Healing in our Black MEN

Yesterday my husband asked me to attend an event with him. It was called Real Men, Real Talk and the special guest was Killer Mike. I had heard him speak on panels before about reparations and was interested in going. I asked him was I supposed to be there or was it just a men's event. He laughed and said he was probably the only one showing up with his wife.

The event begins and they separate the men and women. The men on the main floor and the woman in the balcony. It was beautiful to have a bird's eye view of all the men that had showed up for mental healing. They asked them to turn their phones off and channel in because for the next 90 minutes would probably be the only time they didn't have to worry about anything but them. The asked them to partner up. They played a song about the mask they have to wear. They asked them to place their palms together and look into each other's eyes. It was powerful to watch.

They had passed out mask to everyone with a marker. They told them to write on the outside of the mask what they thought people seen when they looked at them, and on the inside of the mask write what they were hiding. Killer Mike spoke and dropped some major gems. So much wisdom was shared in that room. Then they dismissed us into smaller groups. Men with men, and women with women. As we broke off into our groups, we all had to use the same staircase to go down. A man had his mask faced up, and it had a question mark on it. My first thought was he wasn't trying to participate, but I couldn't shake that he had just put a question mark.

It wasn't the side about what you were hiding but how people seen you. I thought about how sad it was that he couldn't even express how he thought the world viewed him. It really got my wheels turning on how important this event was. I knew that I had prayed for my husband to get around men that would tell him it is important to heal. For him to have men he could open up to and have real conversations with. To think about men who had no identity in the world was something different. I have to admit that my purpose for my husband healing felt selfish at that moment. I wanted him to heal for me and his children.

I guess because he did not care about it, I never thought about him healing for himself. I thank God for that experience yesterday. I want healing for my husband for him now. To be stronger mentally. emotionally, and spiritually. So, he doesn't question his identity in the world. So, he can move confidently and competently through this lifetime. Not as a husband or father, but as man that God created him to be. Our men need healing, and we need to be in support of them being the best whole version they can be.