this book to heal from those formative years where the other boys first taught me—scratch that—enforced the rules of masculinity, and handed me my first script that told me what was okay, what was not okay, and set the rules for how I must act to become a man. These rules stacked on top of each other over time, creating a suit of armor that I would wear for decades. An armor that I didn’t even know I was wearing, and because I didn’t know, I had zero tools that could assist me in removing it.
