I’m the grandma of a little boy. He is 2 1/2. My heart is so full of love for him. I want to be there for him, to listen, love, counsel, encourage beatitude understanding, spiritual fruits, seeing people from different perspectives, walking a mile in someone else’s shoes before we judge.
I have a granddaughter who is 1 1/2. When she came along, my heart immediately expanded with another miraculous gush of compassion, care, love. I want to be there for her. I want to listen, love, counsel, encourage beautitude understanding of us and others. I want to help her find and nurture the fruits of the spirit.
Where are the grandparents? We have an amazing and special role. I am only 5 minutes away from these grands. I am blessed to come and play with them, care for them, share stories with them, and hear their stories.
If you are blessed to be a grand. Do not hide behind a scrolling cell phone. If you are close, get closer and go listen. Don’t judge, listen for the children’s hearts. Your heart knows the way. If your u are far away, you are still a phone call or FaceTime away. Check in. Listen. Love.
If you are judgmental toward your kids, reconsider. Maybe you have broken relationships, and that brokenness is being reflected in your kids and grands. Step back. Seek help finding a way to honestly observe. You see, you had a hand in it. You have to see that. You have to acknowledge that. You have to lay it down. You have to find another way.
We have hard work to do if we are going to honestly help our lonely, frightened children. Grandfolks, we can play a role. I know this is hard. I know it because I had to imperfectly step into this messy process of laying down judgement, learning to listen, learning to love. I’m still in it. It goes backwards into your relationships with your parents and the thoughts you brought forward. It goes forward into how you love your spouse, how you love your kids, how you love your grands, how you love your friends and neighbors.
Our hearts have amazing capabilities. They are full of bullet holes, scars, leaks. And yet, they are capable of mending, expanding, changing, growing. But we can’t deny the state of our hearts and expect others to change to fit our ideas and needs. We have to do the work of seeing what scarred us. Seeing where we have holes that need to mend. Seek help in the mending. Seek spiritual help, mental help, physical help. We heal in community, not in isolation.
Keep your eye on the prize. We do this for the children. The one and two year olds who are fresh and full of all emotions. But we hold space and open arms for the older ones too. Who else can help them navigate their woundedness?
Don’t give up on yourself, don’t give up on the children, don’t give up on the community. 💔❤️🩹❤️
I love this. I also believe our social sickness could be healed with more village for our youth. Our mobile society, with its emphasis on $, has led more parents and children to be more isolated, without aunties and uncles and grandparents, and the pandemic made it worse. I hardly knew my only auntie, and my grandparents lived far away. I had one cousin on the other end of the country. Now I'm fortunate to have my mom and dad in town. It's a small village, but it's something.
Interesting as usual Summer. I once was a bullied sensitive child. Then I became a bully. There were lots of dark reasons for that.
I never cried out for help, because I was told, therefore it was so, that men don’t cry. Then I became a man, a soldier, a spouse, a parent, and a cop, in that order.
In my forties, I realized that my life and parenting were a parody of Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle song. My boys were just like me. And I was just like who raised me.
It took a lot of time introspection and stop & start effort (and some counseling) to drop the facade. It occurred to me once, maybe more than once, that men do cry. Usually alone. And that that’s alright.
I made my apologies to whomever I needed to apologize to. I broke a generational cycle. It is a wobbly wheeled cart, but it works and we rode it out of the chaos. Life still gets in the way and we are far from perfect, but I am friends with my adult children. I respect myself. I know who and what I am. It took a long time.
Some of the best counseling was free to me, just like it is free to men in foxholes, or struggling moms over coffee and cigarettes. It took place in dark patrol cars in the middle of the night as the miles clicked by. A trusted partner, male or female, whom you might die with or for at any moment, becomes a true friend. You bare your souls to one another in between calls. You bond for life. You are closer to a good partner, a battle buddy, or that tortured other struggling mom than to your spouse. And what a rare thing that is. It is unknown to most of the lone wolves who cry for help. That is a sad thing. I fear for us.
Well damn, your words just made me cry. Thank you for sharing you story. And it gives me hope that even cops can "get free counseling" as you suggest, confiding in a trusted confidante in a dark patrol car in the middle of the night.
The wall-to-wall coverage of the Trump shooting has been missing this important note and I thank you, Summer Koester, for identifying the irony in the incident. Trump, who we all know is a bully, was shot by a lone gunman, a very young man who was himself the victim of bullying. Shootings have become a uniquely American behavior and it's now what both defines us and tears open the deep wounding we're inflicting on young men.
