Exploring Societies Male Grief Expectations

I have a confession to make.

I cried when my wife Jane died of leukemia on April 3rd, 2017.

Uncontrollable sobs. Running nose. Watering eyes. A full and complete meltdown.

I did this after the fire department came to pronounce her dead, the coroner came to certify that there was no foul play, they zipped her up in a body bag, wheeled her down the two flights of narrow stairs on a ratty old purble gurney, my in-laws and brother-in-law left, and I was alone in our apartment.

Alone with the grief of realizing that I would never talk to her again.

Never kiss her.

Never hear her laugh.

I waited to ball my eyes out because I was taught to suck it up. 

Walk it off.

It’s just a scratch.

Boys (Men) don’t cry.

Thus began my journey into understanding my grief over Jane dying, how to express it, and more importantly, how to talk about it.

How to Express the Emotions You Feel

Crying, like laughing, expresses your inner feelings to the rest of the world. Unlike laughing, which is acceptable for anyone to do, crying has a stigma for men that’s rooted deep into our culture and is making men both sick and distraught.

For men, well most men, the expression of a vulnerable emotion, one that exposes your weaknesses, is more frightening than the dumps of cortisol that slowly eat at your insides. Some even find it so unpalatable that they would rather take their own life than deal with it.

The Complex Emotions of Grief Brought About by Trauma

In his book, The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, explains how our bodies react to and absorb trauma. This accumulation of trauma leads to all sorts of physical and mental abnormalities that create a cycle that is hard to break out of.

Coupling that with an unwillingness to express a natural emotion, at the time it’s occurring, makes it even more difficult for men to release the tensions that get locked down deep inside.

“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives,” says Dr. van der Kolk. 

It’s this challenge of feeling safe to express oneself that men struggle with and society reinforces.

This gets even worse when dealing with a stressful, traumatic situation where you have to make life or death decisions all while trying to suppress your grief so you can give the impression that you have your act together. 

Some Perspective

Let’s step back a bit and take a more pragmatic view of grief and the expectations that society has on men.

One of the best phrases I like to use to encapsulate the general view of grief is

It’s okay for women to cry but not get angry.

It’s okay for men to get angry but not cry.

This view seems to encapsulate the problem since both anger and crying are emotions all humans can (and must) express yet the stereotype that men should not show their grief stems from society's expectations that men remain stoic in the face of challenging times. Men’s job is to protect the tribe from aggression and to be ever vigilant.

This responsibility does not lend itself to being vulnerable and expressing grief.

Some Hope

I do have some hope that attitudes will change, not from general society but from the military, who recognize the fact that 22 service members commit suicide every day.

Most of those suicides are men that have lost their support network and can’t express the grief and sorrow over the loss of meaning and direction in their life. This is similar to the challenges that many men face nowadays in a world that continues to stratify towards accomplishment and less towards being valuable as a human being.

Some Actions

Grief comes in many different forms. The grief I’m most familiar with is over the death of a spouse.

What’s tricky about death is that society does not handle it well. In the US, we’re all about the happy ending, everything is Instagram awesome, and I can handle anything.

This is blatantly wrong.

What I have found is that when most folks deal with a grieving man, they tend to get stuck in an empathy loop that freezes them into platitudes like “sorry for your loss” or my favorite “Anything I can do to help?”

In order to escape the empathy loop, we should try to rapidly move to compassion so you can take action to engage in the uncomfortable, messy, and difficult work of processing grief.

Here are a few things that I have found that help me and those around me process grief.

  1. Get past platitudes and take action. Simple things like “I’m going to the store, need anything?” Or “I’m trying a new restaurant, want to come?”

  2. Ask a specific question about the dead person like their name, favorite food, what they loved about them, etc.

  3. Listen and don’t give advice unless asked. It’s tempting to want to help but listening is the best way to support someone.

  4. Acknowledge that what happened was horrible. Don’t try and justify whatever happened.

  5. Have a ritual that you can commit to. Like “I’ll call you next week” or “coffee in two weeks”, etc. If you can’t commit, don’t.

Small Things Matter

One last thing that’s important to remember is that the small things matter to a grieving man. There are no magic solutions or a single thing that will solve a man’s grief. Rather, it’s the little, consistent things that build over time. It’s the support that’s both present in the moment or the feeling that you’re not alone that makes a difference. It’s this connection to others and that someone cares about you is what all people, especially men, need while grieving and we as a society struggle to provide them.

