Welcome to episode 7!
Can we redefine what it means to be a man, particularly in times of grief? That's the big question we tackle in our latest episode, joined by the insightful Scott Jensen. In a culture that too often equates masculinity with stoicism, we explore the deep, hidden emotions that men grapple with, specifically in the context of early miscarriage—a poignant loss that society doesn't often pause enough to acknowledge.
As we traverse the less-charted territory of men's grief, we highlight parts of our respective personal journeys, shedding light on the nuances of their emotional roller coaster, and the disconnect many men feel when societal expectations clash with their reality. We discuss the necessity of having supportive environments in which men can safely express their feelings without fear of judgement. We also delve into how societal norms about masculinity can create barriers to emotional expression, and the urgent need for these constructs to be redefined.
In the final part of our discussion, we confront the pervasive issue of toxic masculinity, and its detrimental impact on men’s relationships and emotional wellbeing. Using our own experiences as a compass, we lay bare the potential for connection that lies in the power of vulnerability, and the crucial role authenticity plays in fostering these connections. In a world that's slowly becoming more open to conversations about mental health, our hope is that this episode sparks more dialogues about men's grief and the need to create safe spaces for these conversations.
Thank you for tuning in to find solace, gain understanding, and embark on your healing journey with us!
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
Follow on IG @themiscarriagedad
Email themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
Make sure you subscribe!
Write us a review!
Welcome to episode 7!
Can we redefine what it means to be a man, particularly in times of grief? That's the big question we tackle in our latest episode, joined by the insightful Scott Jensen. In a culture that too often equates masculinity with stoicism, we explore the deep, hidden emotions that men grapple with, specifically in the context of early miscarriage—a poignant loss that society doesn't often pause enough to acknowledge.
As we traverse the less-charted territory of men's grief, we highlight parts of our respective personal journeys, shedding light on the nuances of their emotional roller coaster, and the disconnect many men feel when societal expectations clash with their reality. We discuss the necessity of having supportive environments in which men can safely express their feelings without fear of judgement. We also delve into how societal norms about masculinity can create barriers to emotional expression, and the urgent need for these constructs to be redefined.
In the final part of our discussion, we confront the pervasive issue of toxic masculinity, and its detrimental impact on men’s relationships and emotional wellbeing. Using our own experiences as a compass, we lay bare the potential for connection that lies in the power of vulnerability, and the crucial role authenticity plays in fostering these connections. In a world that's slowly becoming more open to conversations about mental health, our hope is that this episode sparks more dialogues about men's grief and the need to create safe spaces for these conversations.
Thank you for tuning in to find solace, gain understanding, and embark on your healing journey with us!
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
Follow on IG @themiscarriagedad
Email themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
Make sure you subscribe!
Write us a review!
And so part of the problem with grieving a child that's never not still born, that's early miscarriage grief often a part of grieving is telling the story, and when the story's beginning, middle and end is compressed like that, it can be hard to tell the story and then you feel like you weren't part of the story. But the story is in there. The story may be, may begin with the intention to hey, let's bring a, let's bring a life into into this world.
Speaker 3:This is the Miss Carriage Dads podcast, a podcast humanizing the experience of miscarriage by normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers. All right, so welcome to this exciting episode of the Miss Carriage Dads podcast. My name is Kelly Jean-Philippe. I'm joined by my co-host, chris Cheetham-Chris. What's good, brother.
Speaker 4:I'm good man, I'm good. I'm excited to be here. I'd have breathed a little bit for Russian, but I'm good yeah.
Speaker 3:You had a good of a journey picking up your son and then coming back home, huh.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's just DC life, you know yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, this is Top was just saying that that DC traffic will really get you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, no, it comes out of nowhere, man, because that was the thing I knew. I was supposed to get back by like 350 and then all of a sudden so I don't even know why there was traffic, it is, it's just DC, Because it's DC. Yeah, right, thank you. Scott, I'm glad you understand man.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter what time it is, man.
Speaker 4:Right, right, it just is I hear.
Speaker 3:DC traffic just comes up like a flash mob or something like. Out of nowhere All these cars just congregate in one place.
Speaker 4:Oh, yep, just out of nowhere. And then you get up to the point where you think you're going to see like an accident or something like that. No, it just all of a sudden speeds up. I don't know I don't understand. It's all the way up to Baltimore. Yep, yep, it is crazy man, it is so crazy.
Speaker 3:We are excited to be joined by Scott Jensen. Scott and I connected over an article that you wrote. I don't know how long you wrote it.
Speaker 3:Scott, but I was doing some research on trying to understand how men grieve, because that's the topic that we're going to be talking about today, and I literally just did a Google search of how do men grieve and your article was one of the first ones that popped up and after reading it, I decided to. I found you some way and then I sent you a message and Scott responded back to me, chris, and the coolest line in his message was I Googled you. I was like yo, I'm Google worthy, oh snap.
Speaker 4:Dude, I didn't know that I should have Googled you when we met Apparently Never, oh, wow man.
Speaker 3:This is never a 30.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I feel like I have to apologize now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you get.
Speaker 3:I don't think I was worthy then, but now I'm definitely Google worthy.
Speaker 4:Yes, man, that's what success does, bro.
Speaker 1:You made it man. It's all good. Not everybody can say that.
Speaker 3:Well, that is true, that is very true, so. So that was one of the coolest things. So we're going to talk about from Scott's experience, and I'm going to allow you to introduce yourself in a little bit, scott, but before we get started, in preparation for today's conversation, we're sending each other messages back and forth, and you are in the North Carolina, you're in North Carolina, and this week, I believe, some events went down on the campus of UNC, and so you sent me a message to alert me to that, and I was so and still am so incredibly grateful that, in spite of that, you have still chosen to meet with Chris and I today on the podcast to have this conversation. So I just wanted to give you the first several minutes before we jump into our main topic of conversation, just to ask how are you after the shooting that took place on UNC's campus and any thoughts or anything else that you want to share.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. I appreciate you're starting with that. One of the things that helps in a situation like this is knowing that we're seen and we're cared about and just your, your graciousness and your kindness and starting out that way and asking me how I'm doing is appreciated and makes a difference. I'm doing okay. We were talking a little bit before we hit record and it's a little exhausting. It's exhausting seeing these almost quotidian expressions of violence around the country, with shooters and mass shooters. That's exhausting enough. But then when it hits in your local community and you feel how all those connections are in play, all those, those folks that you care about, might be vulnerable or might be called to action to, to support those who have been distressed or or or distressed or safety has been undermined. So I think I'm doing okay.
