Mom, you forgot to teach me feelings

I grew up believing that “I’m fine” was an acceptable emotional state, and a one-size-fits-all response that could cover sadness, anger, confusion, heartbreak and mild existential dread. It was emotional duct tape, handed down like an heirloom. My mother didn’t mean to make me emot
ionally clueless. She meant to make me strong. But somewhere between “be brave” and “stop crying”, something vital got lost: the ability to name, understand, and communicate my emotions before they turned into tiny domestic disasters.

My mother was, and still is, a force of nature. She raised me on her own, juggling work, bills, and my teenage mood swings. I grew up watching her handle everything with grace and grit. But like many mothers of her generation, she was a master of emotional suppression. Feelings were luxuries she couldn’t afford. And while she gave me every tool to survive the world, she forgot the one that would help me navigate it emotionally.

When I got older and started dating, this missing instruction manual became glaringly obvious. I could fix a leaky pipe, pay my rent, and even assemble furniture without swearing. But the moment a woman said, “Let’s talk about our feelings”, I’d freeze. My emotional vocabulary consisted of grunts, shrugs, and the occasional “Yeah, I guess”. I wasn’t a bad man, just an emotionally home-schooled one.

Here’s the thing: many of us men were raised to be our mothers’ little soldiers, their little friends. But soldiers don’t talk about fear; they suppress it. They march through it. And that’s exactly what we did, and we marched through sadness, through confusion, through heartbreak. We learned to hold it in until it became anger, silence, or self-destruction.

And yes, this includes men raised by single mothers. In fact, especially them. Because single mothers often have to be both nurturer and protector, which means softness sometimes takes a back seat to survival. They raise boys to be “men”, which often means strong, self-sufficient, uncomplaining. It comes from love, from wanting us to never struggle the way they did. But the unintended consequence is a generation of men who can handle crisis, but not connection.

Our mothers didn’t fail us maliciously; they failed us maternally by loving us so fiercely they forgot we needed something gentler too. They taught us to open doors for women but not to open up to them. They taught us to work hard, but not to work through emotions. And now, decades later, we’re in relationships fumbling through basic emotional literacy like tourists trying to order coffee in a foreign language.

The truth is, a lot of men don’t need therapy because they’re broken. They need therapy because they were never taught how to feel safely. Emotional literacy isn’t something you magically acquire when you fall in love or become a father. It’s learned — like reading or driving — and most of us never had the lesson.

So yes, boys should be taught emotional literacy from the start, in schools, at home, at church, everywhere. We need to tell them that crying is not weakness, that empathy isn’t emasculating, and that communication is not confrontation. We need to stop grooming them to be tough and start teaching them to be true.

Because one day, that boy will grow into a man who’s not afraid of his emotions, or of yours. He’ll be able to say “I’m hurt,” instead of sulking for three days. He’ll apologise without self-destructing. He’ll listen without feeling attacked. He’ll love without turning every argument into a competition.

So here’s to the next generation of boys who’ll grow up fluent in feelings. May they never have to unlearn the word “fine”.

Jevaughnie Smith is a communications professional. Send feedback to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com.