Jarie Bolander caught the startup bug right after graduating from San Jose State University in 1995 with a degree in electrical engineering. With 6 startups, 7.75 books, and 10 patents under his belt, his experience runs the gamut from semiconductors to life sciences to nonprofits. He also hosts a podcast called The Entrepreneur Ethos, which is based on his last book by the same name. When he’s not helping clients convert a concept to a viable strategy, he can be found on the Jiu-Jitsu mat (he’s a blue belt), interviewing entrepreneurs on his podcast, or researching the latest in earthship construction techniques. He’s engaged to a wonderful woman named Minerva, her daughter, and their Bernedoodle, Sage. Currently, Jarie lives and works in San Francisco, where he works as head of market strategy for Decision Counsel, a B2B growth consulting firm.

Jacqueline Vogtman on A Mother’s Magic

by: Jacqueline Vogtman

In an episode of True Blood, a guilty-pleasure HBO show I watched religiously in my 20s, the vampire Bill Compton says something I always found profound (particularly for TV): “You think that it’s not magic that keeps you alive? Just because you understand the mechanics of how something works, doesn’t make it any less of a miracle…which is just another word for magic. We’re all kept alive by magic, Sookie.”

I’ve been writing magical realist short stories now for about 18 years, since my final year of undergrad, and all throughout my MFA program and beyond I’ve returned to magical realism and its sisters, fabulism and speculative fiction, though I’ve tried out other types of writing. For me, though, magic doesn’t conjure (get it?) wizards and Harry Potter, or witches or Tarot cards or vampires. I find magic in our real world, particularly our natural world, and yes, also in being a mother. 

When I was pregnant back in 2013-2014, I marveled at the miraculous changes in my body, that first kick, that first heartbeat, and the sheer fact that we created something—a whole being, soul included—out of nothing. (Well, I know it’s not really out of nothing; I wasn’t absent during sex-ed class.) And even after my daughter was born, the magic didn’t stop, and still hasn’t stopped eight years later. 

I was particularly fascinated by breast milk, how a newly-born infant will sometimes squirm its own way up a mother’s body to get at it, how the first drops of colostrum carry protective benefits, how the composition of breast milk will change over time to adapt to the baby’s age and health, how my body would let milk down at the mere thought of my child or her cry in another room. All of this is not to say breastfeeding wasn’t very hard—it was, let me tell you, and I almost didn’t make it through—and I know that some parents are not able to or choose not to breastfeed, and that does not make their nourishment of their children any less magical. But for me, the idea of breast milk was a profound mixture of science and magic, biology and spirituality.

For a long time after my daughter was born, I didn’t write. When I finally did, the first story I wrote featured the magic of breast milk (though this was capitalized on by the patriarchal-capitalist system in a near-future semi-dystopia). The story was titled “Girl Country,” and it became the title story of my first published book, coming out from Dzanc Books in May 2023. Many of the stories in my collection focus on mothers and children because I find magic every day in raising my daughter. From watching her grow taller overnight, to that first tooth that fell out and then miraculously grew back, to creating imaginary worlds with her toys, to exploring the budding plants in our backyard, to watching deer dance in a field, to that first word read and that first story and poem written: all of it is magic, and I hope she grows up knowing this too. 

Jacqueline Vogtman won the 2021 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, and her book Girl Country will be published by Dzanc Books in May 2023. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, and her fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Permafrost, The Literary Review, Third Coast, Smokelong Quarterly, and other journals. She is currently Associate Professor of English at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey and resides in a small town surrounded by nature, which she explores with her husband, daughter, and dog. Find her on Instagram @jacquelinevogtman and online at jacquelinevogtman.com.

Jacqueline Friedland on What Makes a Female Character “Strong”? Then v. Now

If you are a regular reader of women’s fiction, you’ve probably heard the phrase “strong female character” thrown around with increasing frequency these days. Many of us are in favor of reading books that feature strong female leads, but most bookstore or library patrons don’t stop to consider what it actually means to be a “strong woman” within a story or elsewhere. Once we begin to examine this phrasing, it becomes apparent that as a society, our collective modern-day definition of a “strong woman” has evolved over time and is currently very different from what it once was. 

