Grit & Grace: Men's Mental Health & The Knife's Edge

Grit & Grace Journal: The Lost Village and the Knife's Edge

Lee J Kemp

    We live in a world obsessed with quick scrolling and short word counts, but some realities cannot be packaged neatly. Some truths demand to be read in full, because ignoring them is costing us lives.

    June is Men’s Mental Health Month. This week leads directly into Father’s Day. And as the world virtue-signals and runs marketing campaigns for a thousand other causes, the silence surrounding the men we are losing is deafening.

    Let's look at the actual data, because this isn't just about the western circuit or the rodeo—this is a massive, fatal flaw in humanity. In Canada, we lose roughly 4,500 men to suicide every year. That is 12 men a day. In the United States, a man leaves this world every 13 minutes. Worldwide, the numbers are staggering. And this Sunday, thousands of kids will wake up missing their dads because the weight of this world simply became too heavy for them to carry anymore.

    When a man falls, society often pretends to care, but they rarely read the warning signs. In the agricultural and rural world, we are conditioned to believe our strength is measured by our silence. We are told to cowboy up. So, guys don't scream. They don't ask for a parade. They just vanish.

    If a guy in your circle finally drops his guard for a fraction of a second and says, "I'm just so tired," you need to pay attention. That is the warning sign. That is a man looking for the reset button. That is the type of exhausted that a good night's sleep will never fix.

    I know this because I have been there.

    I know exactly what the knife’s edge of suicide feels like. I know how hard it is to struggle—hourly, daily, weekly, monthly—with the weight of mental health. I still battle suicidal ideations. I live it, and I breathe it. I have done the work, I have gotten the help, and I have learned the lessons required to fight the darkness back, but the threat is always standing right there at the edge of the property line. I hope I never reach that breaking point again, but it takes constant, exhausting focus on the important things in life to overpower that noise.

    There is a quote that says, "A man's suicide note is the unpublished manuscript of a story that society refused to read." We are actively refusing to read the stories of the men building our infrastructure, running our farms, and carrying the load.

    It used to be said that it takes a village to raise a child. Somewhere along the line, in this hyper-connected world of technology where we stare at screens instead of each other, we lost the village. We forgot how to actually check in. We forgot how to feel someone else's true emotions.

    It doesn't just take a village to raise a child; it takes a village to keep each and every one of us alive.

    When you are at the bottom of a deep, dark, black hole, it feels like there is absolutely no way out. But the reality is, all it takes is one single hand reaching down into the dirt to grab yours. One person saying, "I got you. I’ll pull you up. I’ll show you the way out."

    If more of us were willing to be that hand, we wouldn't be looking at 12 empty chairs at the dinner table every single day in this country.

    This month, don't just send a text. Look your buddies in the eye. Ask the hard questions. Give men the respect, the validation, and the damn week they deserve to acknowledge that they are allowed to be tired, and they are allowed to ask for help.

Be the hand reaching into the hole. We need the village back.

Resources:

• @domoreag - Mental health champions for Canadian Agriculture

• @centre_for_suicide_prevention (Buddy Up Campaign) - A call to action for men, by men.

• National Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call or text 988 (Canada)

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