Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 6 Episode 22: Real Talk, Real Dads: From Brooklyn to Boyhood to Fatherhood with Kenneth Braswell

• Ruth Reymundo Mandel & David Mandel • Season 6 • Episode 22

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What happens when men are finally invited to speak from the heart? We sit down with Kenneth Braswell, founder of Fathers Incorporated and author of Too Seasoned To Care, to explore fear as a learned behavior, anger as a secondary emotion, and why safety and healing must stand side by side. From Crown Heights to Sheepshead Bay, we trace how Brooklyn’s beauty and danger taught vigilance, how redlining and racial tension shaped daily life, and how those lessons echo through fatherhood, relationships, and community safety.

Kenneth shares the moment he shifted from powerless boy to accountable man and the simple progression that drives his work: Change how a man feels, then how he thinks, then what he does. We unpack the hard line that keeps families safe—no excuses for coercion or abuse—while still making room for men to tell the truth about abandonment, shame, and the fears that hide beneath control. This is not about shaming men. It’s about giving them an acceptable language for emotions, practical skills for conflict, and the courage to choose connection over domination.

We talk prevention that starts at home: more eye contact, softer touch, and everyday rituals that teach boys their feelings won’t cost them love. We also talk repair for adults: how to own fear without handing it to your partner, how to build trust after harm, and how to raise sons and daughters who know that boundaries are acts of care. Along the way, you’ll hear stickball and Scully, letters to a younger self, and the reminder that men need friendships that honor the grown man and the inner boy.

If you care about safer families, healthier men, and kids who thrive, this conversation offers a clear, compassionate path forward. Listen, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find the show. Then hit follow so you never miss an episode.

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Ruth Reymundo:

And we're back.

David Mandel :

And we're back.

Ruth Reymundo:

Hi.

David Mandel :

Once again, surprised that we're here. You know. Well, you're joining us for another episode of Partner with Survivor.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah.

David Mandel :

I'm David Mandel, CEO and founder of the Safety Other Institute.

Speaker 1:

And I'm Ruth Raimundo Mandel, and I am the co-owner and chief business development officer.

David Mandel :

And before we get going with this, I think, super exciting show for a lot of reasons, but I'm going to get to talk about Brooklyn. That's that's sort of the that's sort of the that's giving me one of the my hometown. But before we do that, talk about where we are now. We're on Tunksus, Masako land. And we just want to acknowledge the indigenous custodians of the land, the Masako Tunksas people, part of the large Algonquin nation language group that's up and down the Northeast Coast, a very vibrant series of tribes and nations up into Canada. And just acknowledge the beautiful place that we are in the Farmton River Valley, right? With the leaves are gone. We can see the river from our office, which is beautiful. It is way more cold than either of us want it. And we just want to acknowledge any Indigenous elders, past, present, or emerging, who are listening to the show and just acknowledge the history of colonization that has shaped this land and many other lands that people are listening from. So we are going to be introducing our guests in a moment, and we're going to be talking about fathers. And I just want to dedicate the show to my dad. Oh, that's very emotional. My dad, Norman, passed away about a year ago. And 96 years old, and he's married to my mother for 69 years and a day.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah.

David Mandel :

And and we talk, you know, part of Survivor is we talk almost all our episodes are about domestic abuse and and its impact on kids. And interwoven is so much this idea of what it means to be a good father. And then also, you know, when people are not doing well as fathers as well, obviously. Um, so I'm really honored to have Ken Ken Braswell on with us. And he is a nationally, in the U.S., an internationally known leader, and I want to say advocate, passionate. He talks about himself being a social entrepreneur and champion of responsible fatherhood. He started Fathers Incorporated in in 2004. He's been recognized by Oprah Winfrey. He's been involved at the federal level with so many efforts in the U.S. He's been interviewed on CNN, NPR, the Washington Post. I mean, he's an author. You know, we're going to talk about his most current. And he's a dad. And his current book, Two Seasons to Care, How Aging Turns Experience into Wisdom and Liberation. And he is from my hometown, from Brooklyn. We grew up a few miles from each other, probably around the same time, Ken, right? So welcome to the show, Ken.

Kenneth Braswell:

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure. I had such a great time interviewing you, and it's been one of the popular ones. It's still moving. Oh, great. Oh, great. In the context of what we're talking. And it's always great to uh meet better halves. There you go. And there's Ruth joining us.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, no, it's interesting because I'm going to be sitting here in this room, you know, listening to two men who are fathers talk about fatherhood and and and men as parents. And I'm very curious to see where we go. And I have a I have a lot of I have a lot of things rattling around inside me as well.

