Dad on the Pitch: Finding my Footing

No one tells you that fatherhood can break you.Not just sleepless nights or medical emergencies — but the silence. The particular weight of one man trying to be everything, asking for nothing, and slowly disappearing behind the role.Sean McKenna — British-American, football-born, soccer-raised — believed that strength meant standing on self-reliance. That belief followed him through male infertility, into a delivery room, and finally into a PICU corridor where his three-month-old daughter lay surrounded by machines from an emergency brain surgery for Spina Bifida, while he stood outside and felt the ground give way beneath him.What came next was not the breakdown he feared — it was the reckoning he needed.Staying home to raise his daughters while his wife built her career, Sean found himself more isolated than he had words for — shut out of playground circles, invisible in waiting rooms, carrying a private depression he had no framework to name. When his second daughter was born with Spina Bifida and the match grew nearly unplayable, the only way through was the thing he'd spent his life avoiding: asking for help and letting people in.Structured like a football match — from Pre-Game through Post-Game — Dad on the Pitch: Finding My Footing is a memoir about perseverance, small victories, and the community you build when you finally stop trying to win alone. Raw, honest, and written for anyone who has ever stood on the sideline of their own life wondering if they still belong in the match. Read more