麻豆约拍

I grew up on a council estate in East London where toxic masculinity was rampant and young people often wanted to harm other young people.

I鈥檝e spent lockdown writing a book all about that.

The reason I wrote it is because I realized that, for many years, a lot of the man within me was hiding away, For most of my life, I was reluctant to dig deep in case I showed my vulnerability. That would have been bad because Strong, independent, eldest-son-who-never-cries Guvna B didn鈥檛 have a shred of vulnerability.

I pretended to be Solid as a rock.

I could be angry, upset, hurt, or sad and then punch something, because that is what men did. Bare my teeth. Tighten my fist or Withstand the pain.

Phrases like be a real man, or man up, sound okay, but actually they鈥檙e disempowering for me. My most freeing moments have come from crying or being vulnerable about my struggles with people that love me. But I guess I was conditioned.

Human beings aren鈥檛 inherently bad so I feel like me and my friends were just misguided children.

I was on holiday in Ghana a couple of years ago and on the beach I watched a fisherman put a load of crabs in a bucket. Everytime one of the crabs would climb to the top of the bucket to escape, another one of the crabs would pull it down.

I believe that among human beings the 鈥榗rabs in a bucket鈥� mentality is pulling each other down because of jealousy, hate, or limited opportunities. I think too much focus is placed on the crabs (us) and not enough on the bucket (which is our environment). If the environment we grow up in enables us to thrive, then there鈥檚 no way we鈥檒l pull each other down.聽

My faith in God reminds me that there鈥檚 someone looking out for me so I shouldn鈥檛 be afraid of being vulnerable.

Hopefully my little brother and my son know that too because young people are the future.

Find a youngster and believe in them, because when the adults fail to do that, young people lose their way.

Sometimes it鈥檚 not that men don鈥檛 want to communicate their emotions, it鈥檚 that we don鈥檛 know how. Here鈥檚 to us helping each other along the journey.聽