I’m back from Vacation!! 🏖️🫶🏻
Today is the first day of June and the start of Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. 💚
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I was raised by my grandfather and saw his world shatter when he lost his wife. He’d always been strong and confident and bold my whole life. Put on a brave face because he had an image of the man I’d one day let into my life and he led by example. Treated me kindly and fairly with a smile on his face every day. But he missed her, not a day went by that he didn’t think about her and wish he could’ve traded places with her, so that she would’ve enjoyed life a little longer. But there he was, left to raise me entirely on his own, with no understanding or support system on how to raise a daughter as a single father. But he did it, and did a hell of a great job.
My grandfather went untreated for depression for 14 years and shared his pain with no one because he felt it was too much of a burden. He suffered in silence and I was the only person who cared to listen, to sit by him on those hard nights, to take his phone calls, to show him kindness under all that pressure. I shouldn’t have been the only one.
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Many Men in the world suffer in silence. Many single income fathers, speak no words as they come home from their 16 hour shifts. Miss school recitals or school games so there’s enough money to pay for those activities, food, home, bills. Many men will work themselves to the bone and not express their feels or heart aches because they’ve been taught they’re a burden and that no one cares to hear them. Wearing themselves down to build their families up.
I care. I will NEVER subscribe to the words “I hate men, men are trash.” (Etc.) because I know all too well how so many men are drowning inside but will put on a brave convincing face for us.
If there is a man in your life, a husband, brother, father, grandfather, uncle or friend, today’s a good day to tell them you love them and remind them that their thoughts and feels matter and that you appreciate them.