any other legal context where such a presumption is tolerated. This practice violates constitutional protections and equality under the law.
  5. Family Courts Operate Without Due Process Family courts routinely remove children, homes, and finances from fathers without trial, evidence, or jury. Allegations alone—without proof—are enough to restrict paternal rights. No due process. No justice.
  6. No-Fault Divorce Plus Maternal Custody = State-Sanctioned Family Sabotage Unilateral no-fault divorce, combined with custody laws that reward the initiator, encourages family breakdown. The result is state-supported family sabotage that incentivizes abandonment and punishes stability.
  7. The State Has Incentivized Divorce Through Financial Engineering Welfare programs, federal funding formulas, and legal aid structures reward father removal and subsidize single motherhood. The state profits—literally—when fathers are ousted.
  8. Presumption of Father Custody Rebalances Risk and Restores Order A legal presumption of father custody (especially when the mother initiates divorce without cause) would restore marriage as a serious contract. Men will once again invest when protected from institutional betrayal.
  9. Judicial Discretion Is a Veil for Ideological Enforcement Family law judges are not neutral. Their wide discretion enables ideological bias—often rooted in feminist legal theory or outdated maternal preference models. This discretion must be curbed.
  10. Reform Isn’t About Power—It’s About Responsibility This is not a campaign to dominate women. It is a campaign to restore accountable fatherhood as the central pillar of a stable society. Male authority and responsibility rise together. Let the law reflect that truth.

Advisor to Men™ | Cultural Renewal Through Legal Truth www.advisortomen.com

The Masculine Maturity Shield

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

 

PRESENTED TO YOU BY:

THE MASCULINE MATURITY SHIELD

Note: after watching, ask how you can apply these principles to other areas of life.
Even if a man does not have a relationship, a partner, children, etc. it STILL falls to him.
He defends meaning and freedom for all.
Nature’s system doesn’t work any other way…

CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
Advisor to Men™
For the Defender Board of Directors

Defender Board of Directors link

 

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY 2020

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

Every Valentine’s Day is a little special to me now, whereas for a long time it held little appeal. Possibly because it was often a painful reminder of my inadequacy as a kind and thoughtful partner. Or, maybe it was that I didn’t care, or could not care. It’s easy to throw stones at capitalism’s manipulative commercialization of human sentiment. Heck, much of that criticism is justified.

But, here we have it, and there are only so many days of the year where a man is called upon to demonstrably honour his significant other: anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

Mother’s Day is for her children and less her husband, but some think it should be included. A rule could be if your mother is alive, it is she who takes precedence. With an option to honour the mother of your children once dear old ma has passed. Missus taught me that after I went to visit my mother three hours away while she stayed home with our six-week-old daughter, on her first Mother’s Day.

Of course, men love rules and this one could be debated. Debate away, I say.

Then, there’s the “I celebrate her every day!” angle. This is a fair assumption. Many men do.

I know I’m angling for any reason to show my daily appreciation for Melissa. It’s a small pastime of mine, perhaps truly a way for me to practice being prosocial. I’ve learned it’s easy to take each other for granted so I’ve made it a habit to appreciate more this time around. I’m fourteen years in.

Of course, with my background, I needed to work at being nice. Maybe, most of us do.

I was a nice kid. Nice like the fluffy white lamb-shaped cake decorated with white icing signifying purity, and ample white coconut to mimic lambswool, which my Godmother Marie Chenier had made for my First Communion. For me? Yes, for me! Over the years that followed, from altar boy and class president and cub and boy scout and neighbourhood chore entrepreneur, there was a silencing of the lamb. A fractious relationship with my father anchoring and compounding my confusion in a small house filled with frightened children, I emerged a decade later decidedly a Black Sheep.

Funny how that works. It should be no surprise I’m an extravert, scoring in the 95th percentile on the Big Five Aspects scale. Assertiveness? More than 97. You know how those glib psychopaths are, friendly, talkative, their glad-handing masking darkness.

I have some of that. It’s handy.


Where being an extravert (spelled like Jung did) has its advantages, it’s that damn French saying again: I think it’s spelled, “Ont as tous les defauts de nos qualities.” What it means is we all have the faults of our qualities. All of my qualities are tempered with faults. I know , context is everything.

