Aaron White could still be labeled a rookie father: It’s only been three years since his daughter, Claile, was born. But White can talk poetically about fatherhood more than many men who surpass his age and duration as a dad.
The Los Angeles-based youth pastor knows there is a difference between being a dad and becoming a father. That understanding derived from growing up without his father present. It’s an experience he doesn’t want for his daughter and tries to help young men avoid.
White’s thinking started when he would write daily positive “sticky” notes to his mom.
“It wasn’t so much about writing and being dope,” he said. “It was ‘Here’s a word or message’ and have that with you like breakfast.”
His mom suggested the notes shouldn’t just be for her. She said, “You need to share that … you should share it.” White now has more than 62,000 Instagram followers who count on his motivational words.
“I write or create anything I do from a place of talking to myself,” said White. “To impart light or joy, you really have to be those things. I don’t write from a place of desiring to be it. I just write from a place of thinking legacy — what I would leave behind. In order to leave it behind, you have to become it.”
How did you develop your social media following?
I was literally only talking to one person, and that’s why there is such a powerful female following. There is a lot of empowerment from fatherhood, but it was just building up the women in my life (my mom, aunties and cousins). The words are so intimate, and so many people really relate to it. I was like, let me do it in the morning, at lunchtime and during dinner, and with that consistency came the followers.
How are you able to relate to other fathers?
That’s the cool thing — it didn’t start happening until I got transparent. It was like, oh, snap, I’m the very same thing that I didn’t have an example of. I have an opportunity now. So I was real transparent about downloading everything and not knowing anything. People could journey with me as opposed to I’m the father guru. I don’t know everything, but I’m talking about it. I’m being transparent with where I’m at in my excitement and how scared I am. I think too many people are showing the finished product of things, and that’s not reality.
As a youth pastor, how are you helping the younger generation see their potential?
I’ve been going to the juvenile hall prisons for years and working with abandoned youth. As a youth pastor, I can communicate spiritually although it’s not a church-based program. Every Friday I lead about 100 youth. When I started a year and a half ago, it was maybe five guys and 20 females. Now it’s probably the biggest young men’s ministries I know of, at least in Los Angeles. Young men from prison to abandonment, they attach to the not-having-a-father language. We created a program where we had them thinking legacy. We have them thinking about leaving something in the field, if young dudes could get off of themselves and think about planting and leaving a generation behind with something.
Do you have any great experiences from being part of this program?
Numerous. I can say this because this is graduation week. There were four young men who didn’t feel like they were able to graduate. They reached out to their fathers, and I never had the opportunity to do that. All the fathers rejected them. I lead them through a process of us healing together and for them to forgive their fathers. Now their desire is to have families of their own, and that’s one of the biggest things. Graduating was the first step, and then they all got into college and their mothers have seen a massive change in their thought patterns.
Comments