Speaker 1:We've got a good community. It's a strong community. The kids are creative. I say kids, the young people at the university a lot of intelligence, a lot of moral clarity, a lot of ferocity about having their voices heard, expressing themselves, advocating. So you know out of it's cliche to say that out of bad things good things can happen, but I think it's activated a kind of a vision about where we need to go locally, in this country generally, and engaged what I think are going to be some really energetic and and creative and open hearted advocates for the kind of change that I think we we need if we're going to become more of a, you know, a compassionate, kind and inclusive nation.
Speaker 1:And I don't mean that as a critique of where we are as a nation.
Speaker 1:I mean it just as a statement of the fatigue that I think I was feeling before a local event, and now it's it's it's it's given me a perspective on on, on a sense of a of immediacy and urgency to be, to lend my voice however I can. It's easy to sit back and become cynical or to feel powerless or to say, you know it's not going to change anything, but I'm feeling an impulse to, to do what I can, to try, and so there's there's some positives coming out of it and also a sense of wanting to to honor the sacredness of the story of the life that was lost, of the professor who was killed, and the stories of those kids who have responded in ways that have have wanted to share their experiences with the hope of of bringing some positive change. So you know, right now it's okay. So it's not okay, but it's okay. It's moving in a it's moving in a good direction. I think it's going to take time, but we'll get there, thank you.
Speaker 3:Chris and I, we've experienced early pregnancy loss along our journey of growing our family for myself, of starting a family and also growing a family and I I find that differentiation significant because, in my mind, once we had a living child, I never thought that I would be back to experiencing another miscarriage, and so the fact that that was my story, or that is my story, I find it important for me to make that differentiation. So just to just to get it started, have you ever personally experienced that while you were growing your family or starting your family? Scott?
Speaker 1:No, I haven't. I haven't experienced that. But in the course of talking with people about being a guest on on your podcast it's interesting I've discovered people that I talked to that have but didn't know they had and and and the. You know, people that are close to me, people that are in my family, people that connected to no idea, and then just raising that I'm going to be talking to a couple of really good guys. We're going to be talking about men in grief with a, with a, an inflection on on miscarriage and, in a sense, just kind of sharing that, creating a space for them to share some things that they've never shared with me before and that. So I know I haven't experienced it directly, but just in the last week or two, telling people we're gonna be talking has made me realize how many people have in my own circle, in my own network, that I didn't even know I'd experienced that.
Speaker 3:So let's just use that as the springboard to just get straight into the conversation. I'm curious as to if the majority or how would you categorize or characterize the percentage of people who you told about your appearance on this podcast and in relation to men and women who you have discovered over the past several weeks, have had this experience but had never spoken about it.
Speaker 1:It was more women more women. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Which I'm not surprised to hear.
Speaker 1:And those are the ones that were forthcoming and disclosed it. That saw my mentioning the podcast as an opportunity to disclose a name, to share a story or something that was significant. That doesn't mean that some men that I talked to hadn't had that experience. They just may have chosen not to disclose it, but I have no way of knowing that. But no, it's women, not men, are the ones I'm talking about, which isn't surprise.
Speaker 3:So just thinking, you know what, before I even ask the next question, I didn't give you a chance to introduce yourself, like I said I would. So please go ahead and introduce yourself. I'll be a gentleman right here. Oh, we get too deep so I'm just gonna say who you are and why is it that we've been talking to you in the first place.
Speaker 4:All right, we swear this guy's a professional, Like we didn't just pull him in off the street. We swear to God.
Speaker 1:You guys are gonna have to break out. The stage came sooner than you thought. You just hit me off the platform. Well, I turned 60 in July and in August I started my 32nd year as a hospice social worker. So I spent about half my life working with people who are dying, working with family members who are caring for loved one and working with survivors who have experienced the death of a loved one. So my experience is not specifically with miscarriages, it's with the end of life care and with those who are grieving and bereaved. And so I don't pretend to be I'm not gonna profess to be an expert when it comes to miscarriage, but I do have an interest in men and grief and there certainly are plenty of applications and hopefully what we talk about will be of some value to listeners.
Speaker 1:I started out in humanities. I was gonna get a PhD in American history and I have a lot of value and admiration for scholars and scholarship, but I found that my interests really were not so much in arguing about our obstruous points of 19th century historiography. My interests were in talking to the young people that were coming to my office and talking about their lives or talking about things I was dealing with. Not surprisingly, I got my master's and took off and I decided at some point to become a social worker. And in between my academic career and that decision I'd done a number of things that had kind of prepped me for a decision to move in that direction in terms of what I found meaningful. And when I was in graduate school I had the opportunity to pick an internship and I remember seeing this thing called hospice and what is that? And I looked at it and two things occurred to me instantly. One is scared to heck out of me, which is good because, as Joseph Campbell said, it's the cave you fear to enter that holds the treasure that you seek. I like that. It scared me. I had some fear about death. I had some fear about my ability to be a source of compassion for people that were in waves like that, and so part of the appeal was actually to go in and see if I could navigate in a way that deepened me as a human being. The other appeal to hospice was that I'd worked with juvenile offenders. I'd worked with people in a homeless shelter with heroin addictions. I loved it, but they're kind of hard experiences, hard environments, and it kind of had hardened me in terms of a kind of a cynicism about the human condition and some of the systems that we have that people have to deal with and grapple, and I thought to myself you know what we're doing with people who are dying sitting at the bedside. That would be a good way to open my heart. That would be a good way for me to practice what compassion and loving kindness might look like in my life. Because I was pretty well defended and I could talk with tough kids and make a difference. But I had a kind of a hard nose way of looking at things and I knew that. I thought this is a place that can teach me compassion, that can teach me to be grounded when there are intense emotions, that can teach me to be a more decent human being, and so it has worked out that way.