Extraverts live very much in the present. Yup. Confession: I’ve never been able to read Eckart Tolle’s famous book, The Power of Now. It’s right here on my bookshelf as I type this, still unfinished after two decades. To me, it’s the most repetitiously hypnotic text and for this reason, I recommend it to my insomnia clients. Of course, there is danger in reading to go to sleep. It could mean any reading eventually makes you slumber. Cross that bridge when you come to it, I say. If you are kept awake by a ruminating brain, for now, read Tolle.

Introverts live a little more in the future. That’s not me. Thank God missus is introverted, or I’d never have an educational saving plan for my children. I never would have figured out the Riddle of Addiction because it was her nudging which prompted me to take a good hard look at the whole phenomena, its trends and implications. After practicing and tweaking my approach, I’ve been able to reach folks with this. Doesn’t seem to matter what obsession, I can help you cure any addiction in 90 days.

Which brings me back to Valentine’s Day, the one at my place. I’ve written before how when missus and I were first dating I gave her fair warning. I admitted that I would likely forget all the aforementioned days she was due my acknowledgement. She was amused at my confession. And, she was ahead of me.

She didn’t suggest but TOLD me what to do. “Here’s what you are going to do,” she said, before instructing me to head to the nearest drugstore or card shop. “You will buy up a supply of cards for my birthday and whatever else days you want, and you will keep them in that filing cabinet of yours. So, if you wake up some morning and realize you have forgotten, you can wait until my back is turned and get one of those cards, fill it out, and leave it on the kitchen table so I will know you care and thought of me.” I was dumbfounded, of course.

“Will that work?” I remember asking. “Yes, it will,” she assured me. It was at that moment that I knew she was something special. Decades of guilt and shame about forgetting birthdays and anniversaries came tumbling down at once. So, off I went to the drugstore and did exactly as she instructed.

And, it worked. In fact, it worked earlier this month as she sat on my office couch and asked me point blank, “Did you forget my birthday?” before heading out. I could have lied. I’m glib after all. If anyone could look her straight in the eye and offer her some version of bullshit, it’s me. Yet, I also know that when people are looking for bullshit, it’s much easier to find. I learned decades ago that gig is up. Honesty is my policy.  It’s not worth the time and effort nor the consequences for either to dabble in deception.

“Yup, completely,” I admitted, adding, “I thought I had this one because I’ve been thinking about it since the new year but sure enough, come the day, it’s out of my mind.” She smiled, in a sort of womanly self-satisfying way, perhaps knowing she chose long ago to not make this hill hers to die on. God, I lust after that woman. I’m just as sure her smile was deeper.

You see, when she instructed me all those years ago by offering her brilliant practicality, effectively to “let me off the hook” I’d put myself on, I’m pretty sure she knew exactly what she was doing.

Unbeknownst to me , slipped into her instructions was the element of time. So grateful was I to escape the shame of my decades of disappointing other women, that pain serving as motivation, I followed her orders blindly, I never considered the bigger picture.

She had just made me commit to years with her. Years son. Damn, she’s good. Women are closers.

So, it was this morning whilst the two of us were awakening to the sounds of children and a dog scratching in her crate, missus wished me a Happy Valentine’s Day. I promptly grabbed her ass. “Oh, that’s right,” I answered, “Happy Valentine’s Day to you too.” Forgot completely, again.

It’s not like it wasn’t mentioned in the house. Early this week, the kids were busy filling out cards for their schoolmates. Howie brought a single fake rose to each of his teaching assistants. Last year he gave one of them chocolates and said he loved her. Since her husband forgot Valentine’s Day completely that evening, Howie stole her heart. I’m not sure her husband registered the competition as she told him.

Missus went off to work for a few hours this morning. I work from home and today is the second in a row opportunistic no-school day thanks to striking teachers in the province. With Monday Canada’s Family Day (an excuse to have a long weekend in February), the teachers gave themselves a five-day holiday. Me and the kids checked the card stash. They know about the card stash because of mom’s birthday less than two weeks ago. I think that was a strike-day too.

The cool thing is my father died in November. Not that it was cool that he died, nor that November was a cold month. Although he suffered his last year as dementia ravaged his mind, it was bittersweet to see him go. The cool part is when it was decided by my sisters that dad would no longer be able to return home, it was me who took his records and old photos for safekeeping. That included his filing cabinet, old correspondence and folders chock full of carefully labeled newspaper clippings for reference.

