“She’s somebody’s daughter. She’s somebody’s everything. She’s somebody’s little girl, even if she’s grown up and moved away. She’s somebody’s whole world. She’s somebody’s baby, and if you don’t treat her right, hers won’t be the only heart you’re breaking.”
Impeccable words, right? I’m the mother of a daughter, too, by the way, and you best believe that when her heart breaks, so does mine. I MADE IT! Meanwhile, can’t we, though? Just CAN’T WE? Can’t we PLEASE just normalize “singing” this song and its mantra in reverse:
“He’s somebody’s son. He’s somebody’s everything. He’s somebody’s little boy, even if he’s grown up and moved away. He’s somebody’s whole world. He’s somebody’s baby, and if you don’t treat him right, his won’t be the only heart you’re breaking.”
Remember … MEN HAVE FEELINGS, TOO! So, let’s just try being a little more mindful of this factually factual FACT! Now then, ladies — do me a favor and go hug the man in your life right now, please, or if the man in your life isn’t close by, just call or text him today and send him a little hug over the line. Just sayin’.
We’re smack dab in the middle of Men’s Health Month – and that absolutely includes men’s mental health – so I thought it would be appropriate to share a poignant post by an epic content creator I follow on Instagram whose last name is also Williamson. He’s @BradWilliamson80, and his content is uplifting, motivating, and heavily rooted in men’s mental health. As the mother of a son and the late wife of a man who lost his fight with the darkness, I LOVE IT!
Wentworth Miller once said:
You only cry for help if you believe there is help to cry for.
Well then? What if that’s especially true for men? What if telling themselves they can’t go there because no one will care is the silent catalyst for when their pride, guilt, and blood finally spill all over the floor, or, as in the case with Zack, all over the interior of the front seat of the REALLY expensive car that was but an illusion he presented to the world: “Look how OKAY I really, really am!” What if there really is a darkness in the distance from the ways that they’ve been livin’, but they know they can’t resist it, because there really is no mercy to spare for all the sins they’ve hidden in the daylight, then, if they end up on their knees, instead of following The Light, they slip to the void of a very unpopular monster?
As for me and this post? Yeah, I really do love it and hate it at the same time, ’cause just look at the number of people who liked my comment. As of today, there are at least 101 other people in this world who felt my words.
As much as I detest the fact that so many men are hiding in the darkness of their feelings right now, I love that the ripples of awareness are growing day by day. Let’s keep up this bittersweet work, my friends, by continually shedding light on the unique mental health struggles faced by men, dismantling the stigmas that prevent them from asking for help, and encouraging open and sometimes vulnerable conversations about men’s mental well-being, such as the one posted by “the other Mr. Williamson“, because, yes, MEN HAVE FEELINGS, TOO! They shouldn’t have to suffer in silence while screaming out in pain all alone behind the wheels of their cars. Just sayin’.
It’s Veterans Day, again, and a highly annoying question I was recently asked on Quora just rushed to the forefront of my mind:
What’s the most sensitive way to express skepticism toward a war veteran’s stories from battle?
My answer was as raw, unfiltered, and scathing as I’ve ever gotten. Fair warning and full disclosure: If you have a weak stomach when it comes to blood and carnage, this Diary entry is not for you:
Umm, so, let me ask you a question, “Anonymous.” When’s the last time you witnessed someone’s head getting blown off two feet in front of you? When’s the last time you had to pick someone’s arms and legs off your own face? When’s the last time you had to throw an M26A1 into a village full of women, children, and babies, then “watch a young girl cry and her mother scream,” knowing full damn fucking well it was you who’d be making those angels fly away? When’s the last time you hid in a trench while LITERAL hell on fucking Earth was airborne over your back and all you could do was pray to GOD that you’d get to see your family’s faces again?
Unless or until you can get back to me with the firm date and time that you had to participate in any of the living nightmares listed above in the name of your god and your country, and tell me how you “just got over it,” I think you should go wash your brain out with either a bucket of soap and water or some battery acid.
I mean, seriously? I’ve never been in the military or an actual war, but I have watched my own child die in my arms, watched the first true love of my life hit a brick wall on his Harley going 90 with no helmet (to which my immediate response was to actually attempt to put his brains back into his head to no avail), and I also live with the daily knowledge that the second true love of my life, my late husband, blew his own fucking brains out in a dirt lot a block away from our home that I still live in but can’t move away from until our daughter graduates high school, because I’m trying desperately to keep things “stable” for her to the best of my human ability despite the fact that I have to drive the FUCK by “the spot” sometimes multiple times a day.
I also bear the honor of being related to a retired brigadier general, and have spent time in the company of many other combat veterans I’ve been in PTSD group therapies with over the years. As such, I’ve “heard stories” that I’ll never get to unhear or forget. As it turns out, NOT dying with your boots on is one of the cruelest ironies of all and can keep a soldier “dead alive” in a mental prison on the exact “Wrong Side Of Heaven” forever.
My point being this: Who the fuck are you to question the validity of a war veteran’s “stories”? PTSD is a bastard fucking demon like no other on the face of this Earth, and if, as I suspect, you haven’t ever tried it, I cannot NOT recommend it enough. Maybe then you’ll know better than to write unacceptable, bullshit questions like this ever again.
Fuck you, ya Jean-Claude Van DAMN little mega douche.
(PS) I hope this answer wasn’t too “insensitive” for you!
Five Finger Death Punch’s “Wrong Side of Heaven” lives in the impossible space between guilt and grace—where someone can feel abandoned by God, mirrored by the devil, unsure of right and wrong, and trapped between what they’ve survived and what they still have to carry.