Speaker 1:I'm a writer. I've written probably about a hundred articles at this point about different things, a couple of books I write just to explore. I've never written the article I thought I was gonna write. I always discover something and as a way to kind of bear witness to stories that are sacred to me as a hospice social worker I carry so many stories and the writing is a way to kind of get some of that down.
Speaker 1:I've got a lot of special interests. I'm trained in working with PTSD, so post-traumatic stress at end of life. I'm interested in the use of humanities at the end of life, particularly storytelling. I've done a lot of work with transpersonal end of life experiences your death experiences, death bed visions, after death communication. But one of my earliest interests and one of the first specialized interests was really in men and grief, and that came about in the mid-90s.
Speaker 1:I was doing some work with our bereavement department, a small hospice in Durham, north Carolina, and my friend Tom who's a chaplain, a bereavement counselor. We were scratching our heads because we'd have these groups and men would not show up. You know, we'd bereavement support group. Everybody in the group were women, which was great. It was a safe place for them to process and share. But where are the men? And so we thought about it.
Speaker 1:We talked with some folks and we decided to do something that might be a bit counterintuitive but seemed to make sense, since men weren't showing up. We decided to offer a group just for men, and we were prepared for nobody to show up. But we thought maybe it would be different if we offer a group, for it's just men. And they started knocking on the doors and I remember that first group there were about seven men that showed up and they were all kind of not sure they wanted to be there. They were all kind of doing it conditionally. But I don't like this, I ain't coming back. They were kind of a little awkward.
Speaker 1:And that first meeting, when they started telling their stories to other men, when they started doing it in a context where they felt safe, where they felt like there was some understanding and some of the challenges they might be facing, where they felt like they could ask for and receive and offer help without judgment, without precondition, it was an eye-opening experience and it really got me interested in ways to support men who are grieving, ways to be sensitive to some of the potential complications that male gender socialization might create.
Speaker 1:There are some of the norms around constructed identities might create. So that's an interest that goes way back and again, it's complex, it's mysterious. I don't pretend to be an authority on that, but I do have a lot of experiences and I'm happy to offer thoughts in the spirit of if something lands with listeners in a way that they can plant that in the garden of their life in a way that creates something of value, great. If what I say doesn't resonate, I'm not attached. I'm not pushing anything. I'm just giving you some reflections from a guy that's been working with men and women who are grieving for a long time. So that may be more of a long-winded introduction than you were looking for, but I'll put a period on it and let you get a word in.
Speaker 3:Chris, any of that resonates with you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a lot of it did, of course, because of the nature of the podcast, of course, specifically your interest and work with men in grief and being able to see firsthand how men don't deal with grieving, and at least not until we come into a place that we consider safe.
Speaker 4:And it's interesting because it made me think of having that fight-or-flight response in terms of, hey, either we're going to take this thing head on or we're going to run away and thinking about grief as something for a man that is dangerous, something that triggers that fight-or-flight response.
Speaker 4:And I don't mean fight in a healthy way, but fight as in. I'm just going to push through it, I'm not going to worry about it, I'm not going to think about it, I'm just going to continue to live my life, or I'm just going to ignore, run away, I'm never going to try to get any kind of help, I'm never going to try to even continue to live my life, I'm just going to start self-destructing, which is, especially after reading your article, seems to be something that a lot of men do at a much higher rate, statistically, than women do in terms of self-harm, because of a lot of the things that affect us and I think, for men, especially when it comes to losing a child. That is a serious, very serious source of grief that we don't often talk about. We talk about the death of loved ones' spouses, but not often are our children.
Speaker 3:Here is my question, scott, because it's one thing to experience a stillbirth, it's another thing to experience a neonatal death. It's another thing to experience the death of a child whom you've seen grow up, You've taken to school, and then some illness comes and takes that child away, or some tragedy comes and takes that child away. And all three of these scenarios and I'm sure there are many more scenarios but in all three of these scenarios, from the perspective and the experience of the father, there is a sense of connection along the spectrum. During the time that the child was in the womb, the further it got along. I'm talking to the belly now. I'm feeling the kicks, the neonatal. I've held the baby, I've seen the child, I've given that child the name already. I've seen features my child who died because he got hit by a car or she died of cancer. We already have a history to have pictures with. So all of those have this nature of.
Speaker 3:I am connected in some physical, tangible, tactile way. In the event of a miscarriage, especially if it's early on, before the 12 weeks, where not even the mom is experiencing the movement, or anything like that, I know nothing about this child except that it's a piece of me. So my wife experiences the miscarriage, she's the carrier and she is receiving the due attention that is needed. I'm just coasting in the background like I'm here, but I don't have that connection. I want to grieve, but I don't know if I could so Help help us understand, from your experience of dealing with or exploring this topic of men and grief, what could be some of the factors that are preventing me from feeling justified even and in Wanting to grieve, or or grieving at that moment, like what is?
Speaker 1:what are the things that are playing in the background that's complicating the way that I'm able to express or not express my grief as a man my impulse I'm not gonna do this to you, I'm not gonna put you on the spot my impulse, as a clinical social worker, is to ask you questions about your experience and to ask you what you think, what it may feel is it okay, to do that. Yes.
Speaker 1:I'll give you some thoughts, I'll give you some reflections, but in a sense, you are In many ways more of an expert about this than I am, a virtue of the fact that you just put your finger on a challenge. You've just identified a Challenge and you've identified some ways in which your grief may not be as validated, may not be as acknowledged. You may not know how to give yourself permission to To grieve. You may not know how to even story the experience of this child you never were able to hold in your arms and yet was a part of your life, was a part of your, your vision for the few. So, I guess, rather than me Instantly run in my mouth, I guess I'd like to ask you, as somebody that's been through this what, what do you think for some of the, the things that made it difficult that they either acknowledge or have acknowledged your loss and to begin a process of grieving?
Speaker 4:Chris, you got anything oh man, you know there's that Thing inside of you that does feel a bit guilty for even wanting any attention. Because yeah, because you know it's, it's the mom. The child was growing inside of her.
Speaker 3:She has to go. That's a strong word that that you're using guilty, yeah, that's a.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, because you, you don't. You know that she deserves the grief, but you're not sure because, like, as something like you were saying, kelly, you I've never, I never met my child. I never, outside of my imagination, growing and trying to help with nesting, and you know my body didn't go through any changes, mm-hmm. So why should I then be the one to receive any kind of of care? Shouldn't she be the one you know From? For my wife, you know, I remember when she had to actually pass our unborn child and that experience and me having to watch that happen. I didn't go through it. So Do I deserve any kind of of Love or concern? Because I didn't.
