I recently came across this inspiring poem by the poet and author, Will Allen Dromgoole. Will Allen, a woman (yes despite the name she was a woman), wrote the poem in 1899. I feel it applied to the role of stepfathers helping their children by leaving a bridge so they do not have the face the same chasms we did.
Please take a moment to reflect on the legacy you’re leaving with your children. While our eyes are looking forward, our hands should also be extended back reaching out to those coming after us. Thank you to all of the bridge builders. Thanks to you the world is a better place because of the difference you make in the lives of others. Keep on building…
THE BRIDGE BUILDER
An old man, going a lone highway,
Came at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim-
That sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when he reached the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting strength in building here.
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way.
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build you the bridge at the eventide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head.
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”
–WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE
Here are four ways stepdads can manage their roles.
