Fatherhood Fitness: How One Black Dad Took Control Of His Health—For His Daughter’s Sake

By SHAWN TAYLOR

The invincibility of youth is amazing, but it fades: the reality of my body’s limits now hit in my knees, the small of my back, my rotator cuff. All the soccer/martial arts/being a bouncer injuries that used to take me a mere week or two to spring back from? Recovery takes much longer now. Much longer.

Maybe they just don’t build men like they used to. My grandfather, loving as he was, was a hard man. He drank, he fought, and he lived to a ripe old age. He never appeared to be sick or injured until he was on his deathbed—most of us had no idea he was sick, until we were called to the hospital. I get out of bed, and I have to inventory all my aches and pains. I need to make sure I’m not going to injure or reinjure myself.

Without my daughter, I would’ve been content with the little gut, the pain from surgeries, and living a dialed-down version of my youth. But I have a child, and therefore a powerful need to be alive and healthy for her for as long as I can…

See how Shawn Taylor took control of his health—for his daughter’s sake and his own—on Ebony.com.

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