Speaker 3:I didn't go through it you know, but at the same strong word deserve.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right, right, you know, and I feel like those two words play hand-in-hand right, because if I don't deserve it, I feel guilty for wanting it. You know, it's like a year on, you're a part of the class project. You didn't really do any of the work Everyone else did, you know, but now I want some of the credit. That's what it feels like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4:And you really do in your mind, discount yourself and then you just go into protection mode as a husband, you know, because now my wife is not just, is not just said, she's hurt, yeah. So now I have to make sure that I'm taking the time to build her up. I'm making sure that, you know, my family is gentle with her. I'm making sure that the people that we know at church are our gentle with her, people at her job are gentle with her. So I lose even a sense of trying to care for myself because I'm so busy caring for her, you know, and obviously not to not to make her a bad person, right, like that's not, you know, that's not it at all, but it's just you don't even consider.
Speaker 4:Yeah taking the time for to care for yourself or to allow others to even care for you. And it's hard, because it's hard yeah yeah, that's, I Tell that one.
Speaker 1:I want to see what you caught. But I want to respond to Chris, if I may this is saying is is powerful man.
Speaker 1:It's powerful. And when I hear you say you've got a story, and it's a story at an interpretation of events that is really sensitive to your wife's experience and really concerned and protective and nurturing of her experience and and validating what she went through, but when you talk about your experience, it seems almost like a self invalidation. When you say, yeah, I didn't go, you did go through this, what do you mean? You? Didn't go to.
Speaker 1:You did go through this. You were there every step of the way. You were there when it was, when they were working on your wife, and you want to be protected. There is a kind of a pain and a kind of a vulnerability and a kind of a loyalty and a courage to go with that. And yet when you tell the story, it's like no, no, no, that it's all. The focus is on Honoring and being sensitive to your wife. But there's a way, sense in which you, you automatically dismiss the importance of your experience. Or you, just you said I didn't know this job. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. You had a vision in your, you said your imagination. There's a connection to the imagination. There's a hope, there's a love, there's a sense of walking this road waiting for the arrival of Precious being that you are. Hope, that that's yes, and it's a part of the problem with grieving. A child that's never Not still born, it that's. There's an early miscarriage.
Speaker 1:Grief often a part of grieving, is telling the story and when the story is beginning, middle and end is compressed like that, it can be hard to tell the story and then you feel like you weren't part of the story. But the story is in there. The story may be, may be, may begin with the intention to hey, let's bring a, let's bring a life into into this world. Let's, let's bring a new life into our family. Maybe the story begins when you get that positive pregnancy test. Maybe the story begins when you start to think about names, or you start to. You know you go in for the first, though, so you are as much a part of the story as your wife. Your feelings are as valid and important as those of your wife, and for some reason, there's a, there's a Disconnect between giving yourself permission to honor your story, to validate your emotions, your thoughts, your hopes, your pain, your loss, your courage, your resilience, your, your fidelity and and your, your steadfastness In who you are, as a man and a partner, and a father and a husband. So I guess I'm and I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but I'm just noticing that the love for your, your wife, and then it kind of like no, I just got, I just got to deal with it. Not about me, oh, it's about both of you and what you're describing, and we can get into this. Kelly, we've talked about some of the messages men get. That just plays right in. There's some of the messages that men get when they're growing up about being protective and and strong saw story all the way. We can get into this, but so I guess I want to wrap up, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that experience and I also want to. I want to and I'm not trying to tell you how you should think or feel about your experience, but I'd ask you to think about Telling that story, not now, but just Telling that story as though with the same love and compassion you have for your wife. How would you tell that story about yourself? That's where grieving can start. But you giving yourself permission, and often Losses like this can be, can be disenfranchised because you know yeah, you may not even a told people, the people in the office may not even know that your wife's pregnant, or even if they do, they're like miscarried, they don't recognize. So it's not a social context to have that loss Validated, acknowledged and understood. And then if you, if you minimize your own experience, you're kind of doing a double number on yourself you, and that's not a. I don't mean that.
Speaker 1:And so grief can start with just giving yourself permission to say you know what this was as real to me as it was for my wife and I can scare a lot of guys because they want to, they just want to push through, they want to hate the phrase, they want to man up. But when we do a number on that, that's not grieving, that's putting things aside and it's going to come back to. It's going to come back down the road where it's going to create patterns that aren't healthy when you experience other losses, and so you know pausing and just kind of bringing the same love to yourself and knowing that it's okay. You don't have to know the answers, you don't have to protect yourself or your wife, you don't have to have it all figured out. You get to be human and you get to, and to do that in connection with your wife and to share that in ways can actually create a synergy in the grieving process.
Speaker 1:There's no right way or wrong way. I love the beautiful way you articulate it and experience that is so consistent with some of the messages we get as men. And then there can be a positive side, that protectiveness, that kind of loyalty, that kind of honor, that kind of you know providing. But there's a shadow side to it. There's a side that doesn't allow us to be human and doesn't acknowledge our hearts and doesn't acknowledge, you know, our interior lives and the power of the connection that we have.
Speaker 1:Now I've known a lot of guys. They'll say something to be effective. You know what. I talk to people about the losses, you know my wife and they'll say, well, how are your kids doing? I talk to people about the loss of my kid. They say, well, how are your wife, how's your wife doing? But the side you can reinforce, these kind of ways of minimizing or discounting the influence, and there's other, there's lots of reasons, I think, for that that we get into that are not ill intended but are just part of our cultural norms and part of things. So we can get into some of that. But thank you, you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say I wouldn't have said anything too differently than what Chris said his experience was. For me, the only layer that I would add to what Chris said is something that you brought up, scott the fact that the sense of being disenfranchised because for the majority of the losses that I experienced prior to even getting to that point, exactly what you said is what my experience was. My wife asked me to not let anybody know that she was even pregnant. These were things that I was then experiencing by myself, and silence, and then having to go about my day as if that were not a thing, and, in particular, one of the losses that that I experienced when her body was passing our unborn child here at home and having to drop off our firstborn to my in-laws house. Getting to my in-laws house and I couldn't give her any indication that anything was happening at home, because my mother-in-law didn't even know that my wife or daughter was pregnant. So it was this weird way of like how do I arrange my face being in front of her just to give her the impression that I'm just going to work? Wow, I did very well what my wife was going through back at home and then just kind of keeping the facade of normal living just inside the fact that we were going through this thing. So that would be the only layer that I would add on to that.
