Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity

by Justin Baldoni

As an example, my grandpa didn’t tell my dad he loved him, so my dad told me every day. His dad didn’t go to his sports events, so my dad came to every single one of mine. As awesome as it was to know that I could always look to the sidelines and see my dad, underneath it all, I feel like my dad was trying to heal a wound from his childhood by overcompensating in mine. He was trying to heal a sadness he felt as a child by overextending himself to ensure I never felt the same sadness. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put so much damn pressure on himself to show up at literally everything. If he missed something, he would feel terrible and beat himself up, and that’s a pressure that, as an adult now, I wish I could have relieved him of. He was trying to convince himself that he was enough by doing everything he could to make sure I knew I was enough. Damn. If he only knew just how enough he already was. How enough he is.