A Day of Facing Male Trauma

Building from #NoKings into #HealedMen

I woke up this morning with tears in my eyes out of a dream in which a female friend forgave me, in a way, for being a man. Something deep shifted in me, resulting in the tears.

As I went out for a morning coffee, I thought about the #NoKings Day protests, designed to counterbalance the posturing of an aspiring king in DC with his $45 million dollar display of military power. While the protests are vital, it also feels like there is a current of healing today that needs to be named and amplified.

I’m in Duluth, Minnesota, where I grew up and two stories came to mind to understand this moment we are in through the lens of my own journey as a man.

The first story comes from 6th grade, a vulnerable time in shaping a boy’s identity. I was walking to school in the winter on Superior Street and an older boy taunted me, yet again, for something I can’t even remember. He was a good head taller than me and I remember him doing this to show off for some other boys. He then threw a snowball that hit me hard in the back of the head. Something inside me snapped. Even though I was little, I chased him down and beat him up, so badly that his faced was still bruised and misshapen two days later when he returned to school. I don’t remember feeling any remorse, just a pride that I had stode up to the bullying of an older boy.

In the second story, I was seated next to a much bigger and more intimidating bully in 7th grade choir. On the first day, I started to sing. He hit me hard in the arm and said, “Shut up you f’ing fairy.” So I went through the whole school year lipsynching along so as to not provoke another hit, something that turned me into a person who defined myself as “not musical” and someone who prefers a keyboard to public speaking. Basically, I learned that the vulnerable beauty of singing was dangerous in a male culture of dominance.

Now these are both small incidents compared to what most people go through but they had big ripples in my life, making me more competitive with other men, as well as less trusting. I was fiercely committed to winning and hated getting second place in anything. I learned that if you are not dominant, you can become the prey and that aggression could reduce the dangers that come with vulnerability. I was naturally a more sensitive, thoughtful and academic boy but I learned to toughen up.

I share this not because my stories are special but they are, in fact, standard for most men. Most men grow up learning that the most important thing in life is to become dominant in some fashion - economically, physically, or energetically - and if we don’t, we’re in danger of not finding good mates, making a good living, or being victimized. That’s a message that millions upon millions of men internalize.

Which brings us back to #NoKings day. I see Trump as a kind of avatar of this pattern. His whole identity is based on winning more money and more power. Spending $45 million of taxpayer money on his big, beautiful birthday parade? It is all about a display of power and dominance. Sending troops illegally to Los Angeles? The same.

If we go further into his administration, we see Stephen Miller, the key architect of so much of the ICE brutality and someone who clearly relishes cruelty against the perceived “other.” It’s easy to demonize these folks but what do we not know about his story. Was he beaten up by other boys when he was young? How did he take in the culture of aggression and dominance in our male culture in a way that hardened his heart and created a need for violence to establish his own dominance?

Whether we envision the harsh, punitive family environment Fred Trump undoubtedly created with Donald or the karmic antecedents that preceded Stephen Miller’s weaponization of immigration law, the point isn’t to condone what is happening now - which is very much an abuse of power, trust, and the American public - but to understand that they are links in a much longer chain of men who were abused to teach them how to dominate others in the service of protection of oneself, one’s family, and one’s society’s.

The chain goes back thousands of years and it’s not always just attributable to family upbringing because I believe we incarnate to transmute the wounds we carry from other lifetimes as well.

It’s a long, tangled, messy story with men trying to survive, build families, and protect societies and learning that physical dominance and cruelty are necessary in a brutal world. The end result of all this? Brutal police suppression, cruel ICE raids, and using the military to bolster power.

When I see all this, I think of my own version of it - beating up the kid who hit me with a snowball. I felt justified in my own violence and cruelty and I truly don’t remember feeling remorse, although as I write this, some does come up now. What happens under threat of violence is a hardening of our hearts to the other and an amplification of our own desire for power so that we don’t become the victimized.

