It was late.

One of those heavy, quiet nights where time seems to slow down just enough for the truth to finally surface.

We were sitting on my porch.
The air was still warm from the day.
Streetlights humming.
A half-finished drink sweating on the table between us.

He stared out at nothing in particular.
Fingers tapping the rim of his glass.
And then he said, almost like he was talking to himself,
“I think I’ve spent most of my life trying not to feel fully.”

It’s funny…This happens to me all the time.

Sometimes with close friends but almost as often with people I’ve just met.

Something in how I move, how I speak, how I listen, but maybe mostly how I care.

People seem to want to open up and talk about those things they often feel they can’t speak about anywhere else.

It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, and though I couldn’t see it when I started to work with people, it was inevitable that I would get into coaching and facilitation.

We’re all carrying things that are not finished in us.

Some of us have the time, the space, and the people where it’s easier and more supported to get to it all. Most of us don’t.

And so we stay quiet about it.

We put on a face, and we make due with what we have.

Until, if we’re lucky, we come into contact with someone who feels different, safe.

And then, if we are willing to apply just a little bit of courage, we can speak to things that have been asking for care and attention for a long time.

I didn’t rush to respond to him.
Didn’t offer advice or some cliché about healing.
Just let the silence settle around us like a blanket.

Because I knew that feeling.
I’ve lived it.

And in that moment, I could see it all over him—
the way he carried himself like he was always bracing for impact.
The way his eyes looked tired in a way sleep couldn’t fix.

He kept talking.

“I mean, I function. I work. I joke around and laugh. I get sh*t done.
But underneath all of that…it’s like I’ve been holding my breath for years.
I don’t know how to let go of it all without falling apart. You know what I mean?”

I nodded.
Not because I had the answers, but because I understood the question.

This world teaches men early:
Don’t cry.
Don’t be weak.
Don’t f*ck up.

Be a man. Keep going.
Keep smiling.
Keep stuffing it down and calling it strength.

But what he was realizing—what most of us eventually run face-first into—
is that you can’t outrun what you refuse to feel.

Just like Bessel van der Kolk says, “The body keeps the score.”

The soul remembers.
And that pain we keep bypassing?
It doesn’t disappear.
It just consolidates, hardens.
Until one day, life cracks us open.

So I said to him, softly,
“You know…it’s not you falling apart. It’s you breaking open.
The pain isn’t here to destroy you. It’s here to guide you back to what you’ve cut yourself off from.”

He looked down.
Silent.
Eventually, I saw his shoulders drop.
Just a little.
Like some part was letting in my words even if much of him didn’t fully understand them.
Like some part of him knew it was true.

Sometimes these moments involve a big, cathartic breakthrough. It’s quite something when that happens.

But more often, something less overt, less obvious, but often just as powerful happens.

In this instance, he didn’t cry or fall into my arms.
But something shifted. He got something he had been grappling with for a long time.
A quiet surrender to the truth he’d been circling for years.

If you’re reading this and you’re still holding it all in—
still convincing yourself that numbing is strength,
that pain is the enemy,
that your feelings are too much—

Please hear this.

You don’t need to collapse.
You don’t need to be fixed.
You just need to feel.

Because pain isn’t proof that you’re weak.
It’s proof that you’re alive.
And staying alive means staying open.

Even when it hurts.
Especially when it hurts.

That night, my friend didn’t walk away with a plan.
But he walked away with a little more breath in his chest.

And maybe—just maybe—the beginning of something that could finally grow.

~