Our Hurt
WE HOLD A MEN’S CALL EVERY MONTH. SIGN UP FOR CALL-IN DETAILS
adrienne has been such an important guide on our journey. I want to invite us to say a prayer for her and wish her a happy birthday. She wrote a beautiful post about it.
Her words in that post resonate with a reflection I want to invite you into this week:
i wouldn’t wish my trauma on anyone.
healing from trauma, feeling peace and even joy in my life, is the greatest achievement of my life
I think we are right to focus our attention on the harm that we have caused. On the ways in which toxic masculinity has made us dangerous in the world. Our work here is to take full responsibility. So that we can become better men.
And the fact is that patriarchy is itself traumatizing to us, as men. Furthermore, it is also true, that we have experienced other forms of trauma ourselves. In this way, we have been both victims and perpetrators. Each to a different degree.
I want to use this note to pause. And to acknowledge your pain. Especially those of you here who have been seriously harmed as children.
I am sorry. It is neither right nor fair. And it is important for you to grief.
I also have the experience and the trust to know that you can be loved into wholeness. That you can love your own self back to wholeness. That healing from trauma can become your life’s great achievement. It can become the medicine you are here to bring.
As we rightly bring more of our attention to the ways in which women are harmed by men, it might become harder to speak and share our own pain. There is a challenge to speaking of how we have been hurt. We want to be careful about taking up space.
And here. Among men. In a space where we can speak of our sins. I also want you to feel free and open to speak of how you have been hurt.
The world needs us whole and well. This is how we become better men.
To go back to our central text:
you aren’t encouraged to get professional help. again, many of you think it’s only “crazy” people or women who seek professional help, so you either refuse to see the therapists or healers who could support your growing up, or you wait until it’s so late that you’ve already built a mountain of harm on top of the person who has been carrying your emotional load in addition to her own. you end up unhinged, unstable, not rooted in reality – in many ways acting out the definition of what people call crazy. in my mediations, facilitation and friendships, i’ve learned that roughly everyone has the potential to be “crazy”. the difference in how much negative impact our crazy has on ourselves and others is directly related to who has adequate support structures and rigorous practices when the storms of adulthood come, and who doesn’t. therapy, friends, meditation, repeat.
I hope that we are building a society of friends. My life’s commitment is to help unlock the transformative power of a new We. There is medicine in the group. Let’s keep turning ourselves to it.
I look forward to our call tonight.