Trump is a living embodiment of this pattern and that’s part of why he’s been glorified in the manosphere - he’s supposed to be the ultimate winner, the ultimate tough guy, the ultimate alpha. He represents what men who have not wanted to be taken advantage of have learned to crave: power. But that facade is cracking and today’s going to be a telling day, with large-scale protests in 2000 cities, likely heavy rains on his military parade, and plummeting approval ratings.

We don’t know the full story of a soul but what I do believe is that the soul of Donald Trump and the soul of Stephen Miller and the souls of thousands more in his administration actually don’t want to repeat this pattern indefinitely. They actually, on a higher leve, want to end it. Their incarnate personalities are engaged in the re-enactment but their souls want for this moment to be the one to transform it.

That’s why even in our standing up, protesting, and holding the line, I encourage us to find compassion for the hurt little boys inside the cold and brutal men. They actually need healing and part of that healing can be found when we love them even as we stop them from continuing the pattern now.

If we can envision the long karmic chain of brutality finding its full expression now in an anti-constitutional administration that is off the rails of the law, morality, and wisdom, we see that our task is not simply to dominate with hatred but to actually embody healing in how we transform the dynamic.

So in addition to standing up today for the cause of freedom, democracy, and the end of tyranny, I also encourage you to reflect or some of your own wounds from a culture of violence, which affects men, women and gender non-conforming alike. Take some time for your own healing and to send light and positive blessings to the men (and women) of the Administration who are playing out their wounds in full display. Be brave enough to touch the hurt that fuels their displays of power and aggression.

What is likely true is that the breakup of Trump and Musk last week hurt Trump. He had started treating Musk like a son and to have that son attempt to overthrow the father undoubtedly triggered his own fears that no men can be trusted and that he needed to double down on the impulse to control and dominate. Stephen Miller’s wife also left the adminstration to work for Musk and that was undoubtedly a blow to his pride,. which likely fueled the intensity of ICE actions.

I say that to understand that this week’s intensities may have been fueled partially by the hurt from a painful schism, which in turn brought up their relationships with their own fathers and a culture of male violence going back generations. So this week they put their aggression back on display, at least partially to re-establish a sense of safety. Yes, it harmed a lot of people already but it is also harming them as they live isolated in fortresses of their own making, believing they can’t trust anyone.

We often focus on how transactional Trump is - everything is about amassing more power and money for him - but instead of just judging that can we feel how spiritually hollow a life of only transactions is? Where is the joy, the creativity, the love? And the pain underneath that.

These are not just cruel men, these are men in prisons of pain that are a continuation of the prisons of pain they inherited. Their souls, I believe, desire healing of these patterns. So how can we each contribute to the healing today while also saying a clear, firm no to the tyranny?

I think it starts in every one of our hearts.

So I want to end this reflection by offering an apology to the boy I beat up. I am sorry to have hurt you so badly. I understand now that you were also playing out a culture of aggression and dominance and that you were seeking approval and status from other boys. I know that having a littler kid beat you up probably did real damage to your self-esteem and your status at school and with friends. I know that you provoked it from me but I also own that I didn’t transform the situation, I simply continued the chain of violence. And for that, I am sorry.

And for the bully who punched me as I tried to sing, I am sorry that I silenced my voice and did not stand my ground. You needed to be met with a strong boundary rather than my submission. I could have called for an intervention from the teacher or the principal or simply refused to shut up. Instead, I gave in to fear and that probably also contributing to you not transforming that pattern in yourself.

There are billions upon billions of these little acts of violence, intimidation, and oppression that are the fuel behind our nation’s fire.

Let’s each do our best to find forgiveness, understand the legacy, and tend to the wounds in a way that makes us the generation that puts an end to it.

May we participate fully and peacefully in #NoKings but may we also have an undercurrent contributing to #HealedMen today so that we can collectively move beyond the cycles and co-create a brighter tomorrow for America.