"My therapist says we can only heal from trauma when someone else sees, hears, and sits with us in our suffering. After all, the root of compassion is to suffer with.
Anglo-American boys don’t have that. We’re raising a culture of “lone wolves” with few ears and eyes to hold their feelings. Boys are supposed to be strong and tough. Feelings demonstrate weakness. Weakness leads to bullying."
Bullied kids become bullies when they don't have the support of loving parents (of if a parent is the bully). My son was bullied when he was younger and now runs a day camp and after school program that is based on inclusion and joy. He promotes everyone making friends, having fun, and being a kid. It breaks my heart to know that he was bullied (he didn't tell us for years), but he has used that to ensure that other kids don't go through what he did.
The importance of love, showing emotions, and allowing boys to feel more emotions than anger and stress is so critical to their development. If they are allowed to feel the full range of human emotions, they will feel better about themselves.
So true, and I'm so sorry your son went through that, and it's wonderful to see him alchemize his hurt by helping others not go through the same thing. What an incredible success story! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Summer. You have a singular and valuable perspective. I'm grateful. I teach college and I will be sharing some of your essays on raising boys and masculinity with my gender history students this fall. I appreciate that you have focused on the person we have really lost, the young bullied man. Every time I hear the news, that he was shot by the secret service, my mind (that also wants to change the ending of Romeo and Juliet) protests. I think his death, (despite the calls to forget his name as if that is antidote to these events, rather than the reformation of the structural violence you describe so effectively) is the most important part of this story. I myself am terrorized by the narrative being spun about our system and about this election. How is he, this very young person with access to a gun, supposed to respond to that? Why not heroically, trying to give us the relief we need from this danger. That is definitely a masculine narrative. The story of a martyr. And sadly, not what we want or need.
So true! Thank you for mentioning how "the reformation of the structural violence you describe so effectively) is the most important part of this story." That's the part we so often forget, that we are not as self sovereign as we think, but all part of the web woven around us, and even our thoughts are often narrated to us by others. And I would be THRILLED if you shared any of my essays to your students! Wow, what a compliment!!!
I’ve been saying for years that if you had a line up to identify someone, modern American Christians couldn’t distinguish between Adam Smith and Jesus Christ. Yet they have no idea how far they’ve fallen. It’s easy to believe in Jesus, another thing entirely to walk that walk and be Jesus in how you examine your own life and conduct yourself. Never a bad time to pause, reflect, and correct. Thank you for posting this.
I would take issue with this. I too, am profoundly angry about this, but I know people I work with, and have family that that falls into this category, and mostly they, as individuals, wouldn’t harm anyone. They are generally not educated in ways that make the translation from scripture to politics possible, much less adding analysis of the pros and cons of any given position. They are trained from birth to accept what their pastors tell them. When Fox News and the conservative media ecosystem take advantage of that trust and deliberately mislead, they lack the tools to resist. So don’t see where name calling of a whole group of people accomplishes anything productive. Never mistake the poisoned for the poisoner. Go ahead and mock, insult, and take to task those that do this… but class action insults just make it worse. Be better than that… or at least try. I will too. Thanks
I’m not name calling. FFS man, calling a spade a spade is a mark of character.
I possess two graduate degrees from the finest school of the subject in the country. I have the ability to critically think. I’m every bit as busy as anyone with multiple projects. Performed at an extremely professional level.
I also spent my childhood in Cornfield, MO.
Graduate class of 31 people. An hour to a quasi-major airport in big town. Six hours to a true city.
Surrounded by a population of #NewsForDumbFox viewers.
We have a lot in common. Sorry to have jumped on you. I have done worse, and I also have a thing for calling a spade a spade. We’re closer to being friends and brothers than we are adversaries. Thanks.
After growing up in a hardcore southern Baptist church and turning away from religion completely, I read sermon on the mount in my early twenties and was blown away by the beauty, the wisdom, and the poetry of it. I couldn't believe, based on my experience in church, that this came from the same religion I was raised to believe. I had received a much more brutish, bloody version -- a version hyperfocused on the sacrifice of Christ's life for our sins. Most Christians I know are CRINOs and can't stomach the idea of unconditional love, surrender, and forgiveness. Meanwhile, these are the very values that all young people in the world need right now. And they don't necessarily have to get them in a religious context. We have got to build bridges back to one another, stop finding an "other" to blame, and provide hope and community for young people, or we are finished.