— Inspired by “Wrong Side of Heaven,” Five Finger Death Punch
My son started singing “Hold My Hand” at around age three, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to literally take and “hold my hand” as we walked through any public space we traversed together as he belted it out loud for the world to hear. Not long after, another one cued up while I was driving him to school one morning. “A Song For Mama”. Ugh! He reached across the console and “held my hand” yet again and I sobbed like a baby girl. Years later, it was our bittersweet “Mother/Son” dance at The Frog & The Butterfly. That being said, have any of you ever really listened to the words?
You taught me everything and everything you’ve given me – I’ll always keep it inside. You’re the driving force in my life. There isn’t anything or anyone that I could be, and it just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t have you by my side. You were there for me to love and care for me when skies were gray. Whenever I was down, you were always there to comfort me, and no one else can be what you have been to me. You will always be the girl in my life for all times. Mama you know I love you. Mama you’re the queen of my heart. Your love is like tears from the stars, yes it is. Mama I just want you to know lovin’ you is like food to my soul. You’re always there for me, have always been around for me even when I was bad. You showed me right from my wrong. Yes you did. And you took up for me when everyone was downin’ me. You always did understand. You gave me strength to go on. There were so many times looking back when I was so afraid, and then you’d come to me and say to me I can face anything. And no one else can do what you have done for me. You’ll always be the girl in my life. Mama you know I love you. Mama you’re the queen of my heart. Your love is like tears from the stars. Mama I just want you to know – Lovin’ you is like food to my soul. Never gonna go a day without you. {Boyz II Men}
So, imagine you’re an impressionable young boy—or even a grown man—who’s never had a mama to sing these words to. Worse yet, imagine you’re a boy whose “mama” just got up and bolted because she was a self-consumed, vile excuse of a woman who took the utmost honor of motherhood and spat both it and her children upon the ground? Meanwhile, it seems that lately “all men are the devil” is the flavor of the day, but I gotta tell ya, those words will bring the actual DEVIL out of me! Unless you can prove that you have, indeed, known every man who is now or ever was, then bashing “all men” makes you a moron and a bigot. More so than that, however …
Anything men can do, WE can do better!
Well, then SUCK IT UP Rosie The Riveter, come down from your sanctimony, and shove that fuckin’ hammer that destroyed “the heart of the home” as the world once knew it right up your “I AM WOMAN! HEAR ME HAMMER!” ass, ’cause with that train of thought …
Anything MEN can fuck up, WE can fuck up BETTER!
Hey, ladies? Sometimes, when you’re dealing with a “devil of a man,” the best thing to do is take a good hard look in the mirror. Have any of you ever stopped to consider that maybe you’re the one manifesting the devil out of him? Ya get what ya give. Know what I’m sayin’? And by the way, don’t forget where we came from:
THEIR RIB!
I’m an ecumenical abuser, my friends. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, so let’s stop pointing fingers at the other gender and do a better job managing our own “roles” and business.
For fuck’s sake, the last time I checked, most people don’t even know what they want or need from the opposite sex, and God forbid a man try to tell a woman what he needs, lest he be dubbed “weak”, shamed for showing his emotions, and emasculated for having (… drum roll, please …) “feelings”! I literally just puked in my own mouth!
We’re ALL human!
We’re ALL a hot mess!
We ALL make mistakes!
We can ALL be the devil from time to time!
The sobering truth is that the woman’s hand was meant to rock the cradle, not destroy it! We’re the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the stars and the entire COSMOS to the babies we carry. Even wild animals know this to be true and often do much better jobs raising their young than some of those “things” running around this bitch with wombs. I mean, HELLO? Do you KNOW where the black hole my husband finally succumbed to the night he swallowed that hollow point began? His “mother THING” threw him away the day he was born. Yet, even CROCODILE “mamas” instinctually know better than to either CAUSE or BRING harm to their nest.
But I’ve digressed …
Now, does a good, strong, emotionally wealthy and present father bear any value in raising a child? OF COURSE HE DOES! Do ya think I’m effing stupid? But you see, “mother love” is the fuel that supplies this world with the most valuable energy of all, and as that supply is steadily dwindling, huMANity is fucking FLAILING!
“Mama” is the only one who can make a human being, so “mama” is the one who wields the most power to SHATTER a human being irreparably. For every toxic “devil of a man” roaming this planet and giving “some men” a really bad rap, chances are that you can trace his fucked up ways back to the hands of a worthless “mama” who didn’t rock his cradle. Sorry. NOT sorry! It’s the Jean-Claude Van DAMN cold hard truth, and I don’tcare what anyone has to say about it.
I thank GOD for the truly good men in this world. I respect them, value them, worry for them, and PRAY FOR THEM! I cherish and HONOR men as the strong towers they were intended to be. You see, I am a woman who’s been lucky enough to have been loved by not one, but TWO of the most beautiful KINGS who ever walked this Earth (make that three if you count my son) and often thank God that I wasn’t actually BORN a man. From the moment they draw their first breath, they’re expected to bear the literal weight of the world on their shoulders, and “stay at home trophy husband” usually ain’t an option for ’em. It’s a brutal reality that so many women take for granted.
If you are a man-hating biotch, you are NOT my people. Actually? You’re gross and the majority of what’s wrong with this world we’re ALL fucking up. So, take your “toxic masculinity” double standards of BULLSHIT back home to your family, cook some fuckin’ chicken for the man in your life if you’re lucky enough to have one, and get the HELL out of my Diary PRONTO!
Oh, and one last thing …
If you’re a man who’s reading this right now and thinking that every woman in this world wants your head on a stake and for you to burn in an actual place called Hell, here’s at least one woman that “sees you”. I’m especially sorry if you’re a motherless son due to the unnatural cause of “her choice”. That sucks, it’s not fair, and there’s a silent tear eternally running through my soul for you every day.
