Saints for Men

Drop the act for a minute. Nobody is watching in here.

You are carrying more than you let on. Maybe it is a job that is grinding you down, or the reverse, a job going nowhere and dragging your name along with it. Maybe it is a marriage running on fumes. Maybe it is a kid you would step in front of a truck for and cannot seem to reach across the dinner table. Maybe it is a habit you have sworn off a hundred times that still keeps its hand around your throat. Or maybe it is just the low, grinding hum underneath everything, the sense that you were supposed to be further along than this by now, and no one ever handed you the map.

No one handed it to me either. That is the part nobody says out loud about being a man. You are expected to lead, to provide, to stay steady, to stay faithful, to stay strong, and you are expected to have worked out how to do all of it on your own, in silence, without ever letting the strain show. So most men white-knuckle it. They fake the competence, swallow the fear, numb the ache with whatever is close at hand, and pray nobody looks too closely.

This book is for the man who is tired of faking it.