Damar Hamlin: The Radical Act of Giving Men Space to Process Trauma

Photo Credit: AP

We need to talk about what happened on Monday Night Football. Not about Damar or his current status, though we should keep him in our prayers. What we really need to talk about is the fact that we witnessed more than a hundred grown men experience Trauma in real time. And we, as a society, didn’t know how to handle it.

Back tracking for a moment, let’s come to an agreement that football (we can argue all professional sports) is the only mainstream, socially acceptable place for men to experience the full spectrum of human emotion. When their team takes the field, suddenly it’s ok to express hope, excitement, joy, anger, frustration, sadness, and grief. Not to mention, fandom is one of the few remaining structures in our society for men to find comradery and connection. Where men can feel belonging. Where they can feel like part of something bigger than themselves. And where they can find something to believe in—have you ever talked to a Jets fan in August? It’s faith in its purest form.

It can be easy write this off as frivolous or to even to get frustrated by a man’s unwavering commitment to and likely unparalleled passion for the game. Trust me, I’ve been there. But let’s come at it from a compassionate point of view. Imagine game day is the only time you got to be fully human? The only time you could express freely and by the way, the pretense of the game makes it so you don’t have to have any other story behind those emotions? You have these few precious hours of release and then it’s back to society’s messages of stoicism and focus. Women, too, have been conditioned to keep it together, but we get a lot more leeway in expressing how we feel.

So now that we agree that football is where men come to feel. Let’s talk about what we felt last night. Damar’s condition was scary. We were suddenly faced with our own mortality. One moment, you’re bouncing to your feet in celebration, the next you are at death’s door wondering if you lived life to the fullest. It was sad. Damar is a kid. Find me a mother of a 24-year-old boy who doesn’t still consider that human to be her baby? The situation was sad. Maybe we felt guilt. Players on the field may have been wondering if they could have moved a millimeter in different direction or run a millisecond faster to change the hit. Guilt from fans whose first thought was about the state of their fantasy football team. I looked at the coaches—men who are used to taking decisive action and keeping everything in control when under pressure. And I saw them realize there was nothing they could do. They looked lost; they felt powerless. But I also saw compassion and connection. As those on the field experienced this Trauma, they comforted one and other; grown men showing love. They gathered around Damar to send healing energy. And to protect him.

And when the ambulance pulled off the field, I saw 105 men caught flat-footed by these emotions. As professional ball players they have been taught an extreme version of what we teach all men in our society—suck it up, keep your composure, and get back in the game. And instead, each player sat there frozen in their feelings, probably for the first time in their career.

If you were watching live, you know that initially the decision was made to give the players five minutes* to warm-up and get ready for the next down. To ignore the Trauma, shove down the emotions, and get back to work. Because lest we forget this game was literally just an evening shift for young men at their job. It seemed obvious to me—a highly sensitive woman sitting on her couch 600-miles away that no one on that field was ok. Bills QB Josh Allen was ghostly. I saw him leave his physical body when the chest compressions started, his demeanor thereafter was zombie-like. To me it seemed wild that there was even a possibility of players resuming the game. Meanwhile, my 92-year-old, ex-Marine grandfather sat next to me shaking his head in disbelief. He said, “They’ve gotta get back out there!”

So there, in my living room, my grandfather and I sat embodying the two ends of the spectrum that the NFL decision-makers faced. When we boil it down, their conundrum was: Is it ok to allow these men (boys) to feel sad and scared and give them the space to tend to these emotions instead of forcing them back to work for other people’s gain? This is a decision steeped in their own experience, beliefs, and conditioning. And one mired by the intertwining structural complexities of Capitalism, White Supremacy, and Patriarchy.

