They are men enough.

My men. My husband and son.

For the most part, they are kind, open, compassionate, gentle and loving.

They respect women, and try to live out their values, and strive to be their best selves.

They are sincerely trying to be enough.

Enough for themselves, enough for us women, and enough for their friends and communities.

And in my female heart, I know they are enough.

But my husband and my son, both products of the patriarchy, are consistently told otherwise.

They often believe otherwise.

And mostly they cannot take the mask of masculinity off. The price is too dear.

As a kid, my husband had blackout temper tantrums. One afternoon while skating on a neighborhood pond, in a fury, he slashed his hockey stick at a kid’s head, sending him to the hospital in a friendly.

His parents never talked to him about the event. He carries the guilt and shame to this day.

He had fist fights with his brother as a teen.

There are times when I’ve seen him so overwhelmed with unidentified emotion that he was raging.

It breaks my heart and I assume that his own heart was broken a long time ago, and never healed.

It is a true disability today.

He wasn’t taught to journal, or care about small hurts, or to nurture his shadow feelings.

The language he learned was doing not feeling.

And I remember my son, at four, he was giggled at and teased for wearing his sister’s tutu at her birthday party.

I can only wonder when I see him wearing a pink dangly earring at the Taylor Swift concert, how much ribbing he endured that night.

But they say things have changed?

My husband struggles on a daily basis with how to release his frustrations. His anger is often a chokehold on his own true personality.

He was never taught how to decipher the subteties of his moods. He had only a few – happy, not happy, frustration and red-hot anger.

My son was always gentle and even-tempered, but I could see the way his little world was made smaller sometimes.

He was intellectual but had to tone it down, to play sports, and to always let the other girls and boys step up to the front and center.

In sports he had to push through pain and fear of concussion. One time he broke his arm playing basketball and was told by the coach to stay on the bench and “quit whining”.

Like the girls, he had to play both sides – not too much ambition and striving, but not too much softness, either.

Acceptable to all, except in his own skin.

When he reached high school, I saw how his friends began rejecting the nerdy and less traditionally masculine kids.

I saw that it was basic survival – there was a real anxiety of taint by association.

Driving carpool, I listened.

It was never cruel, the things they said, but they were completely coded conversations about who was cool and who was not.

And I saw that it was really about gender. And it broke my heart, both for the geeky kid and also for my boy.

My son was a hugger, though shy. I think in soccer he found an outlet for that physicality.

But a fist bump or bear hug is not the same as tenderness.

And whooping a yell of encouragement is not the same as holding a buddy’s hand.

My husband never told his mom he loved her. Never.

And now, 38 years on, our marriage bears proof to this. Of course he tells me he loves me almost every day, but it is the other feelings that he reckons with.

I imagine it like he is looking at a blurry color wheel, and can only identify vague hues but not crisp, clear reds, greens, and blues.

His is a daily eye test that fails the spirit and handicaps him, emotionally and interpersonally.

Cultural messages throughout the years have put a mangle on my mens’ bodies, a throttle on their spirit.

Why?

Because they are male.

Yes, I came up on the rise of the feminist movement, but just because we were trying so hard to be and feel liberated, looking back, we carried a warped sense of who we were.

For the men too.

Men I have lived with, and loved and taught.

Men I have invested in.

My husband, who was never taught to cultivate his inner life.

My son, who learned by example, and still carries the hurts inflicted by his own father.

My husband, who struggles with how to pick up the phone and lend support when his friend and colleague has a mental breakdown.

My son who must grapple with the term breadwinner, long after I thought we’d outgrown that particular noose.

My husband, who never learned to express things – but instead inherited the language of hard work, self-sacrifice and responsibility.

My son, who values doing good in the world, but will never be paid for it.

My son who wants to be a student of restoration ecology and not be a government employee. He prioritizes personal fulfillment. He doesn’t want to be a military man.

And I see this: my 7 year old boy, in his room littered with Hot Wheels and books, stacked neatly by his bed. And there is a cage with a teeny white rat in it. And he is holding that rat so gently, so reverently, with his chubby little fingers.

Daughters can be emotional, sons cannot. Or the parameters are that much narrower.

When my son was upset, it hurt me to see him push that pain down – the red face, the tears squeezed back, the way his body froze.

If you push the hard stuff down, and don’t let those sad, lonely, scared feelings make it through your body, you won’t necessarily be able to access the good ones either.

We women know this. And male bodies are made of all the same stuff as ours.

I believe that what we have on our hands now is a cultural crisis of our own doing.

We are all a part of the patriarchy of violence against male’s mental, spiritual and physical health.

Today I watch my son doing groundbreaking work – helping lead retreats and seminars to educate and support men.

https://www.heybrotherco.com/

And my husband is one of them, having participated in the very first father/son retreat.

Like veterans from a war, I see the men of my generation living with a form of trauma that is so normalized as to be exalted.

Can’t feel? Good for you.

It makes you tougher, more attractive.

Our popular male heroes are mostly muscular, maybe smart – but they’re shallow, and they’re not usually feeling types.

And I can only say: hold the mirror up my fellow women.

We helped grow this. We pushed our boys to be strong, we looked away when things got too sensitive. We buy into Hollywood’s machismo.

Still, I see my son back in a high school, on stage as Macbeth:

Through shimmery tears he says: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, knits up the overwrought heart and bids it break”.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

Shakespeare, Macbeth

It is the ancient tale of misguided masculinity; a story of the toxic fidelity of a man bound and destroyed by his own disabused male power.

And the cost is death – and the ripping seams of the entire world order.

But more than that, it is the destruction of a man who shouldered an impossible male mantle.

Of course I simplify.

But speaking of tearing seams, I also see this:

I see my husband, tall back hunched over a sewing machine, creating a costume for my daughter for Halloween. He never loses his patience. After all, he has become an extremely capable tailor and a perfectionist.

And last week, running errands together, I dropped him off a the coffee shop so he could journal. What?

I guess he has inherited some of my son’s bravery. He’s willing to try.

Anyway, there is so much more.

But what I wanted to say is that my son is moving forward with this exploration: reclaiming sorrow, reclaiming joy.

And my husband and I will try to follow.

Embracing masculinity in all of its colors. For me, that’s more than enough.