Speaker 3:But whatever layers you add or subtract just from the basic story that Chris told, your point is so spot on in that there are all of these different messages that are playing in the background that are influencing how Chris responded and how he articulated his story, because I took notice of that too, and I always take notice of that. When I ask men how they're doing about a particular thing regarding fatherhood or themselves, they often talk about the kids. They tell the story from the perspective of the wife, and I do the same thing too. So then, what the heck is wrong with me that is making me incapable of embracing telling the story from my vantage point. So let's talk about some of those messages that you mentioned in the article, and I'll post links to the article in the descriptions for people who want to read it. You mentioned, through the research that you did like four basic messages that little boys get as they're growing up that helps them shape what it means to be a man. So walk us through those things.
Speaker 1:But I lifted those from you to still you, and so I just took that from her research and, yeah, let's talk about that. But before we do, I want to say something in response to something you just said, kelly. You said that what is wrong with me? That I don't have the capacity, that nothing's wrong with you, nothing is wrong, and you do have the capacity to delineate and express the feeling you do. There's nothing wrong with you and you have the capacity.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, men find themselves either in a trance state, believing that they don't, that they shouldn't, or don't feel safe. They're not sure who to trust, or they think they're reaching out in ways that are misunderstood. And then they feel, oh, I made a bid and it didn't go good, I'm back into my shell. Or they feel like they have. And why don't we just talk about the message? Because that'll play. But again, this tendency to invalidate our experiences. A lot of times I'll ask guys, I'm doing fine, and they start asking questions. It's like, well, no, there's stuff going on. And when they realize they can trust you, they all have the capacity. They all have the ability to articulate the subtleties of their inner life. Do they feel safe? Do they feel heard, do they feel like it's important enough and do they have a blueprint that allows them to value that process? Because some of being men is like, why do I want to talk about it? It just makes me feel worse, I got to keep on going. Why would I want to do that? And so there may not even be a blueprint for an understanding of why this can create connection, can create healing energy.
Speaker 1:And so, looking at Stylian's work and she wrote a book back in the 80s looking at what's called gender differentials in the ways men and women grieve and again I think in terms of styles of grief, I don't think I'm not deterministic in this way. Like men grieve this way, everybody's different. Everybody grieves in the way they grieve as individuals. But there's different styles of grief that I think men tend to gravitate towards that are more action-oriented or more cognitive. But women do that too, and a lot of men are in tune with emotional life and their interior life. But it's not as common as I'd like for it to be the work that you're mentioning by Judith Stylian, as she saw.
Speaker 1:What the research tells us that we're getting to is that it can be their barriers sometimes for men feeling safe to disclose, talk about, or even having the trust that it's OK to talk about their experiences or feel like their experience is important. And so there's four messages that she distilled out of her research, and so I'd like to take credit for it, but I can't borrow it from her. The first is what she calls the stiff upper lip syndrome. When boys are growing up, they get these messages, and it's not just from the family but the community. It's in the TV shows we watch, it's in the athletic teams that we join when we get older, it's in the fraternities, it's in the businesses we've run, it's in the air, and men are supposed to be strong and stoical in the face of difficulty, discouraged from expressing vulnerability, encouraged to accept pain without complaint.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we dismiss the importance of our feelings, or we even pathologize feelings as being irrational or being unimportant, or being something that's maybe a privilege of those that don't have to take care of business.
Speaker 1:I need to push forward. So the stiff upper lip syndrome, where we're supposed to just be in charge, we're supposed to be stools, we're supposed to take whatever life throws at us and not let them see a sweat. Well, that's really not fair. We're human beings, and as human beings, we're imperfect. As human beings, there are things that we're struggling with. We deserve as much compassion as we learn, things, as we grow, as we change. And yet why do we do this number on ourselves when we have to take the hits and not let them see as flinch? Why do we have to be so intent upon hiding our vulnerabilities, as though we're not men, if we somehow feel fear or feel confusion, or feel inadequate in some way to be able to protect or to respond to things that are overwhelming in the moment? So that was the first message to keep a stiff upper lip, to be stoical, to not be driven by, not even trust, sometimes, your own emotional reality.
Speaker 3:You know what's interesting about that? When I talk to people in my context and I work out a pediatric setting and oftentimes I am supporting families who are losing their children, and so moms and dads are often the people that I am supporting and the father would often say something to me if he opened up. You know, I have to be strong for her Right, like I have to be strong. Both of us can't be weak, right?
Speaker 1:So, yes, yes, there's that word, there's that word.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, there's that word, there's that word.
Speaker 3:I don't even think that oftentimes we stop to consider what we mean. There's this person, who's very influential to me, who says words don't mean anything. People mean things, and words are just the vehicles about which people express what they mean, right, and so I don't even think we stop to consider what we mean by the use of words like weak, right, strong in these contexts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and why isn't being emotionally aware of strength? Why isn't the courage to express vulnerability a strength? And why is it? When it's a man, it's often considered to be a manly or a weakness, or it can make people feel uncomfortable. I know, when I first started out as a social worker, I'm an unmanly man and I'm trained in counseling and I'm comfortable with intense emotions and people in states of distress. But I often would feel uncomfortable asking a man how he was doing because I felt like I was kind of violating. So I didn't want to put him on the spot, I didn't want to be presumptive, I didn't want to penetrate defenses in a way that made himself conscious. But some of that was my own fear, some of that was me projecting.
Speaker 1:And as I've gotten older and experienced, when I talk with men, often when I send the message I see you, I care about you. I would like to know what your experience is. You know, sometimes they'll stay in their defenses, which is fine, but that's fine. But a lot of times there's like this okay, you're testing me, is this guy for real? But once there's a kind of a trust, then all this stuff opens up and that, to me, is true strength. That to me is a real willingness to be a man in a deep sense. And again, there's nothing. When I say that, you know that I don't mean that there's anything wrong with, with, with, with, with. Like you said, words are worth and the intention behind it can often be a good one. But but in denying our emotions we often aren't even aware of how layered they are. And with man I've seen this a lot.
