How Star Trek Helps Me Show Up As Dad
Note: This is the companion version. Read the full essay on Unfinished Pages → How Star Trek Helped Me Breathe Again.
I grew up on Transformers, He-Man, and Ninja Turtles. The first thing I discovered on my own though was Star Trek: The Next Generation. No one in my family cared about sci-fi. I found TNG on a fuzzy TV with rabbit ears and it stuck. When the series ended in 1994, I clipped a newspaper article about the finale and kept it. I lost the toys. I still have the clipping.
- I expanded this into a longer personal essay here: How Star Trek Helped Me Breathe Again.
Fast forward. Life is heavy some days. Special needs parenting, work, and normal family chaos stack up fast. I am the type who tries to swallow the stress and keep the ship pointed straight. That does not always work. Sometimes it leaks out in short, snippy ways I am not proud of.
Season 3 of Picard surprised me. I expected nostalgia. I did not expect it to help me exhale. Seeing that bridge again, hearing that familiar computer voice, being back with characters I grew up with, it gave me a better pressure valve. It reminded me who I was before the stress piled up. It helped me release some of it without taking it out on the people I love.
That is the point here. If you are a parent who carries a lot, find the thing that lets you breathe and still be you. Maybe it is Trek. Maybe it is music, running, sketching, or fifteen quiet minutes in the car before you walk inside. We show up better for our families when we give ourselves small, honest ways to reset.
If you want a place to start, cue up an old TNG episode tonight after bedtime. Try “Family,” “The Inner Light,” or “Darmok.” Put your phone down. Let your brain unclench for forty five minutes. Then go hug your people.
I am keeping that 1994 clipping for a reason. Some stories do not just entertain us. They steady us. Star Trek has done that for me more than once.
