The Hardest Lesson I Ever Learned

You have to keep the family together.

This is a guest post from Ed Latimore. He has a new book coming out tomorrow (Aug 5th) called Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business: Boxing And The Art of Life. In that book, he tells his story growing up without a father, how it affected him, and how boxing helped him rebuild himself. If you enjoy this essay, then you definitely want to check out his book.

I’m not one of those kids who didn’t know his father. I knew exactly who he was. I saw him once or twice a year. I even lived with him for one summer.

But I once did a rough calculation of how much time we actually spent together growing up. Including that summer, I estimate—generously—that I spent a total of 60 hours with my dad. Not 60 days. Not 60 weekends. Sixty hours.

And most of that time wasn’t bonding or guidance. It was him driving my sister and me around while he visited friends. I don’t have a single memory of him living with us, or even living in the same city.

When my father died, I was 18. I cried because I was supposed to. My sister didn’t. At first, my mom and I figured she was having trouble processing it. But as I got older, I realized the truth: she had no reason to grieve.

She didn’t really know him. Neither did I.

He wasn’t cruel or abusive. He paid child support. But he also wasn’t present. He didn’t protect us. While my mother’s boyfriend was abusing us, my father did nothing to intervene. That leaves me with only two options: either he didn’t know, or he didn’t care. Either way, he wasn’t there.

For most of my life, when I thought about my dad, there just wasn’t much to think about. He wasn’t a villain, but he also wasn’t a protector or guide. I told myself he wasn’t a factor in my life.

I was wrong.

Years after he died, I began reading about the critical role fathers play in child development. The science is staggering.

Children with involved fathers—really involved, not just weekend visits or a check in the mail—show better development in the parts of the brain that regulate stress and emotional control. The amygdala, which governs fear and anger, develops differently without a father’s presence. The prefrontal cortex—responsible for decision-making and impulse control—strengthens when a father is consistently around.

Studies like the ABCD Project and the Bucharest Early Intervention Project have confirmed this through brain scans. Kids raised without present, loving fathers often become more reactive, more anxious, and more vulnerable to stress and peer pressure.

You become either too soft to handle conflict or too volatile to handle it wisely. Either way, you're in survival mode—easily manipulated, quick to anger, and emotionally unsteady.

Frederick Douglass once said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” The data backs him up.

I struggled with addiction, poverty, and identity for most of my adult life. I’m the first to say that personal responsibility matters—but I’d be foolish to ignore how much harder it is for kids to thrive without a stable, two-parent household. That matters more than money. That’s not opinion—it’s observable reality.

I was one of the lucky ones. I avoided prison. I got sober. I figured my life out. I earned a degree in physics. I built a career. I fought my way back—literally and figuratively.

But now that I’m a father, I carry a lesson I’ll never forget:

Above all things, keep the family together.

Once you have kids, your life is no longer just about you. You still have goals, hobbies, and responsibilities, but your top priority is to protect and strengthen the family.

That starts with self-control. If you’ve got habits that threaten your family—alcohol, porn, gambling, infidelity—get them in check. Fast.

I often think about the chaos I’ll never bring into my household simply because I got sober. Too many families are torn apart by a man who couldn’t control himself. A man like that isn’t just a risk to his wife—he’s a liability to his kids.

Some guys like to say, “She should just stick it out.” But when your behavior brings chaos, you make it harder for your children to feel safe, to feel loved, to feel led. A father’s presence is supposed to create peace, not provoke pain.

Yes, sometimes families can’t stay together. However, many of those situations could have been avoided by choosing the right partner before having children. Here’s one of the sad ironies of fatherlessness:

Boys without dads are more likely to become promiscuous and reckless. That raises the odds of them having kids with women who may not be equipped to be mothers, and the cycle continues.

I don’t know if my father loved me. Maybe he did. But his actions didn’t show it. And if someone’s love makes you question whether it’s real, then that alone is a problem.

So here’s the final message I’ll leave you with:

Make sure your children never doubt that you love them.

Love is hard to define, but we know when it’s missing. As kids, we might confuse discipline for rejection. But when we grow into adults, we know if our parents really loved us. If you ever question whether you’re acting from love, here’s a simple test:

Are your actions in service of yourself or your family?

You won’t know if you passed that test until your kids grow up. But you’re being tested every day.

I’ll leave you with two quotes that guide me:

• “Eventually, your children are going to find out who you really are.”

• “You are your children’s mentor with authority, not their boss. You can’t fire them, but one day, they can fire you.”

My new book, Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business: Boxing and the Art of Life, tells the full story—from growing up in poverty without my father, to falling into addiction and failure, to redeeming my life through boxing, sobriety, and a second chance at discipline.

If this post resonated with you, read the book. It’s about breaking cycles, reclaiming identity, and becoming the kind of man your children will be proud to discover you really are.