Speaker 1:They tend to discount a number of emotions, but one emotion they often don't discount is anger, the very emotion that's going to kind of keep people away or keep people a little bit. I don't know if I want to ask him how he's doing right now, or. But the anger can look like, you know, conventionally I'm really lost of temper. But it can look like irritability, it can look like decreased frustration, tolerance, it can look like little things yet until you it can look like, you know. But but anger is, is one of those, those surface emotions, it's, it's, you know psychologists will say it's not a primary emotion. Typically, there's usually something underneath it and you know Bandler and Grinder have said that often what they found is like what they've written, a well-known book, it's like a therapy, they say they find that often underneath anger is sadness or shame. I think that's true. I found that.
Speaker 1:I also find grief under anger. I find fear under anger. I feel it find a sense of aloneness under anger. I find old wounds and traumas that are channeled into anger out of defensiveness, when a new wound, the loss of a child, occurs. So we sometimes put ourselves in traps by by denying our inner experience, our thoughts that we're having, that we're afraid to share feelings that we're having that feel intense or make us question whether or not you know we can stay grounded or whether or not we want to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Or channeling things into, into channels that maybe make us feel like we have some agency or some, some power or energy, like anger can do, or feel like we're strong in a in a sense or that kind of keep people at arm's length. There's a certain protective wall we can put up, because maybe I'm afraid of people coming in and seeing how bad I feel, because I don't trust that they're going to do that without judging me. I don't trust that they're going to do that without labeling me, or I don't trust that it's going to help. I think it's going to make me feel worse. There can be all kinds of impediments. So that's dip up for lip syndrome. It can go deep and it can. It can, it can metastasize out in so many different ways.
Speaker 4:I mean it was, it was funny because, you know, I was, I was thinking of things to say and I feel like I went through like every stage of this in my brain right, Because at first I was thinking, you know, especially we were talking about media and it took me back to the just the eighties, you know, and who our heroes were, and we were talking Arnold Schwarzenegger and who was Bruce Willis, Rocky, you, know, like these were the men you know. Cut me, mick, like you know right.
Speaker 4:Mel Gibson, right, Mel Gibson, and you know, one of my favorite movies was Predator and I'll never forget Jesse Ventura at the very beginning. But before they see the monster, you know, they're just killing all the Colombian terrorists or wherever and whoever, just killing people, right, and there's the anger. And then so he, apparently he got shot in the arm. So one of the guys was like hey, you're bleeding. And he, you know it, was just looking up at his target and he was like I ain't got time to bleed and he keeps shooting, you know, and we know that was cool bro.
Speaker 4:That was so awesome, but like in real life. If he really got shot in his arm, like his muscles are disrupted. Who knows if it had an artery like? It might have broken some bone Right. Exactly right. He just tied up. He's way more useless now because his arm is shot and he's carrying like this giant minigun. There's no way he's carrying a minigun after he shot.
Speaker 1:No, he's gonna shot in the arm, bro. How are we going to live up to something like that? And if we do, it's going to be a trap anyway because it's going to deny our humanity. Well, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking of them. I grew up in the 80s too and I like the karate kid movies and I'm thinking of this.
Speaker 1:There's a scene where John Priest, the evil sensei, you go into his dojo. There's all these messages Beard does not exist in this dojo, Mercy does not exist in this dojo. Defeat, Defeat does. And these are injunctions. That's extreme, but a lot of time men are given the same injunction. Little boys, big boys, don't cry. Yep, yeah, Don't be a scaredy cat. You know, Be competitive.
Speaker 1:When I I remember I played first base in high school, I got some guy was 220 pounds. It was like a line batter came down the first baseline. I caught the ball, got knocked down, got up and my coach said get up and get out of there. There was no sympathy. He was like get back, Don't show pain, Don't show discomfort. And this is why do we do that to ourselves? I mean, yes, there can be. Why do we do that? Right, and when we're trying to grieve and allow ourselves to be human and allow ourselves to be patient with the fact that we can't just push through. You've got to experience and you've got to let it unfold and you can learn and grow as you're doing that. What? Why do we create so much impatience with our own humanity? It's not our fault.
Speaker 3:Are we saying in one way, that there is no place for that stiff upper lip way of handling or responding a situation, or are we saying that that can't be the only way that we respond to every situation?
Speaker 4:Yeah, right, because I think in real life, right, like in real life, like if I'm actually in war, bullets are flying around, people are dying around me. I have to have a stiff upper lip because I have to push forward, Right, yeah, but when we're talking about things like this, like grief, moving forward past pain as men, moving forward past things like abuse, we have to handle it differently and we have to look at toughness differently and flip it on its head because our lives are in danger, but in a very different way, and we're not taught to see that difference, like for sports. It's very important in sports that you get up because there's an entire game going on. What team needs you? You listen? Yeah, your arm is hurt, but I'm going to need you to. I remember watching football and Steve Smith broke his arm in the middle of a place, still ran in for a touchdown. I was like I would have passed out on the field, like, but no, he did the right thing. His arm is broken, but they didn't blow the flag. You got to go.
Speaker 3:What were you going to say, Kelz? Kobe Bryant dislocated his right shoulder Right and he came back and started shooting left-handed yes. Yes, yes, it's sports, it was like listen, no emotion, like nothing, or the game that he ruptured his Achilles. I remember him. He sat on the floor, he knew what happened. The look on his face was like I'm okay. And that is such an iconic image in my mind because whenever I look back at those highlights I'm just like yo, kobe was a real dude, right.
Speaker 4:And he was, he was. But the thing about sports is, we don't just expect this from our men, we expect it from our women. It's sports.
Speaker 4:I don't care if it's men's softball or women's softball or if it's like watching Simone Biles and all that stuff that happened with her and how people were upset with our brand. That was a completely different situation, but even so, we still expect our athletes to continue to move if they're physically injured. But, now we're talking yeah, right, but now we're talking about mental injury, which is more so what Simone Biles was going through at that moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. It's a good point, and when you're a little boy looking at Kobe Bryant, that's what you're thinking the blueprint is. I love what you said, Kelly, because you're spot on. I'm not saying that this is bad. I'm not saying stiff upper lip is the wrong one. It can give you some tools that you need when you went and had to pretend everything was fine even though it wasn't. When you had to hold it together and with the mother-in-law, it's like I'm good, I want to work at everything.
