o the dads who are still here and the dads who are not ❤
@brandon.of.bjerke, my dad, and B's dad
all men of tenderness and warmth, each in their own ways
working on issues with Brandon over the years (but mostly since losing our son) has really helped me understand the legacy that we have handed down to the men in our lives
I keep seeing how I am complicit in emotional/psychological/spiritual abuse-- all normalized by our society and relationship structures
When we talked about having kids, I was always less worried about raising a son than a daughter
But now I'm seeing the depths of trauma that our sons/men are brought into and pity myself for assuming my son would be tough enough to handle it when I didn't even understand it myself
The roads toward healing are cut off for many men (for a variety of reasons)-- our rituals and rites of passage have less gravity now
Finding place within community is hard-- getting a man to hold space for another man and be affectionate with another man seems to be something that is starting to shift in my generation
But we have largely abandoned them, encouraged them to get hard, be individuals, be dutiful, be productive
All the unprocessed anger/sadness/grief must be a heavy burden to carry on their own
Coming from a line of men on both sides of my family who were alcoholics and sexually abused, the pain runs to the core
Men are conditioned to keep quiet about their pain-- that shit will eat you from the inside out which explains all the numbing and self sabotage I've seen
When I feel into my compassion for men and fathers (mainly my own father and maternal grandfather), I think about the way I would treat my son had he lived
My wishes:
keep him close, shower him with love, teach him to soften
do not abandon him with his feelings because of external expectations of what it should look like and how he should act
do not force him to grow up too fast and harden his heart, encourage tenderness and responsibility to himself
remind him to share his inner world/experiences and meet him with compassion
teach him to love and heal without discrimination
teach boundaries
change the legacy, honor the legacy
