Today, I am grateful for the environment and family I was brought up in (well obviously there are issues – I am 30 and single so big drama in traditional society circles), my family defied so many stereotypes and it made me who I am today. I witnessed my parents journey towards for their own happiness in different ways, courageous divorce and navigating life and family dynamics afterwards. My formative, teenage years I was mostly living with my dad who always reminded me to be independent and self-sufficient woman on my own but also holding space for all big emotions which I can tell you were many. My mum was my example of following her own path, trying courageously various career paths and fighting for her happiness as a woman without the attachment of a husband. I am immensely proud of my parents and their life journeys. I witnessed my talented younger brother blossoming into a beautiful, emotionally open and extremely intelligent young adult.
Our family was very much different from what our culture and society dictates back home, there is a standard to be followed and roles men and women should fit into. Needles to say I am not the one to follow these roles, I am very disciplined and rules follower otherwise but not when it comes to these social standards. With that I wanted to dedicate this post to all men, honouring their vulnerability and emotions. I do agree we live in a world made for men and for the past 60 years there has been powerful feminist movement that we are still very much in. Females are still fighting for equality in so many different aspects. I do recognise that this won’t happen unless we have full support and equal part in it from men – we need both sides supporting equality in order to create it. On the other side, there is a silent movement taking place at the same time to recognise how deprived and unfair the world is towards men and their freedom to express their feelings and vulnerability freely and without judgment.
I grew up in a culture where men are supposed to be strong, never crying unless it is death related (sometimes not even then if females require strong support), they are supposed to be bread winners of the family and have their emotional life contained inside with no external display. Since the young age we tell our little beautiful and fragile boys that crying is for girls or even worse “don’t be a pussy” – that breaks my heart. First, we are telling these boys that being a girl and crying is something to be ashamed of and second we are not allowing them to feel, to express their pain. How unfair is that? In the movie I put in as inspiration below, it is so beautifully explained why majority of violence, rape, terrorist attacks, mass shootings are coming from men – because they have so much pain and anger bottled inside that they think the only way to let it out is through revenge which is often either on women because they associate it with deprivation of what they are not allowed to feel or on society through massive attacks because we betrayed and neglected them. These are obviously extreme examples and there are much more nuances than what I put in a sentence above, but also statistics show huge disparity between suicide rates between men and women. I ask my beautiful, powerful women out there to pay attention how much on a daily basis do we feel, how many emotions we share with our girlfriends, families and wider circle, you know the answer – a lot. Sadly, men rarely manage to form strong, secure and open friendships among themselves due to stigma around being perceived as weak. It takes huge awareness and openness for a man to hold space for their male friend while they are going through heartbreak, or their parents getting divorce, or being humiliated in work, losing their friends – they are just not allowed to express and let out their emotions like we do. So it is a call for us as their partners, lovers, friends, mothers and sisters to give them that safe space, to hold them like we want to be held and to soothe them when they are hurting. At the end of the day we all feel exactly the same no matter our gender identification.
I know many women who want to have a man who is strong, bad boy, alpha male, masculine but at the same time gentle, to show them how much he loves them and all that cute fluffy stuff. However, so many women do not know how to handle and support their male partners when they are crying – it feels strange to them, they never saw man crying before. It all goes back to their own father and previous generations where men never cried, so many of us never saw their father crying and let alone example of women comforting a man. But guess what, it is not as hard as we think, it is exactly the same as when you hold your best girlfriend or your child or the way you want to be held. My greatest privilege is knowing that a man feels safe enough to cry in my presence to allow me to comfort and hold him and I hope I can give that to any person that crosses my life journey.
I do see progress and awareness growing around this topic in mine and younger generations. I hope we continue in this direction owning our responsibility as women, because some of us will and are raising these small, fragile and beautiful boys who deserve to know that world is a safe place to express their inner world and rich emotions just like us girls are allowed to.
I hope this inspires you to give a big hug to the important men in your lives today and letting them know that you see them for who they are and they are safe with you to feel all the feels -we all deserve equality!
I don’t have the privilege to hug important men in my life today cause they are far away but this is for all of you, I hope you always remember my arms are open wide for all the comfort your hearts might need.
Please watch the movie below to honour emotions of the men in your lives, they deserve it (available on Netflix too but only in certain regions).
With all my love,
Eni
Dum Amo,Vivo 