Speaker 1:There's a strength, there's a quality of solidity that it can give you that you might need. It can be based on values of protectiveness. It can be based on I don't want to burden people, so it can be based on some really good values. It can be based in some really good strengths and skills that you need. The key is to not overemphasize it or make it definitional to the point where you deny your humanity. It's both, it's both. You get to be vulnerable and you get to have this value of wanting to be responsible for your stuff and to not put it on somebody else, but to also allow yourself permission to be human and say you know people care about me and this is important. Dealing with this doesn't mean denying it and taking the hit and moving on. It means it may mean acknowledging it and having the courage to share it in ways that is not burdensome to the other but is more transparent and creates a better connection. It's both.
Speaker 1:I don't think any of these messages are inherently negative, but I think they create such an impossible blueprint and such a potentially mentally destructive blueprint. In 2019, the American Psychological Association released guidance on what they call toxic masculinity and they said basically, if these messages that boys are socialized in around competitiveness and aggression, stoicism and the kinds of violence that goes with the movies we watch or the things that happen in the playground or the things that gym taters made us do, that can lead to a really kind of destructive and, in extremes, mass hygienistic or violent or bullying that there's an extreme. So, taking the good, but also not getting sucked into the trans thing and thinking this is what it means to be a man no, these are some things that might come in handy but recognize oh.
Speaker 1:I got that message when I was kid big boys don't cry. Well, I'm not going to cry when I'm up there giving a presentation to the board, but I'm not going to do a number on myself. When I'm sitting with my wife feeling sad and the tears are coming and I say, no, I can't bear. Share these with her, I'm not a man. If I do Now, you can do that, it's okay. Either way, there's no judgment and not everybody processes their inner life the same way. Some people do it by talking, some people don't, some people use actions, some people use solitude, some people use creativity, and often it's a mix. So it's knowledge. Talking and sharing is the only way we grieve. It's not, and it may not even be a primary way that men grieve, but it should be an option for us which we should give ourselves permission.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I want to bring it. I want to bring everything that we've just said back to to the setting of early pregnancy loss as experienced by a man. And what you're saying is so spot on, because one of the things that I experienced at first was the inability to connect with my wife after our first miscarriage experience, because in the back of my mind it was just kind of like, well, you know, also because someone framed the experience for me in a very harmful way and so it made it very difficult for me to connect with her in that regard. And then, after our second miscarriage experience, I was just so overwhelmed by a sense of guilt because of my lack of empathy towards her during the first experience, and then now finally allowing myself to feel this thing because I had created this very real reality in my mind that we weren't going to be here again and here we were, and so far and so forth, and so there was a lot of compounding, grief and layers of how I was feeling.
Speaker 3:Also shrouded in the fact that we didn't tell anybody that we were pregnant.
Speaker 3:You know so all of those things were all clashing at the same time and it was difficult In fact, it still is difficult to even talk to her about our experiences.
Speaker 3:We have not spoken about what that period was like for either of us, and I am hosting a podcast about men who have experienced miscarriage, and we're having this conversation talking about why it's important for men to grieve and open up and talking and find some way to not not distance or disassociate themselves from a very real experience that is, to your word, scott, as real for me as a man and father, as it is for my wife as a woman and mother, and my wife and I still haven't spoken about it.
Speaker 3:We've nipped and tugged, we've nibbled here and there, but we haven't sat down to talk about hey, this is what it felt like for me, or how did it feel like for you, like what was it? What were the implications? We haven't done any of that, and I'm not saying that every guy needs to do that, but I couldn't agree more with what you're saying in that there is a synergy that happens when both people are able to acknowledge that, although our experiences are different, we're still. There's still value in how you perceive it and how I perceive it, we're in it together.
Speaker 1:We can support each other.
Speaker 3:And we're absolutely in it together. And so, whatever my paradigms are for what a man is and what not, not that I need to completely get rid of them because I feel to I'll throw this out there and then I'd love to hear you guys's thought about this. There's a sense that our present day and age there's a cultural movement, like a strong cultural current, to get rid of the stiff upper lip syndrome or to get rid of the lone ranger thing. You know that toxic masculinity, that is one of the most toxic boxes that exists in our modern society. In my personal humble opinion but it's a strong opinion the toxic masculinity box is a toxic box, not because of the toxicity of the masculinity in it, but because of what it represents.
Speaker 1:And the way it's sometimes used.
Speaker 3:Yes, because what I think it's trying to do is just eradicate aspects and traits of masculinity to your point, scott that present helpful tools in specific moments and saying let's get rid of all of that, we don't need any of this and we just need a brand new, reimagined, an air quotes softer version of masculinity, where it's all mushy and gushy and all of that stuff. And I can tell you, as a guy, I am mushy and gushy, but sometimes, sometimes I just need to be roughed up with some guys. I just need to. I just need to feel like a man's man, whatever that means, but I need to feel like that right, like it's almost like this primitive. I want to break some stuff for crying out loud, and I think there's value in that too. So I love what we're talking about in terms of there is room for a variety of expressions of masculinity without the need to say that this one is better than the other, that this one is more useful than the other.
Speaker 4:I'm a geek, don't care, because my wife loves me. My favorite superhero is Batman right.
Speaker 4:And there's some things that I learned about Batman that I didn't realize until I got older, because I remember when we were kids, the whole nightfall storyline happened where Bane broke Batman's back in the comic books and stuff, and I realized the way that Bane was able to break Batman and I didn't realize how this was. Speaking to what you're talking about, kelly being able to be a man, a masculine man, whatever that means, and finding balance in this stiff upper lip thing. Right, because I think that's what we're talking about, the reason Bane was able to beat Batman. Bane never fought Batman straight up. Bane just came in at the right time. Batman had just lost Robin, jason Todd he died, was murdered by the Joker. Batman never deals with it, by the way. All he does is he just beats the Joker within an inch of his life. There's that anger, right. Then he starts feeling sick. So what Bane does is he comes in, he releases all of the prisoners out of Arkham, shoots a rocket in they're the most comic book way possible and sends Batman through this gauntlet where Batman is just running trying to capture all of these guys. Throw them back into prison Again.