As far young men in their actions, I think it’s a combination of toxic soup in which we dwell, the silt shallowing the gene pool, and societal expectations. In my experience people, especially children, do what is expected of them, mostly.
How sad and depressing (and ironic) it is that the secret service is spread so thin and can’t protect Trump due to political violence that he himself is responsible for.
“Like it or not, we are all raising each other’s kids”
I hate it. We shouldn’t be raising each other’s kids. Our system of forcing children out of their loving homes into prison schools is insane. Thomas Matthew Crooks had a face only a mother could love, but he was forced to spend most of his waking hours in a social environment distinguished from “The Lord of the Flies” only by the presence of adults who were as indifferent and/or hostile to him as the students
It's truly tragic. At the same time, I wish more of us would help raise each other's kids. It truly does take a village, and we've lost the village, which helps buffer us from the hardships of the world. Studies showed that kids with the most adverse childhood experiences who were able to overcome their traumas did so with more caring adults involved in their lives. So we really need to educate all adults, not just the parents.
If the village is a true community, and is extended family, as it was traditionally. As is, most current communities are simply an aggregation of atomized individuals. We can return to true community, which wasn’t really very long ago, as history goes
I’m the grandma of a little boy. He is 2 1/2. My heart is so full of love for him. I want to be there for him, to listen, love, counsel, encourage beatitude understanding, spiritual fruits, seeing people from different perspectives, walking a mile in someone else’s shoes before we judge.
I have a granddaughter who is 1 1/2. When she came along, my heart immediately expanded with another miraculous gush of compassion, care, love. I want to be there for her. I want to listen, love, counsel, encourage beautitude understanding of us and others. I want to help her find and nurture the fruits of the spirit.
Where are the grandparents? We have an amazing and special role. I am only 5 minutes away from these grands. I am blessed to come and play with them, care for them, share stories with them, and hear their stories.
If you are blessed to be a grand. Do not hide behind a scrolling cell phone. If you are close, get closer and go listen. Don’t judge, listen for the children’s hearts. Your heart knows the way. If your u are far away, you are still a phone call or FaceTime away. Check in. Listen. Love.
If you are judgmental toward your kids, reconsider. Maybe you have broken relationships, and that brokenness is being reflected in your kids and grands. Step back. Seek help finding a way to honestly observe. You see, you had a hand in it. You have to see that. You have to acknowledge that. You have to lay it down. You have to find another way.
We have hard work to do if we are going to honestly help our lonely, frightened children. Grandfolks, we can play a role. I know this is hard. I know it because I had to imperfectly step into this messy process of laying down judgement, learning to listen, learning to love. I’m still in it. It goes backwards into your relationships with your parents and the thoughts you brought forward. It goes forward into how you love your spouse, how you love your kids, how you love your grands, how you love your friends and neighbors.
Our hearts have amazing capabilities. They are full of bullet holes, scars, leaks. And yet, they are capable of mending, expanding, changing, growing. But we can’t deny the state of our hearts and expect others to change to fit our ideas and needs. We have to do the work of seeing what scarred us. Seeing where we have holes that need to mend. Seek help in the mending. Seek spiritual help, mental help, physical help. We heal in community, not in isolation.
Keep your eye on the prize. We do this for the children. The one and two year olds who are fresh and full of all emotions. But we hold space and open arms for the older ones too. Who else can help them navigate their woundedness?
Don’t give up on yourself, don’t give up on the children, don’t give up on the community. 💔❤️🩹❤️
I love this. I also believe our social sickness could be healed with more village for our youth. Our mobile society, with its emphasis on $, has led more parents and children to be more isolated, without aunties and uncles and grandparents, and the pandemic made it worse. I hardly knew my only auntie, and my grandparents lived far away. I had one cousin on the other end of the country. Now I'm fortunate to have my mom and dad in town. It's a small village, but it's something.
Having a village is huge. As a parent, I never would have found my way to healing without my friends, my church, my family and some good therapy!
I share that belief. There’s always a caveat, darn it.
It’s really hard to create community, when you haven’t experienced community.
Thank YOU for this. More inspired than ever as we help raise grand twins.
Mine are not twins, but they sure were close together!! Double the love and twice the work!
Interesting as usual Summer. I once was a bullied sensitive child. Then I became a bully. There were lots of dark reasons for that.
