Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 25, Number 7, 1 July 2008 — Nurturing Fathers takes an ʻohana approach [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Nurturing Fathers takes an ʻohana approach

As a counselor for the Nurturing Fathers of Hawai'i, lohn Dudoit guides incarcerated men through

the same program that he credits for helping him after he abandoned his family, abused drugs for decades and

was finally sentenced to two years in prison on drug-related charges. "Men like me have to learn to give back to the family not just to take," said Dudoit.

The program teaches fathers in prison to heal emohonal damage inflicted on them by their own fathers. For Dudoit, this meant coming to tenns with a dad who was abusive and aleoholie. "I look back and wonder sometimes how eome I didn't recognize the chaos when everyone started to fight and beat up and next day it was, 'Oh, sorry bruddah! Let's go buy another six-pack, so we ean drink again, so we ean fight again, so we ean make up again.' What a cycle!" Family therapy experts agree that the dad-generated domestic abuse cycle cuts across all ethnicities. But Dudoit believes that

being the product of an abusive Native Hawaiian home brought him a double whanuny of shame: his father made him feel worthless, and as he grew into manhood during the 1970s, struggling to survive in an economy that was marginalizing kanaka made him feel even worse. "Not that I didn't have opportunity," he said, explaining that he had heeome a professional draftsman and bought his own home in Makiki just years out of high school. But deep inside he felt he was a bad guy and set out to prove it by getting involved with drug trade. "So the first time I got busted

and got released, I went right back to my parent's home and ripped out my face from our only family portrait to show I was so bad, I couldn't possibly belong to them," he said, pausing to ehoke back tears at the memory of his rage turned inward. He eventually divorced his wife and had little to do with his four children. In prison, a combination of drug treatment and "moments of truth with God" led him to regret his severing of family ties. Then while taking college sociology courses through a prison release program, he hooked up with social work-er-professors Tom and Barbara Naki of the Institute for Family Enrichment. TIFFE, as it is known,

had adopted the clinically proven approach to successfully reuniting families by empowering men like Dudoit to trade in abusiveness for nurturance with mentorship from other dads. Because of the makeup of the loeal imnate populahon, TIFFE "Hawaiianized" the program with familiar cultural symbols such as kalo planting and eanoe voyaging to teach cooperation, praise and encouragement as key to household hannony. Like many incarcerated fathers, Dudoit found the program difficult at frrst because it involves forgiving the unforgivable. A challenging moment eame when he was asked SeePRISONERSūū page II

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hnn to say some positive things about his own dad. But he did h. Gradually, he started forgiving hnnself. Because the program treats every family as a holistic system, Dudoit was eventually required to sit down whh his ex-wife and his by-then grown-up children to put together a so-called safety plan stating how they would all eope whh the hurt of the past, if they resumed contact. Asked how well the plan has worked, he says whh a smile, it's not so mueh a plan - as h is a miracle. On Valentine's Day two years ago, he remarried his exwife. Together, they are now raising two grandsons. "Not only am I a counselor now, I apply the tools (from the program). Iust to be a dad who comes home every day and says, 'Hey son, how was your day?' Iust listening to your ehikhen is so nnportant.' " For infonnation, go to www. tiffe.org. I