But stashed in the back of his cabinet was a big stash of cards. Blank cards for all occasions.

They say it’s inevitable we find in our partners something of our parents. I supposed it’s easy to stretch what you like about somebody into something you appreciate in your parent or parents. It’s natural enough and this can work out well or poorly, depending.

The very first occasion where missus met my family was at Ma’s 80th birthday party. It was held at a private club downtown and I sent ma and her pals to the party in a big white limousine. Sure enough, ma and missus hit it off. Both were introverts, wall flower types, and spent the time sitting together. Missus never felt more appreciated than that day, remarking how alike her and ma were. I beamed at her happiness, oblivious to the wider implications.

Looks like dear old ma had contrived the same card hack for my father decades before missus did for me. Why haven’t I ever heard of it before then if it’s so common? Probably because dad felt the same shame I did, and ma was as introverted as is my missus. I suppose if you have too public a system for making the effort to acknowledge someone else it might also detract from the gesture somehow too.

I know this because of another thing about Valentine’s Day. It’s often not so much the private gesture but if a girl has her druthers, being singled out at work in front of peers as a box of roses arrives just for her from a romantic interest is heady stuff. It says she is loved; that despite the competition all around her she has backup. I had to own a flower shop at one point to learn that one. Women told me.

But missus went deeper and helped me understand things more clearly. After some of my antics while out with others early in our time, she summed it up this way. “I want others to look at us together and want to be me, not look at us and feel sorry for me that I’m with you.” Boom!

I was probably fifty when she told me that. This young woman from humble beginnings is in so many ways much wiser than me. Women are the primary caregivers the planet over and most of them possess a depth of understanding men often lack. That’s been my experience. She knows how to line up allies and cut loose competition. The good ones don’t have time for assholes of either sex.

Good women also make good men better. A man with a loyal woman by his side has the wind at his back; though, he better stay-out in front of her if he expects to feel it.

A lot of what holds people back in life has to do with shame. Can’t take compliments or criticism? That’s usually shame. Chronic procrastinator? Perfectionism rooted in shame. Not living the life you know you were meant to live? Look at how much shame you carry. It’s a consequence of our interdependence on each other. By itself, it is neither good nor bad except the meaning we give it. A mild corrective within a family can, with repetition and escalation, evolve into a crushing sense of unworthiness.

When we feel like there is something wrong with us, that we are “broken” on some level, shame has taken hold and acts as a burdensome filter through which life is seen. It can become like wearing heavy winter clothes at the beach on a warm summer’s day. Sometimes, it can be like trying to swim with heavy work boots on.

That’s the thing about fatherhood. It’s not a right as the Incels would suggest. Not at all. It’s a not even just an obligation though plenty of men in or from difficult marriages will unfortunately sometimes see it that way. It’s more that fatherhood is a privilege, something that can define a man. If motherhood is part of a woman’s Hero’s Journey, fatherhood is similar. More so, it’s a chance to be someone’s hero.

My father held on to his shame for most of his ninety years. His own father disowned him, despite their looking like different-aged siblings. As my grandfather’s only son, the youngest child with three older sisters, my dad needed his father. It was not to be. Grandpa spent most of my father’s early years institutionalized and didn’t reconnect with his family for decades. Grandfather was still a jerk.

My father did his best but inevitably passed along his pain to his children. He never apologized but he demonstrated his regret. For example, as an editor, he taught me to write when I was in my late forties. It started when he sent back a letter I had written home corrected with red editor’s pencil. At first put off, I quickly realized his corrections made sense.

I decided to take the high road and wrote him back in thanks. He answered. Told me if I was going to write him to make it double spaced so he could do his job. So, I did, and after several years he handed back an essay I had given him and said there was nothing to correct. I’ll never forget that day.

It was as if the more I knew myself the more I knew him. It was our unspoken understanding, and our private conversations in his last few years were honest and warm and unreservedly candid.

I realized later I had subconsciously become a gangster to protect myself from his wrath experienced in my early life.  It took years and deep dives into my subconscious to unburden the pain I held within me in exile. The tough guy was my protector.