I never cried out for help, because I was told, therefore it was so, that men don’t cry. Then I became a man, a soldier, a spouse, a parent, and a cop, in that order.
In my forties, I realized that my life and parenting were a parody of Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle song. My boys were just like me. And I was just like who raised me.
It took a lot of time introspection and stop & start effort (and some counseling) to drop the facade. It occurred to me once, maybe more than once, that men do cry. Usually alone. And that that’s alright.
I made my apologies to whomever I needed to apologize to. I broke a generational cycle. It is a wobbly wheeled cart, but it works and we rode it out of the chaos. Life still gets in the way and we are far from perfect, but I am friends with my adult children. I respect myself. I know who and what I am. It took a long time.
Some of the best counseling was free to me, just like it is free to men in foxholes, or struggling moms over coffee and cigarettes. It took place in dark patrol cars in the middle of the night as the miles clicked by. A trusted partner, male or female, whom you might die with or for at any moment, becomes a true friend. You bare your souls to one another in between calls. You bond for life. You are closer to a good partner, a battle buddy, or that tortured other struggling mom than to your spouse. And what a rare thing that is. It is unknown to most of the lone wolves who cry for help. That is a sad thing. I fear for us.
Well damn, your words just made me cry. Thank you for sharing you story. And it gives me hope that even cops can "get free counseling" as you suggest, confiding in a trusted confidante in a dark patrol car in the middle of the night.
Your sense of humanity is so beautiful!
Definitely worth emulation.
We can all benefit from bringing everything down to a personal, fellow human level. Thank you.
thank you for doing your work, brother. so much love to that precious little one who was bullied.
🫶🏻
Thank you for your kind words.
One of the finest, most inspiring comments I have ever read. I was very moved, humbled and inspired by your story, Robert. Thank you.
Wow. Thank you. Love Summer K.
I want to share this with the world. Are you okay with that?
I am.
Thank you !
The wall-to-wall coverage of the Trump shooting has been missing this important note and I thank you, Summer Koester, for identifying the irony in the incident. Trump, who we all know is a bully, was shot by a lone gunman, a very young man who was himself the victim of bullying. Shootings have become a uniquely American behavior and it's now what both defines us and tears open the deep wounding we're inflicting on young men.
"My therapist says we can only heal from trauma when someone else sees, hears, and sits with us in our suffering. After all, the root of compassion is to suffer with.
Anglo-American boys don’t have that. We’re raising a culture of “lone wolves” with few ears and eyes to hold their feelings. Boys are supposed to be strong and tough. Feelings demonstrate weakness. Weakness leads to bullying."
Thank you Jane for making that spot on connection.
Bullied kids become bullies when they don't have the support of loving parents (of if a parent is the bully). My son was bullied when he was younger and now runs a day camp and after school program that is based on inclusion and joy. He promotes everyone making friends, having fun, and being a kid. It breaks my heart to know that he was bullied (he didn't tell us for years), but he has used that to ensure that other kids don't go through what he did.
The importance of love, showing emotions, and allowing boys to feel more emotions than anger and stress is so critical to their development. If they are allowed to feel the full range of human emotions, they will feel better about themselves.
So true, and I'm so sorry your son went through that, and it's wonderful to see him alchemize his hurt by helping others not go through the same thing. What an incredible success story! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Summer. You have a singular and valuable perspective. I'm grateful. I teach college and I will be sharing some of your essays on raising boys and masculinity with my gender history students this fall. I appreciate that you have focused on the person we have really lost, the young bullied man. Every time I hear the news, that he was shot by the secret service, my mind (that also wants to change the ending of Romeo and Juliet) protests. I think his death, (despite the calls to forget his name as if that is antidote to these events, rather than the reformation of the structural violence you describe so effectively) is the most important part of this story. I myself am terrorized by the narrative being spun about our system and about this election. How is he, this very young person with access to a gun, supposed to respond to that? Why not heroically, trying to give us the relief we need from this danger. That is definitely a masculine narrative. The story of a martyr. And sadly, not what we want or need.
So true! Thank you for mentioning how "the reformation of the structural violence you describe so effectively) is the most important part of this story." That's the part we so often forget, that we are not as self sovereign as we think, but all part of the web woven around us, and even our thoughts are often narrated to us by others. And I would be THRILLED if you shared any of my essays to your students! Wow, what a compliment!!!
