Therapy is a valuable tool in dealing with life's struggles

I remember Mississippi. And I remember my Uncle Ben.

Sometimes, I talk to my therapist about him.

On our trips to the South, I always tried to get close to him. He lived in this slick, double-wide trailer with hardwood floors and marble countertops on my Uncle Cummings' farm. It was the early 1990s, so his surround-sound setup seemed fresh and futuristic.

"Listen to this," he'd say and put on some old blues joints.

He wore this cologne that made him smell like hope and joy. And whenever we were done riding the ATVs on the mushy terrain during those 100-degree mornings, I'd sit on the back porch with my uncles and listen to them talk about the day ahead. One time I interrupted them and said something like, "'Oh, I'll be back 'round 'leven o'clock,'" in the faux Southern accent I only adopted when I visited them. They both looked at me like I'd committed a crime. I never used the accent again.

My Uncle Ben represented the generation of men who raised me. He was strong and independent. He'd fought in wars. He'd thrived on his own. Even as he aged, he stayed youthful. He always showed up to family events with a woman a few decades his junior. He dressed with flash that accompanied his energized spirit.

I'm grateful to those men for teaching me about resilience. I don't know how I would have overcome the greatest challenges of my life without it. They also showed me determination. Are you hurt? Get up. Keep fighting. Are you hungry? Get a job and feed yourself and those who depend on you. Are you worried? Control what you can and keep living.

That autonomy helped me achieve my dreams.It is also responsible for my ability to thrive as a single, co-parenting father of my three daughters. I have an "I got this" attitude. But what about the days I don't?

I'm searching for those answers with my therapist now. It's a recent journey for me. I have tried therapy in small doses over the past 10 years. But I've never stuck with it, mostly because I always believed ambition and intention would supersede everything in my life.

And, like other men, I wrestled with the stigma attached to therapy. I'm not here to stand up for all men and ask for patience or grace. I can only speak to my experience. It takes a lot to address a socialized perspective on manhood and create a new way of living and thinking.

Those sturdy fathers, action movies, locker-room jokes and pro wrestling pay-per-views are all stitched into our collective psyche. It's not an excuse for some of the toxic choices and decisions men make every day. But it's also not something to overlook.

Per a 2019 survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 13.4% of men had sought mental health treatment in the past 12 months compared with 24.7% of women. When race is considered, those numbers dramatically decrease for marginalized communities, in part, because accessibility is a factor, too. Just 8.1% of Black adults had sought counseling in the past year, per the survey. I wish more people had the resources to get the help and guidance they might need.

Through my therapy sessions thus far, I've realized I'd learned to push forward and bury pain, not process it. That's probably my most embarrassing revelation in therapy. I thought I'd overcome some events in my life when I'd really just moved past them without actually really doing the work to understand the way they had affected me.

Get up. Keep fighting.

My therapist offers reassurance in this journey, however, that's made me feel confident about the process.

Last week, I discussed my fear with her: I worry that I won't develop some of the tools and lessons to be better for those around me because I don't know a man in my family who tried therapy or even discussed it.

"You're not that," she told me.

She said I'd made progress just by taking the step. That made me feel good.

Did Uncle Ben feel good?

I hope so. I never saw him without a smile. He wasn't the life of the party. The party began when he arrived. He was that guy.

Am I allowed to be mad at him? When my father called and told me my Uncle Ben had decided that he did not want to be here or that he could not be here anymore or that he needed to go wherever our angels go and his life had ended, suddenly, I felt sad and frustrated.

"C'mon, man," I thought. "Put on some B.B. King and let that sultry Mississippi wind hit us in the face. Let's do what you told me. Let's do what you showed me. Keep pushing, right? Right?"

That day did not change the way I felt about my uncle. He's still the smoothest cat I'd ever met. He's still my buddy on those trips down South.

As I age, however, I do wonder where he put his pain.

I'm glad I found a therapist to help me understand my own.

I love you, Uncle Ben. Miss you, too.

Myron Medcalf is a local columnist for the Star Tribune and a national writer and radio host for ESPN. His column appears in print on Sundays twice a month and also online.