There have long been multiple definitions of “strength.” For starters, we must acknowledge the fact that strength can refer to superior physical prowess or to a hearty metaphorical backbone, meaning how someone behaves. Let’s start with the easy one: physical strength. Back in the day, (think Victorian times or even earlier), a woman could be considered strong for obvious reasons, like being able to carry multiple heavy buckets of water uphill from the well or heave large piles of laundered clothing along with herself while climbing a ladder up from a cellar. These domestic skills, as well as capability with tasks like sewing, laundering, cooking, and cleaning, were the ones that led a woman to be respected. Even better was if the woman had a body strong enough to birth multiple healthy children, providing her husband with offspring to help work the land or heirs to carry on the family legacy. These were the accomplishments that society applauded, and so a woman who could achieve them with ease was valued for her strength. Today, many women are still engaged in physical labor that requires great strength, but the activities which society values have changed. Now, if asked about females with physical strength, many people would look to professional athletes as the pinnacles of success. Where a useful and industrious homemaker would once have been considered a great asset, domestic work is less valued today than it was in centuries past. With more women working outside the home, new metrics are being used to evaluate female strength.

Long ago, a woman was admired if she had moral virtue, religious piety, modesty, and a strong work ethic. Most of all, self-sacrifice was the utmost commendable trait. Women were believed to be the moral touchstones and influencers for their families. Thanks to restrictive gender roles and pre-set expectations, there wasn’t much a woman could do to impact those around herself in ways that would be considered positive, other than keeping a tidy home, instructing her children in manners, and performing other wifely duties with grace and skill. 

Luckily, there were women who broke the mold, even during those restrictive eras long ago, and acted in ways that those of us with more modern sensibilities would consider to be deserving of the highest praise. We are all aware that women are conspicuously absent from the historical record. It’s not because they weren’t participating in the major events of their day. They just had to do it behind closed doors. Becoming involved in matters outside the domestic sphere required a level of creativity and bravery well beyond what most of us can imagine. 

One woman who challenged her times by participating in activist activities in the form of abolitionist endeavors, is Ann Phillips, who was an American hero born in the early 1800s. Physically, Ann was the opposite of strong. She suffered from a mysterious illness that was never diagnosed and which left her bedridden for days at a time. It is widely conjectured now that the condition she had was rheumatoid arthritis, but that autoimmune condition had not yet been discovered during Ann’s day. Because of her symptoms, poor Ann was often prevented from leaving her house for weeks on end. Even so, she managed to find ways to continue spreading the abolitionist message. Whether by writing speeches for her husband, the great orator Wendell Phillips, to deliver in public or by sending letters that helped create and solidify clandestine abolitionist plans, Ann did not give up. She was a pinnacle of what people in modern times would consider a “strong woman.” 

Now, in 2023, the definition of “strength” continues to evolve. We live in time where women no longer aspire to beauty and domestic bliss as the be-all-end-all. Women aspire to this amorphous concept of strength, which is now associated with resilience, empathy, vulnerability (all of which were qualities that Ann displayed in spades during the antebellum era). A person need only scroll through a social media site to see mothers wishing daughters happy birthday with messages like: “to my strong, resilient, brave, empathetic daughter.” This is vastly different from the wishes sent to women in greeting cards of generations past, that read: “to my beautiful daughter,” or “to the prettiest girl in town.” Similarly, when “influencers” first appeared on social media, advertisers tried to show us all the beautiful people as a way to convince us to buy whatever they were selling. Now, the advertisers have wised up, and they are showing us “real” people instead, people who look like us, women who aren’t wearing makeup, or who didn’t have time for a salon blowout before the photo shoot. We are moving away from images of perfection toward a more realistic approach because society has come to appreciate that a woman cannot be strong without being her authentic self. 

A strong woman seeks happiness actively. She challenges herself and those around her. Strength is no longer about heavy lifting or individual achievement so much as it is about collective empowerment. No longer is a strong woman the one who can make the floor shine brightest with her mop. It is the women who engage, create, resist, persist, and who lift the rest of us up along with them who are ultimately the strongest women of all.

Jacqueline Friedland is the USA Today best-selling and multi-award-winning author of He Gets That From Me, That's Not a Thing, and Trouble the Water. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School, she practiced briefly as a commercial litigator in Manhattan and taught Legal Writing and Lawyering Skills at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. She returned to school after not too long in the legal world, earning her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Jacqueline regularly reviews fiction for trade publications and appears as a guest lecturer. When not writing, she loves to exercise, watch movies with her family, listen to music, make lists, and dream about exotic vacations. She lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband, four children, and two very lovable dogs.