Caged Boys
That was powerful medicine on Monday night. We are entering a new level of depth together. Thank you so much for showing up and willing.
One of you sent me this excerpt from Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. I appreciate that he started reading this book because his wife suggested it. It is from her essay “On Boys.
Our men are caged, too. The parts of themselves they most hide to fit into those cages are the slices of humanity that our culture has labeled, "feminine" - traits like mercy, tenderness, softness, quietness, kindness, humility, uncertainty, empathy, connection. We tell them, "Don't be these things, because these are feminine things to be. Be anything but feminine.
I want my son to keep his humanity. I want him to stay whole. I do not want him to become sick; I want him to be shrewd. I do not want him to surrender to cages he must slowly die inside or kill his way out of. I do not want him to become another unconscious brick that power uses to build fortresses around itself. I want him to know the true story, which is that he is free to be fully human, forever.
The Better Men Project sets out to rescue masculinity. To find ways to embody a conscious masculine. To practice an alternative to toxic masculinity. Somewhere in this process is liberating ourselves from a cage that separates us from the so called “feminine” traits.
We want wholeness. We want integration. We want to embody the fullness of who we are.
Thank you for being on this with journey with me.