David Mandel :

And and you know, we just to start, it's not even on the questions, and you know, we send you some stuff before think about, but really it does mean a lot to me to talk to somebody. You grew up in Crown Heights, I grew up in Sheeps and Bay, you know, and and in the late, you know, 60s, 70s, you know, I left. When did you leave New York? I left in the 80s. When did you go? Late 80s, I left. Yeah, and and uh when people ask me where I'm from, even though I lived in Connecticut for 40 years, my answer is Brooklyn is New York City. What do you say when people ask you where you're from? Brooklyn. Always.

Kenneth Braswell:

I'm suspect of people who say New York because you know how we do. We start going down, I like where, where you know who your people are.

David Mandel :

I talked to you that I talked to my my postman, the guy who delivers our mail the other day, and his wife, you know, I grew up on Nostrand off of Nostrand Avenue, and and his wife grew up a couple blocks from there, and that you don't get any closer than that. Crown Heights is a couple miles away. We're on Nostrain Avenue, and Avenue U. Oh, that way that way.

Kenneth Braswell:

That way that way.

David Mandel :

Well, no street goes all the way through, cuts all the way through through all the way through Brooklyn. So it goes. Bushwick goes all about the bushwick.

Ruth Reymundo:

Yeah, this is gonna be so interesting for no seriously for our readers, our listeners who are like in Australia, Australia, the UK like Ireland. But the thing is, is that New York City is such a huge, huge place, but really at the bottom of it is just the humanity of neighborhoods, right? The humanity of neighborhoods.

David Mandel :

And it was, you know, it was a different place, I think, in many ways than it is now. It was a much more dangerous place. Then I think it's hard to explain to people that it was like 4,000 murders a year in New York when you and I were coming up, and now the number, which is still bad, it's like, but it's like 400 a year. I mean, it's just that that's a representative kind of number.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And there was racial tensions during that time in the A as well.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, there was a lot of stuff level of tension in New York City. Yeah, you know, it the interesting thing about it's almost like I don't know if you've ever heard people tell a joke like, you know, you can say anything, you know, you uh we can talk about each other, but you can't talk about us.

David Mandel :

Right, right. No, yeah. No, that's that's that's that's that's true. And it and there was also in my experience, and maybe it wasn't yours, is a you know, uh growing up Jewish in New York is one experience. You know, we lived in Brooklyn, but we we had overlapping but different experiences. You growing black in in in in New York City, I would assume. But you there was also a certain honesty and openness about sort of you weren't white, you were Italian. You weren't you weren't white, you were Jewish. You you were you know what I mean? Is that was that your experience? It was where you're from. You were from and who your people were. It was it was it was it wasn't there was an honesty. You you know somebody was a very good thing. Do you know what the beauty in that was?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, is that it was very easy to find commonality.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, right, that's right.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, when you talked about family and you talked about community, and so in Crown Heights where I grew up, it was 33% Southern blacks, right, 33% Puerto Ricans, and 33% Hasidic Jews. That's right, that's right. When I grew up in the building that I grew up on, Empire and Troy Avenue, my building, the context of my building was the same measure inside of my building. So I grew up smelling collard greens on Sunday, rice and beans on Saturday, right, and being able to go to the synagogue on the weekend and learn about Jewish traditions. That's right. That's right. We looked out the window and we saw them celebrate Hanukkah. We saw them, we played stickball in the streets, if you can imagine, right? And growing up, they were the Hasidic Jews, and even in the summertime, they would have on their white shirt and the long jacket and the pants, and just like they're burning up. But it was never, it wasn't different for us. It was this is what we do, this is how we play basketball together.

David Mandel :

Yeah, you play basketball stick ball. See, just even saying stick ball, you know, immediately just brings me back. Yeah, yeah. Pan ball, stampball, basketball, paddle, pataball, all this stuff. You play, did you play stoop ball? Did you play? Yes, we did. Okay. See, these are things that you know, I've never found anybody outside New York to say stoop ball. And it's like you throw you have to throw a rubber ball against the point of the stoop of the the the like the step, the step, and then how many bounces depended on how many hits you got. And I mean, it was it was just a game you make up in New York City. That's Scully, right?

Speaker 4:

Did you play Scully with Oh, absolutely. My kids are like, what is that? I drew it in my driveway one time and had the kids out there playing. But the so the one element that we could not fulfill because we were here in Atlanta, right, is we didn't have the the plastic milk carpet and there was no tar to scrape up to put on the inside of it to make it.