I’ll keep this rant short, but it’s important. It can be difficult to untangle the effects of these three systems of oppression especially where one starts and the other begins. But let’s start with capitalism. This is a system that puts productivity and profits above all else. The NFL has a long history of placing productivity and profit above the humanity and wellbeing of its workers (players). If this statement feels surprising to you, I’ll direction you to the Aaron Hernendaz documentary on Netflix. So, when the bosses (coaches) and their bosses (Owners and NFL Execs) are making business decisions, the conditioning of capitalism tells them that the logical decision is to keep playing—to ensure the fans, networks, advertisers, sports betting services, and so on stay monetarily invested. Afterall, there were millions of dollars at stake.

Capitalism and the belief in production and profit above all is inherently intertwined with White Supremacy. When these forces combined, we got slavery. Slavery was not only the ultimate way to maximize profits, but also stripped workers of their humanity. And when you do not see your workers as human you do not need to treat them humanely. I’ll make just two points here: 1) this concept still pervades the work lives of most Americans today regardless of race. Our bodies, our time, our energy are not ours but rather a resource to be maximized and exploited by our employers. 2) The NFL is an employer that relies on largely on the bodies of young Black men to produce its profits. Yes, these young men are paid handsomely, but it is impossible to separate our country’s history exploiting Black bodies for profit from the current state of affairs.

And so, when we come back to the situation on the field, the guise of white supremacy has traditionally given license to exploitation. Once that ambulance pulled away, there were 105 able-bodied players on the field. And the logic of capitalism and white supremacy was whispering that their emotions did not matter. Get their bodies back to work.

In recent years, we’ve come a long way as a society in recognizing these influences when they are overt, but they still prevail. We have hundreds of years of collective conditioning to break through. Which leads us to Patriarchy. We often think about patriarchy as just men holding the power. Or a society which is designed to benefit men. But especially when we add the layers of capitalism and white supremacy, we have a system where very few people hold the power and actually benefit. Instead, patriarchy as a construct manifests as unchecked masculine energy. Bearing in mind that every person has both masculine and feminine energies—it’s our active vs. receptive energy, our logic vs. emotion. Every person has both. Every person needs both. But we live in a society that overwhelmingly favors masculine energy. So all of us, regardless of gender, are in overdrive in terms of logic, analytical, and linear thinking. In terms of strategy and control, competition, production, growth, action, hustle. And when we are constantly in this state, without the balance of feminine flow or rest, we quickly become disembodied. We cannot connect to our emotions, our intuition, our needs, or our desires. And yes, this is bad for everybody, but we’ve already agreed that women are given more leeway when it comes to feeling and expression.

Simply put, men are constantly conditioned not to express their emotions, but they are also embedded in a system that makes it damn near impossible for them to even identify or feel the emotions in the first place.

So now we have coaches, officials, and NFL executives whose lives have been shaped by these oppressive systems and ways of thinking, looking at 105 players in the throes of Capital T- Trauma and actually feeling and expressing emotion and no one knows what to do. Is it ok to allow these men (boys) to feel sad and scared and give them the space to tend to these emotions instead of forcing them back to work for other people’s gain?

Ultimately, the NFL made the right decision—one that many speculate would not have happened even a few years ago. But the rhetoric says the decision is out of respect for Damar. And yes, it is that. But why can’t we explicitly say that the game will not be played this week because there are 105 players and countless others (including fans) processing the emotions of Trauma? Remember football is where men come to feel. And right now, they are feeling scared and sad (or lashing out because those emotions are too big to handle). When we fail to acknowledge this, we are unconsciously sweep male emotion under the rug. There is no doubt in my mind that things will return to normal on Sunday for Week 18. Will we have assumed that six days is enough to move on and get over it? Will we consider this a win for men’s mental health and emotional wellbeing?

Maybe it is a win, relative to where we’ve been, but we still have a long way to go. Our ability to move toward a move loving, peaceful, and connected society hinges on our ability to help half the population come back to their bodies, process their emotions, and find alignment within themselves. And until we find those ways to help men feel and heal, we will stay trapped in systems of oppression.

I wonder how many times a day our partners, brothers, sons, and coworkers face a version of Monday’s night’s events in their daily lives? How often do men experience a significant Trauma and then go right back to business as usual? How often are the people around them unsure how to hold space for their emotions? How often is there resistance to their vulnerability?