Little Chrissie, that’s what they called me as very young boy in short pants. Well, I got you now Little Chrissie. No one will hurt you again. We are a team you and I, and I’m strong enough and tough enough for us both. Stick with me kid, I have this figured out for us both. It’s going to be OK.

Dad held his father’s hand when grandpa passed away, secretly hoping for a reconciliation that never came. With several of my siblings, in November I held my father when he died. No reconciliation required.

I’m so glad I forgot today was Valentine’s Day. I’m so happy to find this card tucked away in my father’s collection of cards. Thanks Pops. Also, grateful my children were here with me this morning so that they could participate in writing in a little something for their ma to which I added my expected flirtations for the woman I love, my Melissa.

She came home and found the card in its red envelope on the kitchen table with her name on it. I could hear her voice exclaim, “A card? For me?” She was thrilled. Oh Jiggles…

It was from all us: from where we have been and where we are going.

We exist in each other.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Christopher K Wallace
©14 February, 2020
all rights reserved

ckwallace.com
advisortomen.com
Advisor & Mentor
For a free strategy session click here 

GETTING OVER A FATHER

Advisor to Men 2 Comments

GETTING OVER A FATHER (in 6 steps)

You can do this exercise even if you don’t know your father. If you do or did, that is know him and felt loved and can say you had a great relationship, I thank him on everyone’s behalf (as do you). We need good men. Though, even if he wasn’t part of your life you can still take from this essay a kernel or two of wisdom. I’ll give you my example, you can take it from there.

Not all but many men have problem relationships with their fathers. The post-second world war period as the west re-industrialized under new technologies meant many men worked away from contact with their children for most of the day and week. Lots of men continue to make not much more than an evening appearance at home and spend scant time with family and children on weekends. Feminism probably didn’t help men’s contact with their children, especially as divorce laws were liberalized to favour mothers.

These six steps I used to deal with my father issues were important for me to gain perspective, to put things in black and white. I knew in the end where my anger came from, my nice guy compensation, and several other compromises I unknowingly accepted in developing my personality. I also learned to understand and accept several of my father-derived traits for which I had no prior appreciation, including a multi-generational understanding of influences. This helped me take better charge of my life.

First step: Acknowledge your father’s weaknesses and strengths while identifying which you have adopted as your own.

Undoubtedly, he left his mark in some way so take an inventory. First, put aside resentment if you have any and try to see things as objectively as you can. Even if you don’t know your father, your ma can give you hints: If you have a trait that is clearly from her, but others that are not, assume those other part of you came from dad. Simple elimination.

Write a list of characteristics and assign them accordingly.

Step two: Assert your reasons for change and gain leverage

Why do you want to do things differently than your father? Recognize, we exist in each other. Epigenetic influences on ancestral DNA are handed down for several generations through the methyl groups and are part of your soul. But you can still make decisions for yourself so it’s best to decide out of anger or out of love how you will proceed with your life. The better you understand the forces operating on how you got to where you are, the easier it is to steer yourself to a better existence. I was damned if I was going to parent as my dad did.

You are bound to have some of your father’s tendencies so it’s worth spending a bit of time deciding which to keep and which to update.

We exist in each other. I tell my kids when they are getting strapped into their car seats, “Watch your fingers, watch your toes, canteen open, canteen close,” the same ditty my father learned in the navy and he used to say to us when piling nine kids into a ’67 Pontiac Parisienne. When I repeat those words, my father in me is speaking.

There are stories of twins separated at birth who find each other decades later and they are dressing the same and have similar interests. While not as drastic as that perhaps between father and son, ancestry might be a third of soul. We can’t get away from that stuff so make peace with it.

My father, Howard Carew Wallace and grandson, Howard Thomas William Wallace (my boy)

Step three: Surmise where dad’s influences may have come from. He had parents and grandparents and lived in a different era.

This is where your natural curiousity comes into play. Even if you don’t know your father you can conclude quite a bit from the area of the country and the generation in which he grew up. These things are easily researched. What would a man who has these traits (name the ones you have that are not from mom) growing up in this area at this time be like? That’s what you’re dealing with.

How little or how much you know about your father’s background shouldn’t prevent you from doing this exercise. What’s important is you develop a narrative about his life that allows you to reconcile his existence in so far as it concerns yours.

