When I heard about the 68 million men visiting a website built on the abuse of women I wasn't upset because it shocked me. I was upset because it didn't.
I work with women every day who are trying to find a good man to love and be loved by. And before we get to that, I often have to sit with what bad men did to them. The wounds. The stories. The things that happened that sometimes still leave me speechless.
I do my best to help them heal.
I've seen and heard enough to conclude that there are vile men in this world. Evil men. And they cause damage on a massive scale.
Some days that weight is hard to carry. Because the gap between what I can actually do and the scale of the problem is enormous.
I've worked with hundreds of men over eight years. Good men, mostly. Men who know they're carrying hurt and don't want to put it on women or others. Men who showed up because they wanted to be better.
But in my life I've only ever really stopped a handful of the other kind. The ones who hurt women and feel nothing about it.
And that's not enough.
I don't have a clean ending for this post. No call to action that feels adequate. I just needed to say that some of us see it. Some of us feel the weight of it. And some of us will keep doing the (small) work even when the scale of the problem makes it feel pointless.
I know it's not pointless. But today it's hard to feel that.
-Jan-Willem Van Der Heiden
I do my best to help them heal.
I've seen and heard enough to conclude that there are vile men in this world. Evil men. And they cause damage on a massive scale.
Some days that weight is hard to carry. Because the gap between what I can actually do and the scale of the problem is enormous.
I've worked with hundreds of men over eight years. Good men, mostly. Men who know they're carrying hurt and don't want to put it on women or others. Men who showed up because they wanted to be better.
But in my life I've only ever really stopped a handful of the other kind. The ones who hurt women and feel nothing about it.
And that's not enough.
I don't have a clean ending for this post. No call to action that feels adequate. I just needed to say that some of us see it. Some of us feel the weight of it. And some of us will keep doing the (small) work even when the scale of the problem makes it feel pointless.
I know it's not pointless. But today it's hard to feel that.
-Jan-Willem Van Der Heiden