I’ve been saying for years that if you had a line up to identify someone, modern American Christians couldn’t distinguish between Adam Smith and Jesus Christ. Yet they have no idea how far they’ve fallen. It’s easy to believe in Jesus, another thing entirely to walk that walk and be Jesus in how you examine your own life and conduct yourself. Never a bad time to pause, reflect, and correct. Thank you for posting this.
Thank you, and so true. Christ's teachings are so in contradiction to what so many so called Christians preach!
The qualifying verbiage “American Christians” creates an incorrect statement.
The correct noun is ‘Murikkkans”
Full stop.
I would take issue with this. I too, am profoundly angry about this, but I know people I work with, and have family that that falls into this category, and mostly they, as individuals, wouldn’t harm anyone. They are generally not educated in ways that make the translation from scripture to politics possible, much less adding analysis of the pros and cons of any given position. They are trained from birth to accept what their pastors tell them. When Fox News and the conservative media ecosystem take advantage of that trust and deliberately mislead, they lack the tools to resist. So don’t see where name calling of a whole group of people accomplishes anything productive. Never mistake the poisoned for the poisoner. Go ahead and mock, insult, and take to task those that do this… but class action insults just make it worse. Be better than that… or at least try. I will too. Thanks
Just keep me away from me PR department…….
I’m not name calling. FFS man, calling a spade a spade is a mark of character.
I possess two graduate degrees from the finest school of the subject in the country. I have the ability to critically think. I’m every bit as busy as anyone with multiple projects. Performed at an extremely professional level.
I also spent my childhood in Cornfield, MO.
Graduate class of 31 people. An hour to a quasi-major airport in big town. Six hours to a true city.
Surrounded by a population of #NewsForDumbFox viewers.
If somebody wishes to, they can do far better.
We have a lot in common. Sorry to have jumped on you. I have done worse, and I also have a thing for calling a spade a spade. We’re closer to being friends and brothers than we are adversaries. Thanks.
So important to consider these ideas. Great piece, Summer!
Thank you, Aaron!
After growing up in a hardcore southern Baptist church and turning away from religion completely, I read sermon on the mount in my early twenties and was blown away by the beauty, the wisdom, and the poetry of it. I couldn't believe, based on my experience in church, that this came from the same religion I was raised to believe. I had received a much more brutish, bloody version -- a version hyperfocused on the sacrifice of Christ's life for our sins. Most Christians I know are CRINOs and can't stomach the idea of unconditional love, surrender, and forgiveness. Meanwhile, these are the very values that all young people in the world need right now. And they don't necessarily have to get them in a religious context. We have got to build bridges back to one another, stop finding an "other" to blame, and provide hope and community for young people, or we are finished.
Totally agree! Thanks for your comment, James.
As far young men in their actions, I think it’s a combination of toxic soup in which we dwell, the silt shallowing the gene pool, and societal expectations. In my experience people, especially children, do what is expected of them, mostly.
Agreed
Another wonderful thoughtful piece of writing. Thank you.
Thank you, Sue!
We all need to do our best to raise peaceful and loving children.
Thanks for posting, Summer.
Thank you, Diana!
How sad and depressing (and ironic) it is that the secret service is spread so thin and can’t protect Trump due to political violence that he himself is responsible for.
Indeed. Now Trump is calling the kettle black. Very ironic.
“Like it or not, we are all raising each other’s kids”
I hate it. We shouldn’t be raising each other’s kids. Our system of forcing children out of their loving homes into prison schools is insane. Thomas Matthew Crooks had a face only a mother could love, but he was forced to spend most of his waking hours in a social environment distinguished from “The Lord of the Flies” only by the presence of adults who were as indifferent and/or hostile to him as the students
It's truly tragic. At the same time, I wish more of us would help raise each other's kids. It truly does take a village, and we've lost the village, which helps buffer us from the hardships of the world. Studies showed that kids with the most adverse childhood experiences who were able to overcome their traumas did so with more caring adults involved in their lives. So we really need to educate all adults, not just the parents.
If the village is a true community, and is extended family, as it was traditionally. As is, most current communities are simply an aggregation of atomized individuals. We can return to true community, which wasn’t really very long ago, as history goes
It’s true. Nowadays, our communities tend to be more disconnected parts sharing space but little else.
Brilliant piece, Ms Summer.
Thanks so much, Hudson!
🫵💪✌️🫶🤙🌹
Thank you for including the link to the oil rig story. That was amazing and I wish it was something more men and boys could participate in!
Right?!