by Brenda Wanjiku Kiragu

Growing up, I don’t remember seeing the men in my life cry. Not my father. Not my uncles. Not my older cousins. Emotions like sadness, fear, or confusion were things they either never had—or had learned to bury so deep that we believed they didn’t exist. What I did see was silence, anger, withdrawal, or sarcasm. And I began to understand: being a man in our society meant being strong. And being strong meant being silent.

This fear of vulnerability runs deep in Kenyan culture—and wider African society too. Boys are told “be a man” when they fall. Teenage boys are laughed at for crying. Young men are mocked for sharing their feelings. It doesn’t stop with childhood. In relationships, many women complain about emotionally unavailable partners. In friendships, men bond through banter, not openness. Even in pain, men often suffer alone, quietly, until they break down—or break away.

We’ve told our boys that vulnerability is weakness. But here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud: it’s killing them.

In Kenya, suicide rates are disproportionately higher among men. Substance abuse, violence, and emotional isolation are rampant. Men are hurting—but they’ve been conditioned not to show it, not to speak it, not to seek help. The cost of emotional repression is high, and it doesn’t just affect men—it spills over into families, relationships, communities.

A man who cannot express love struggles to give it freely. A father who fears vulnerability cannot build deep emotional bonds with his children. A partner who is too ashamed to talk about fear, failure, or sadness becomes distant, or worse, emotionally absent.

We all pay the price for a culture that tells men to be hard instead of whole.

But what if we redefined what it means to be a man?

What if we taught boys that courage is not the absence of emotion, but the strength to confront it? That real masculinity includes softness, empathy, and honesty? What if we stopped mocking men who speak their truth—and started listening?

I’ve seen glimpses of what’s possible. Friends who finally started therapy. Brothers who opened up after years of silence. Men’s circles where healing begins with “I’m not okay.” It’s not easy. Vulnerability feels foreign at first—like wearing shoes that don’t quite fit. But slowly, something changes. A crack opens. Light gets in.

I’m still learning, too. Learning to say when I’m hurting. Learning to admit I don’t have it all figured out. Learning that being open doesn’t make me less of a man—it makes me more human.

So to the men reading this: it’s okay to feel. To cry. To ask for help. To talk about your fears without shame. You don’t have to carry it all alone.

And to everyone else: let’s create space for our brothers, sons, and fathers to be vulnerable. Let’s stop expecting men to be stone when they were born to be flesh and blood like the rest of us.

Because the truth is, when men heal—we all do.