In my case, I learned my dad was never accepted by his father. My father’s first memory was of his dad smacking his mom around in the kitchen when my dad was just four. He could hear them and remained frozen at the top of the stairs wanting to intervene but afraid, he told me a few years ago clenching his fist. He was just four years old at the time he witnessed it all, mid-eighties when he told me.


My dad and his big sisters

Regrettably, the argument was over my father’s paternity, dad found out later. Dad’s three big sisters were fine and accepted but somehow my grandfather got it into his head grandma had borne him an illegitimate son. It ended up defining my father’s life and he was still mad about it when he told me about it eight decades later so you can imagine.

My grandfather was institutionalized for many years and didn’t appear in our lives until the 1960s when he showed up with grandma, introduced to us nine kids as “Uncle Gimpy.” It was only later we found out he was our lost grandfather and were given permission to call him Grandpa Gimpy. During some visits, I witnessed my father and grandfather arguing in the living room, shouting at each other, presumably over the paternity issue.

My dad spent some time in an institution himself in the 1970s, suffering from what they called manic-depressive back then, bi-polar now. It forced his early retirement from the navy as he tolerance to stress became less and less. He swung back and forth emotionally in what I call a crazy 8 pattern, from anger and rage to loneliness and brooding self-pity and back to anger again. Once the “horses are galloping” as he put it to me once, it could take him days and days to settle down.

Dad was holding his father’s hand when he died at age 98 in the Rideau Veteran’s Home here in town around 1990. Right to the end, my father hoped for a sign, something which would acknowledge him, or perhaps even a death-bed reconciliation. He got nothing.

I saw his pain retrospectively, with him discussing what his influences were while looking at his life. Though, he eventually got dementia and spent his last two years in a locked ward for his own safety, for two years before he went in, I purposely moved nearby from another city and visited him at the family home each week during the day. We spoke less as father and son and more as men.

He told me many stories of his early years and lifetime. He lived in his living room with floor to ceiling bookcases and read thousands of books. As a kid, we were afraid to ask him something because you might get a half hour lecture about a culture or place in the world. When you are a learner, you must teach.

When he died in November, a month shy of five years since he lost ma, his partner of sixty-two years, a few of his nine children were present, including me. It was at the Perley Rideau Veterans’s home built on the grounds of the old Rideau Vets home where his father died. We held his hands in turn, no reconciliation necessary.

Given the uneven attachments and unpredictable violence of my early years, I gained a good understanding of why my father was weakened so in his lifetime despite it all: his pain was large and lifelong.

Ma was not much better off. Born into a family of nine in Newfoundland, she was given to her grandmother as a child because her mother “couldn’t bear another.” Though cared for, she never got over this separation from her family. At some point in her early teens, she was allowed to stay overnight at her mothers and announced defiantly in the morning she wasn’t leaving. You can imagine the deal she had to make with herself just to stay and be near where she believed she would be loved.

And my grandfather Gimpy, my father’s father. As a boy he heard his two older sisters, the ones tasked mostly with looking after him, crying to each other in the night sick with scarlet fever. In the morning he found them both dead. It was the late 1890s, the milkman had infected the whole neighbourhood.


Then, his mother bleeds to death over three days while delivering twins at age forty, despite the neighbourhood women taking shifts to staunch the blood from her ruptured uterus. Then a wicked stepmother enters the picture.

In 1914, he goes off to war and is shot by a sniper and thought dead. He miraculously recovers leaving an ugly pink scar more than a foot long on his leg and giving him his nickname, Gimpy. He takes up flying, done with the infantry, comes back from a bombing run at war’s end and crash lands in the fog, staying hospitalized with brain damage in Britain until 1921.


While there, he loses his father back in Halifax. My great grandfather is killed racing his horse and buggy through a short cut by a train at a hidden crossing racing home after seeing another of his sons, long before they had those lights and barriers common today.


Thomas Patrick Wallace with his three sons, Howard Vincent, soon to be named Gimpy is on the right.

Looking up my ancestral records, sleuthing through the genealogical tree, I find my great-great grandfather, John Wallace dies of “exhaustion due to excessive drink” on a Saturday night in Oshawa Village. He worked at the carriage maker which later become part of General Motors and leaves a conscientious woman, Mary Hart, in charge of his five kids of whom Thomas Patrick was one.


