Quentin R. Jiles

He was not born silent. Somebody made that boy shut up and then called him strong for it.

Nobody taught him how to talk about what was happening inside him because the men around him never did that either. They just moved through hard things without saying a word, pushed through and kept it moving, and when he did the same thing the room praised him for it. A hundred small moments where going quiet was the thing that worked, where speaking up either changed nothing or made everything worse, where composure got rewarded and that was the only lesson he needed.

He watched what happened when somebody broke the rule and he never forgot it. By the time he is a grown man that silence has been with him so long it just feels like who he is. And the men who do the real work find out that they were never as closed off as everybody thought. They were just waiting on an invitation to come back to themselves that nobody ever sent.

1 in 5. That’s how many new and expecting parents experience a perinatal mental health condition. Not 1 in 100. Not rare. 1 in 5.

And yet — most don’t know where to turn, or that what they’re feeling even has a name. May is Maternal Mental Health Month. This is our moment to connect the dots: between the statistic and the story. Between the person struggling and the support that exists.

Share this. Tag someone who needs to see it. Together, we change what’s possible.