I was working one morning at Reverie Coffeehouse, sitting in the corner where they keep the kid's toys. A mom was there with her coffee. Her son was playing on the floor.
That corner has a little of everything in it. Trucks, blocks and dolls, all in the same pile. The little boy picked up a doll, walked over to me, and held it up.
"My baby."
Here's the part I love. He didn't show his mom. She was two feet away. He brought it to a man he had never met, and he did it with pride. Nobody had told him yet that a man might be the person you hide it from.
His mom told me he's two and a half. He has eight younger cousins, and he's the nurturer of the group. That's her word. Nurturer.
I couldn't stop thinking about therapist Terry Real and what he calls the halving. You take a whole human being, draw a line down the center, and call one side masculine and the other feminine. Strength, competence and aggression on one side. Dependency, expressiveness and nurture on the other. Real says that line comes down on boys as early as three.
Nurture is the exact word his mom used, with pride, about her son. It sits on the other side of the line.
So that boy might have 6-month. Or a couple of years if he’s lucky. And I keep thinking about my own version. I was the boy who played with dolls. The boy who loved his pet rabbit, Cupcake. The boy who cried every time he heard "We Are the World." Somewhere along the way I put him away in pieces small enough that I never noticed any of them leaving.
That's why Heart-Strong is building Project Little You.
Read the full piece on Substack.
Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org