John Wallace, b. 1824 Ireland (we don’t know for sure) d. 24 May, 1875.
His schedule C gave the reason for death as “exhaustion from excessive drinking.”

John Wallace was the only son of Thomas Wallace, my founding immigrant, who fought in the Gibraltar campaign of the Napoleonic War before sailing to Canada to fight for Her Majesty in the War of 1812. Arriving in 1814 at war’s end, he settles in Oshawa Village.

Thomas Wallace gravestone, Oshawa, Ontario

I can trace five generations of Wallaces before me through these men and see the pain they have transferred to each generation.

Step four: accept, forgive, surrender

Call it compassion, sympathy, cognitive empathy while realizing we are people makers. It is only by understanding that each person lives the best they can under the circumstances and makes the best decisions for themselves at the time. Of course, they do, self-interest is always paramount. If they knew better or could act differently, they would.

Seeing a previous generation through the lens of today’s values and morality is called presentism. It drives historians nuts. Let this knowledge signal greater tolerance and compassion for those who came before you.

Not only were the cultural values different way back in your father’s time and his father’s time, so was the environment. Times of war or of social justice upheaval or economic hardship far removed from our experience precludes our ever being able to completely reconcile their journey. “You had to be there” you have heard people say. Well, we could not, so judge less on that basis.

We didn’t live through the advent of electricity, women’s emancipation or even the vote being extended to all citizens for that matter. We know nothing of two world wars. Most can’t remember the sixties. Two hundred years ago life expectancy was less than fifty and most were living hand to mouth on the family farm or in tiny communities. Religion was stronger and laws often looser.

Step five: seize control and take the stand all men must make.

Ask: am I going to allow my history to determine my future? Or, shall I create a life of my own?

What will be my legacy to others? How will I improve upon my ancestral line so that my legacy flows into the distance intact and strengthened?

Make the declaration. THE PAIN STOPS HERE!

Use this powerful stance to decide your future, ensuring you are an improvement on the previous generation. I remember visiting my mom and dad from out of town once when I had then missus and my first son in tow. Dad noticed how I interacted with my boy and remarked to all around, “Christopher is determined to not act like me.”

He was right. I’d be damned. I haven’t been perfect, but I haven’t been him either, not by a long shot. Though I recognize him in me when shit hits the fan. That’s been an important part of my personal legacy.

No one becomes a parent with anything but the best intentions. No one has kids and intends to fuck them up on purpose. Good intentions are tossed aside when stress hits and we revert to our family of origin programming. Be aware of this and make plans for how you will counter this if necessary when it happens, because it will.

Step six: Reclaim your power and gain your freedom.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote at one point: “One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never shrinks back to its original dimensions.” Think of that for a moment.

Whatever circumstances came before you, you can live differently but only under certain conditions. This is because we live emotionally and interpret things later. Most of what we do happens subconsciously. It’s only by bringing something into awareness that we can bring about the possibility of change or control. It is only with insight where free will begins, not before.

If the soul is comprised of the epigenetic influences on ancestral DNA, contrasted with the collective unconscious of all mankind’s history and then added to by your databank of emotional experiences since birth, the spirit is its voice. You are a unique combination of these influences and to deny any is to deny them all. It is to deny your spirit.

The more aware you are of your history, and the more you accept and surrender expectations and the futility of should have, could have, would have and what if,  the more you can take charge your present and future. Life is lived forwardly, not regressively, though the past has lessons to teach.

Now that I know all this, I get to decide. Some of my father lives on in me as a shadow aspect of my personality. Knowing my shadow allows me to live in the light.  It is a light of my choosing. Power equals agency.

I consciously blame him for this violence in me I had to learn to tame on my own. I blame him for my disregard for money and for my nice guy tendencies earlier in my life. I also blame him for my love of books, for my memory, for my athleticism, for my sense of justice and for the simple love of teaching. He taught me to write when I was fifty. I blame him for that too.

Using our power in service of ourselves and others is how we find meaning and freedom.

Ask yourself: How will I live?  Powerfully or in weakness? How will I be an improvement on the generations which preceded me. As Horace Mann once suggested, “Be afraid to die until you have won a victory for mankind.”

Stay powerful, never give up: You will sleep better at night

cw

©January, 2020, all rights reserved
Christopher K Wallace
Advisor to men, mentor at large

book a free call here