Dear Mimmo:
I have so much to tell you. Not to go deep right away, but my number one fear is losing you. And my number two fear is you losing me. There are important things I need to share with you, so I’m putting them in a letter to make sure you always have them.
I love (really love) being your mom. It feels sacred to be so close to you during these early years. You’ll be turning 10 in a couple of months. When I look back at old pictures and videos, I realize how much you’ve grown and learned. Every day you become more and more of who you are.
I could tell even when you were still in my womb that you were powerful and sensitive. Something in your simple existence communicated this to me. As an infant, your determination was remarkable. So were your curiosity, your love of music, your sensitivity to others, your sense of humor, your love for food and flowers and cats. I guess my point is you were born with a specific personality and temperament and I’ve seen it as my job to help you stay true to that while also becoming a good friend and community member and citizen of the world.
I’m writing you now because you are at a critical age for a boy. It seems that at about age 9, something happens to make boys stop being as expressive as they were before. They are no less emotional, vulnerable, or sensitive, mind you. If anything, they become more so. But they start to keep it all inside and push it down.
A lot of this is related to the awareness of growing up and eventually becoming a man. And I realize that more and more that other forces besides me and your dad are influencing your ideas about what that means. A few months ago, I shared my opinion that there’s never been a better time to be a boy who can be fully himself. I thought we’d made a lot of progress in terms of letting both boys and girls express themselves fully without fear of violating unspoken gender rules. But you corrected me: you told me how difficult it is to be authentic and emotional and how much pressure there is to “man up.” This was heartbreaking and I can’t stop thinking about it.
I was also a very sensitive kid. I was told I was too much, and at the same time felt like I was never enough. I put so much pressure on myself to “get it right” even though I had no idea what that meant. In the end, I mostly felt wrong.
I want something better for you. I want you to be able to be exactly who you are – strong, sensitive, funny, outgoing, private, curious, affectionate, passionate, powerful, vulnerable, attuned, and considerate. And I can feel the conflict arising in you where there are overt and covert pressures to be something else: strong, silent, untouchable, unflappable, invulnerable.
We’ve talked about people like Andrew Tate and the impact he is having on young men, all of whom are also sensitive, thoughtful, vulnerable, and just want to be loved. We discussed how he manipulates and brainwashes them to think that in order to feel strong and “like a man,” you need to subjugate girls and women, put them in their place, devalue them, hate them, maybe even hurt them. He’s teaching young men that girls and women are essentially the enemy who will humiliate you, reject you, and make you feel badly about yourself. But this is not the truth. The truth is much more complicated and I wonder if you can understand enough of it right now to choose a path that will be good for your body, mind, and soul.
Remember when we watched Batman and became obsessed with the character of Bane? We spent a lot of time talking about “villains” and how they became that way. We researched Bane’s backstory and learned about his pain: born in prison, dad left, mom died, raised in an environment of violence, survived by learning to dominate and overpower, and eventually became addicted to the venom used to make him stronger. I think you understood that “good” and “evil” are oversimplified ideas and that even villains started out as innocents who needed love and care but didn’t get that.
So many of the men in power these days remind me a lot of Bane. Men like Andrew Tate who have money and influence and loud voices. They project an image that has become associated with manhood. They have impact on others’ lives. They seem to be able to make or break others. But no one is born trying to break another person. A lot must happen to and within a person to get to that point. Not to oversimplify, but I would imagine that even Andrew Tate has been hurt, belittled, and felt so vulnerable that the only way he could image surviving was to transcend his softer emotions and embody only what felt strong and dominant.
There is a violence to the pressure to “be a man” that is often hard to see. It requires that you suppress your emotions, don’t allow yourself to cry, don’t let yourself feel anything tender. I see it as essentially killing half of yourself: cutting off critical circulation to the parts of yourself that make life worth living, that allow you to experience connection, love, joy, and wonder.
And make no mistake, those painful and scary emotions don’t go away. They just get distorted. What starts as a need for love, when repressed, becomes a sense of entitlement. What starts as a need to be seen and appreciated, can devolve into performances of masculinity and alienation of real connection. What starts as sadness or loneliness (totally normal human emotions that everyone feels sometimes) turns into anger, rage, and even violence against those perceived as causing you harm.
For many years I pushed my own feelings away with alcohol only to realize I was hurting myself more and more. Once I decided to stop drinking and start feeling the full spectrum of my emotions, it was almost a second birth. It’s only in feeling the most difficult and uncomfortable emotions that I finally feel like I’m living my life as the real me. You don’t have to get lost for 20+ years only to come back to authenticity later. You can stay connected to it by being wary of the people peddling the image of invulnerable strength and power.
As you get older, your guy friends are likely to all feel this same pressures as you. They may pull away, be less affectionate, less open. But they don’t necessarily want that. They just don’t know any other way to respond to what you’re all feeling. You might have to be the one to go first – to say, Hey how are you really doing? You know you can talk to me about anything, right? or I’m going through a hard time, can I talk to you about it?
So many boys feel isolated and alone right now. They would rather stay home and watch porn than risk rejection or uncertainty in relationship with a real person. They would rather lump all girls and women into a category of “enemies” because it’s easier than finding real connection and navigating rejection and heartbreak. They would rather speak with hatred, aggression, and misogyny than feel the occasional sadness, loneliness, and uncertainty of living in a world with women as their equals, equals they could actually learn a lot from, equals who are also figuring out their own stuff.
I love how you remind me that you have every right to your feelings. When I’m more focused on my own discomfort with your emotions, you’ll remind me, Mom, are you suggesting I shouldn’t feel the way I do? These are some of my favorite (and most humbling) moments. Hearing my own words coming back at me helps me remember you are listening to and watching everything and that you are so exquisitely sensitive. Do whatever it takes to stay connected to those parts of you.
The need to belong to groups of friends and peers is strong. And it can cause you to abandon parts of yourself. I wonder what it would be like, though, to refuse to let go of the wisdom of your big heart. You might even discover that your refusal to abandon yourself inspires others to take that courageous risk. And that, in becoming a man, the most fearless, gutsy, and brave thing is to be exactly who you are. Because that is the person I love the most.
Always,
Mom
