The Dad Diaries: Because Real Risks Are Worth Taking and A Memoir by Joseph Tito

The Dad Diaries

"I'm grateful I didn't get the life I thought I wanted. I'm grateful I got this one instead."

That's the epigraph of my new memoir, The Dad Diaries, and if I'm honest, it's also the closest thing I have to an explanation for why I'm using my own magazine's real estate to sell my own book.

Why I'm Doing This Anyway

I own this magazine, which means I'm fully aware of what it looks like when the editor-in-chief uses his own front-of-book pages to announce his own memoir. I've edited enough author profiles to know exactly what a reader is supposed to think in this exact moment. So let's get it out of the way: I know. I'm doing it anyway.

The Story Behind the Memoir

On September 26, 2026, I'm publishing The Dad Diaries — six years of writing, distilled into the story of how I went from running an international production company out of a high-rise in Bahrain to moving back into my parents' Richmond Hill basement at thirty-eight, waiting on birth certificates for twin daughters being carried by a surrogate in Kenya, while the relationship I'd built my future around quietly ended in Italy without me. My daughters, Stella and Mia, turn eight not long after the book comes out, which should tell you how long I sat on this story before I was ready to actually finish it.

The Man I Used to Be

Two years ago, the version of me that runs this magazine wasn't around yet. Five years before that, I was standing on a balcony in Manama, looking at a Ganesh tattoo I'd gotten in Bangkok the week before, hoping the god of new beginnings would start by clearing the emotional clutter in my head instead of the actual clutter in my closet. That guy had a production company, a boyfriend in Italy he saw twice a month, and no idea he was about to blow the whole thing up for two babies he hadn't met yet. That's the guy this book is actually about. Here's how it opens:

Moving Back Home

"Moving back in with your parents at thirty-eight feels different when you're pregnant. Not pregnant in the traditional sense — that would require a functioning uterus — but pregnant with twins being carried by a woman in Kenya while your ex-boyfriend starts his new life in Italy, far from the wreckage of what we used to call our future.

The basement smells exactly like my childhood: old carpet, my mother's industrial-strength air freshener, and that particular mustiness that lives in forgotten, dreamy, dusty corners. I'm standing here surrounded by cardboard boxes labeled "Joseph's Stuff" in my mother's careful cursive, holding my phone with shaking hands, staring at an ultrasound photo of two tiny heartbeats that are somehow mine.

"Giuseppe!" My mother calls out from upstairs, her voice carrying the same mixture of excitement and barely controlled panic that's defined the last six months. "Did you call the lawyer about the birth certificates?"

The birth certificates. Right. Because apparently when you decide to have babies via surrogate in East Africa as a dual Canadian-Italian citizen living in the Middle East, paperwork becomes more complicated than quantum physics. Who knew?

I spent twenty years running from this house, this town, this life that felt too small for whatever I thought I was meant to become. Richmond Hill, Ontario — the kind of place where the most exotic thing on the menu was Swiss Chalet and the biggest scandal was when the Coffee Time ran out of coffee. I'd been so sure I needed bigger stages, more stamps in my passport, more everything that wasn't here.

But here's what nobody tells you about running: eventually you have to stop. And when you do, when life finally catches up with all your clever escape plans, you discover that everything you were looking for — the belonging, the safety, the people who love you even when you're a complete disaster — was right where you started.

"Terrified," I say out loud to no one. "But the good kind."

The Prologue

That's the prologue. It gets messier, funnier, and considerably more Italian from there.

The Dad Diaries Launch

The Dad Diaries launches September 26, 2026. You can read more and order your copy at thedaddiaries.com/memoir. If you want the rest of this world — the magazine, the brand, everything else we're building at JEO Publishing — thedaddiaries.com is home base.

Stopping the Run

I spent six years not finishing this book because admitting I used to be that guy on the balcony felt harder than becoming the guy I am now. Consider this the part where I stop writing around it.