A trauma I talk about often, was losing a student to suicide. This loss had a tremendous impact on our community and in the months and years that followed, I saw so many of our boys falling into depression, lashing out in anger, and screaming in sadness. As in all my years working with young men, I was well adept at holding space. At allowing them to feel. To be vulnerable. To say the things they wouldn’t say to anyone else. But in the school setting, I found myself capping off the grief and nudging them back to class. It was time to compartmentalize. Time to get back to work. The constraints of capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy worked against my better judgement every time.

One day, I entered the cafeteria to a scene of what can only be described as hysteria. As is common with suicide, after the initial loss we experienced near weekly crises of other students reporting suicidal ideations. Thankfully, this was usually reported directly to a trusted adult, which allowed us to take quick action to provide the appropriate response and care. But on this occasion a young man reported these feelings to his girlfriend who then informed an adult. So even though we had started our usual protocol and had ensured this young man’s immediate safety, and nothing felt significantly different to us as the adults who were in this constant state of triage. The incident was understandably extremely upsetting to the girlfriend who then shared her concern with friends. Suddenly the entire 8th grade was dxheaving and sobbing in grief—the horror of losing another classmate, the tamped down emotions of the first loss, on top of the collective trauma of being a teenager of color in the world we live in.

Much like Monday Night’s game, there was no capping off this grief. No tamping it back down. These kids needed space to feel. The constraints of systems and illusion of control when out the window. It was time for feminine flow to prevail. The next hour was about letting them get it out and keeping them safe in the process. At some point, I noticed a large group of boys congregating in the bathroom and stood in the threshold keeping an eye out for safety. I looked on with tears in my eyes as a group of 15 boys huddled together, much like the players surrounding Damar. Tears streamed down their faces. Hands giving reassuring squeezes to shoulders. They took turns letting out howls of emotion. One-by-one they said things like “I will always be here for you,” and “It’s ok if we don’t really hang out, you can always come to me. You can always talk to me.” They made a collective pact that they wouldn’t let depression or suicide take them down. That they wouldn’t let each other suffer in silence. That they would protect each other, to protect their classmates from more trauma. And as they felt held in each others’ love and support they came to a collective calm on their own.

This was one of my proudest moments as a school leader. Where in the midst of a truly indescribable crisis, I could breathe because we had created a space where our boys felt safe being vulnerable with each other. Where they took care of each other. I left the building that day praying that they would never lose this ability to feel their feelings and to connect with the men around them as they went on to different high schools, colleges, and beyond. This cohort graduates high school in June. They experienced even more community-based trauma, they endured a pandemic, they endured the social unrest surrounding the murders of Black men and the collective call that their lives mattered. I’ve worried about them every day since. And I hold hope, that they will continue to create spaces for the men around them to feel safe and seen. But they can’t do it alone.

Just before Monday’s game, I had been listening to an episode of The UNcivilized Podcast with Traver Boehm where he interviewed noted mens’ coach, Elise Micheals. Traver asked her, “What do you wish men knew about men?” And without any hesitation Elise said, “That other men want to connect with you in a vulnerable way.” She went on, “Every single guy that I talk to is like ‘I never talk to my guy friends like this. I can’t do it. They are not those type of men.’” And so, she asked, “I just wonder what is that type of man? …What would happen if you just opened up once?”  

In a world where our men and boys are starved for authentic connection, may we let Damar’s tragedy serve to open a new door. Let’s acknowledge and honor all the emotions we saw on that field and that we felt in our own hearts. And may we challenge each other to create spaces where everyone—including men—can feel and heal so we can change for the better.

* The “five minutes to resume play” directive has been widely disputed by the NFL and The Player’s Association. I sincerely hope that it is true. But for the purposes of this discussion, the fact remains that the fans in the stadium, announcers on TV, and millions of people watching did not take postponement as a given.