Speaker 4:Mentally, he still hasn't dealt with losing Jason. He's now getting sick, he's tired, he's not getting sleep like he's supposed to and by the time he's done all of this and he's super tired mentally and physically. Now Bane shows up and beats him and breaks him, and the only way that Batman is able to come back from that is he has to recognize that it's okay to need help, it's okay to have your family around, and during this, he realizes that he has never really dealt with this whole Jason thing, with him dying, and he's able to come back victorious because now he has found a way to be a bit more balanced. And growing up, I didn't realize that that's what happened. Now, while all this was done, he was still Batman. You still didn't mess with that. Batman would jack you up. You know what I'm saying. He was, but he had found balance, you know.
Speaker 4:And now, as an adult, I recognize that when I was a kid I'm just focusing on Batman beating people up. But now I realize wait a minute what this story was trying to communicate. What the writers are trying to communicate was to me as a boy, which is something that stuck with me, and I didn't realize until I was a man that, okay, there are times where things are going to go crazy. But even when things are going crazy in your life you got bills that are due and the wives manage you and all this kind of stuff you still, yes, have to be strong, but you have to make sure that you're taking those quiet times and quiet moments to make sure that you're centering yourself, that you're finding that time to be able to be vulnerable and open and, like we were saying, kelly, soft so that I can go out into the world and be hard when I need to be hard.
Speaker 4:I think the problem is we're not able to find that balance, we're not able to draw that line to know when it's okay. And the thing is you can't do one without the other. Like I can't go out in the world and have the stiff upper lip if I'm not taking care of myself and allowing myself to empty of all the things I need to be able to empty so that I can go and take on again. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and as you're talking, I'm thinking even our definitions need to be broadened and reconsidered, right yeah?
Speaker 4:right, I can't even find the right words to describe everything. Right.
Speaker 3:Whatever needs to be soft, whatever needs to be strong.
Speaker 1:If I could respond to the point he made. Kelly, I want to circle back because I have a question for you about the experience you described the first miscarriage but I want to respond to some of what you said. I actually do think that toxic masculinity is a real and important thing to be aware of and extreme, and if you think about the current culture that we have bullying, misogyny in some sectors, violence peddling on some of the leaders who are perceived to be like uber masculine, there is an extreme part of the continuum.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because these construct notions of masculinity.
Speaker 1:That is violent and destructive and is psychopathological. So, yeah, I think there's a part of the continuum. So I'm not willing and I would resist throwing out the notion of toxic masculinity. Where we get into trauma, I think, is when we over apply it or when it's in ways to pathologize certain notions of masculinity. But some of the people that are doing that have agendas to keep us in the straight jacket of traditional masculine identity. And so I think you're both right. I agree with you that we need to find ways to balance, have a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man, what it means to be human and to step up or live.
Speaker 1:It can be grounded in ideas of loyalty and fidelity and care. It can be honored in ideas of honor and integrity. There can be a lot of value. But it's knowing when it becomes a straight jacket. It's knowing when being hard or being tough you need to do that sometimes that does not interfere with your grief, you can. I'm not talking about one or the other, but knowing, being mindful about when you're doing what, being mindful about it to the extent that you can the impact of your behaviors.
Speaker 1:If your hardness is creating relational friction, if your hardness is denying, you're offering it to the feeling that's not the kind of hardness we want to cultivate. If your hardness is protective in some ways. If your hardness is saving some energy so you can do what you have to do and you can get to other stuff later. If your hardness is there because your kids need you to be there and to be present, focused, or because there's a threat out there and you need to push back on the guy that's trying to rip you off, not at the lay, whatever there's room.
Speaker 1:But the question for me is is this hardness right now moving me toward connection or separation? Is it moving toward I don't mean violence in an aggressive way, but towards a kind of a psychological, emotional violence? Or is it moving towards a kind of an authentic expression of something I need to stand up for? I need to set a line on.
Speaker 1:I agree with both of you, but I don't want to throw out toxic masculinity and I don't want to inadvertently allow people who may want us to stay in the straight jacket of a kind of rigid masculinity to convince us that what is really wanted is for us to be wishing one. It's kind of complex and so I'm going to ties it in with social narratives and what's going on culturally, with larger stuff. I think there's a lot of room where we all agree. But I want to circle back to it because you said something that really caught my attention and, if you're comfortable answering the question you said the first time through you had a hard time connecting with your wife and because somebody had framed it for you in a way that was not helpful, that was hurtful. I'm curious if you're willing to disclose how was it framed?
Speaker 3:I will respond to that question. The only issue is I am short on time because of another commitment coming up.
Speaker 1:And we only got to one message to the four of us.
Speaker 3:But this is. I hope that this is, if anything, from the many things that our listeners can pick up on this. The one thing that I do hope they pick up on what we've been talking about for the past hour is just how complex, how nuanced, how layered this issue is. It's not just as simple as saying, hey, you just need to start talking more. Hey, you need to get rid of this. This is deeply ingrained stuff that forms to the microfiber level of how I see myself as a person, how you see yourself as a person, as a man, as a husband and what have you. So I just wanted to say that it's also obvious that we need to keep this conversation going with Scott, because there are many more things that I would love for us to talk about, but again, like I said, I have to hop on a therapy session in about six months.
Speaker 4:Hey, listen, I felt like this was therapy session too. I didn't expect that. Thank you, scott. I was about to. I was almost a tears man.
Speaker 1:I think, both of you I mean your authenticity and your willingness to be vulnerable in real time and to share experiences and ways that are going to allow other listeners, men and women alike, to allow themselves to be more human and to connect with those people we love when we're in a shared experience, rather than to feel like our experience doesn't matter and we've got to protect them. The irony is, in doing that, we can make ourselves unavailable in ways that interfere with our intention to be supportive and so but again, I'm throwing this out there we're all. This is a generative process. I'm not an expert in anything, but I'm bearing witness to the power of your experiences, contrasted, paradoxically, with your impulses to not share, not talk about or to in some ways diminish the importance of your experience. Thank you.