A message for men’s rights activists and father’s rights activists.
NDBS was founded on the principles that men are capable of being amazing parents. It’s primary purpose is to facilitate conversation and engage men as they go through the journey of fatherhood. This brand has supporters of all kinds. We have single fathers who very rarely see their children and married fathers who are active in their children’s lives every day. For a variety of reasons and situations we have men who fall into categories of all mixtures in between those two situations.
We fundamentally believe that more support needs to go into men’s issues and men’s mental health awareness. That society needs to “lean in” just as much to men as they have women and as men we need to support each other through hardships. We have an obligation to our children to better ourselves and to become the best men we can be. However, this is not about blaming genders. This is about responsibility, understanding that things can be horribly unfair (at times) and working through them. But most importantly supporting each other through them. That’s the core of what this movement is. We want to be great dads, we are great men of all kinds and we are pushing ourselves to be better each day.
Many men who engage with this movement have gone through some incredibly tough times. A lot of times they communicate that those tough times are caused by a woman. The first step here as we have discussed many times on the We Are Better Men podcast is to understand your responsibility in the situation that happened. No, that is not justifying what was done to you, or excusing any horrible behavior but once you understand you have some responsibility in decisions you made, you can move forward with healing. You need to heal from these situations. That is the only way you can move forward with your life. For some men healing involves counselling or therapy, and for others it means 3 months in the woods hunting and meditating. Whichever works for you, is what you need to do. But you need to do it.
What we can’t do as a movement is generalize a gender and spew hatred towards to them. Systems are broken, some systematic processes are wrong, and we can work towards coming together and fixing those as they do need fixing, but we can’t let this become exactly what we feel has happened to us.
Let’s embrace the good people in our villages, in our lives and who love us. No matter their gender, no matter their status in life. If they are there for you, they are there for us.
Sincerely,
LD
NDBS Founder