If there is one thing working dads are missing, it’s the team aspect that Angelo Melchiorre loves from his day job – being a manager at work. So, he dreamed up an idea that he hopes will give fathers something larger than themselves to focus on. More on that in a minute.
The impetus for Angelo, our Lead Dad of the Week from Downingtown, Pennsylvania, to create a team of dads was his own struggles after his second child was born in 2019. “For me, it was too much to handle,” he said. “I didn’t understand anything about our emotional or mental health. I grew up in a very loving household, but we didn’t talk about our emotions.”
His wife called him out in 2021 with “it’s not us, it’s you”. That was what he needed to get a coach to help him engage more as a father and husband.
“I realized how much weight I was carrying,” he said. “When we don’t process those emotions, it gets bottled up. When I wasn’t processing it, I was all over the place. I was showing up at work and doing great with my team, but I never believed it. I was the fun guy everyone wanted to be around, but I didn’t believe it. I’ve detached from those outcomes and I’m embracing the journey.”
It’s helped him with his wife, who he met in college, and their two kids. But it also spurred him to do more for fathers who might not have access to a coach like he did. He started a slack group called The Real Dad Life, focused on creating resilient, engaged, authentic and loving fathers.
One way it’s doing this is through a push-up challenge, setting a goal of 1 million pushups by the end of 2024. “The point is to motivate dads, to help dads learn to be consistent in something,” he said. “It’s about keeping promises to myself, my wife, my kids. The push-up challenge is the glue for the community.”
“I wasn’t the star athlete on the team,” he said. “I was the glue. I was the energy guy. I get filled up when I see dads stepping into their full potential. I want kids to see their dads doing something each day and keeping a promise. Those dads know there are other guys out there doing the same things.”
Welcome, Anthony, to The Company of Dads – and keep crushing those push-ups!