David Mandel :

We would do wax, we would do wax or or crayons or something like that. But it's it's a game where you you do squares and it does squares inside of squares, numbered, and then you put a cap, a bottle cap, and you fill it up with something heavy like tar or wax or crayon, and then you you're supposed to flick it.

Speaker:

Flick it, yeah.

David Mandel :

You flick it with your finger, and then you can knock other people out. That was the best part.

Speaker:

That's great.

David Mandel :

So anyway, these were these were games that were passed down generation in New York City. I mean, probably, you know. One last thing. Did you have milk delivered on your you did you have motion? Absolutely. We have that little gray thing outside the door. There you go.

Speaker:

This is I'm really enjoying this podcast so far. This is this hello, listeners. This is your cultural education about New York City.

David Mandel :

And and and and how it was, it really was a shared experience racially and ethnically, you know, at that point, because this is who you grew up with. You went to school with, you went to public school, you you lived next door. Like one neighbor was Italian, one was Irish, you know, then the next neighbor down. And and and just to interject this, you know, it was shaped by redlining, it was shaped by segregation. I lived on a block where there were no black people. There was a project right across the and I learned later on. I didn't know this as a kid, this all had to do with redlining and segregation and loans and block busting. And I mean, this was not, you know, this stuff, the neighborhoods, the way they were set up were not an accident. Right.

Speaker 4:

And you know, and the interesting thing about that is when I got older and began, got my first summer job in Manhattan and started to work, what I realized is that you didn't see diversity until you went into Manhattan, the way you saw it. Right. And at five o'clock every day when you got off of work, everybody went to their own corner. Yeah, right. Right. When I moved to Albany, when I left New York in '88 and moved to Albany, New York, to go to school. I remember walking, going to work and people speaking to me on the street. And me, David, I don't know if you remember how you used to walk, it was a security mechanism. When you walk in certain parts of the city, you walk close to the wall. Oh, absolutely. Walk close to the wall because it it blinds one side, no one can get you from that side. You can see everything in front. And because you're walking over those silver girders that go down into the building, if someone is behind you, they're making noise and you can see everything from this side. Yeah, absolutely. So I walked that way when I went to it, when I went to Albany, New York. But the strangest thing for me was on the weekend how all of our folks in our office would invite each other to their homes, right? And so it's only black, white, and in our in our and I wasn't used to that because in New York City, I never visited anyone's home who didn't look like me and didn't go to my community. So when I went to Crown Heights throughout the week, all I saw was blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Jews. I didn't see anybody else. American white folks until I went to Manhattan. All the businesses was culturally owned. All of the people who worked were culturally based to the community that it served. And so it was a really interesting thing moving outside of that and having to ingratiate myself to a whole nother culture I wasn't used to.

David Mandel :

It it was a total change for me coming to Connecticut. You know, when I think about playing handball at lunchtime at Marine Park Junior High School, right? These are all things that you probably you know recognize. The kid there was my friend group was was an Asian American kid, two black kids, and another Jewish kid. And that was who we we hung, you know, but that's who you hung out together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

David Mandel :

And and as as I moved out of the city, my world changed. It became much less diverse in some ways, you know, and and it became harder to work at diversity in terms of connections and stuff like that. But it's anyway, we're talking about reminiscing.

Speaker 1:

I I like I told you, like I'm taking advantage of Canvas to like talk about Brooklyn and and and and but let's talk about No, but those things really, really shape us, and they shape they shape how we create relationships and we move through community circles. And and I know, you know, being raised in in institution, but being from California, that those communities are very different than here on the East Coast. They have different feeling to them, they have different ways of being together, and that that's very different in each culture, but it's so wonderful to see people being able to to to move through different communities and relate to people, and that's what happens when you're in that density of city. So it's it's a good thing.

David Mandel :

And I do, I do, you know, I tell the story, you know, about safety in New York and and and actually the work I do. I mean, I grew up very concerned for my safety. You talk about walking next to the building. I walk, you come off the bus or the train at night and you walk down the middle of the street, or you walk away from the you don't want to be too close to the parked cars because you could be somebody you were somebody who was between the parked cars, you know. So you were you're physically navigating the world. And when I came to Connecticut, it felt like I was out of prison. And it was really hard to explain that to people.

Speaker 1:

Like you were you felt safe.

David Mandel :

But women, I know women you know knew didn't explain. And it would have been different if I was a black man because I wouldn't black friends would say, Oh, I'm I'm I'm I'm in the country now, I don't want to go out to the woods. I don't want to go. Yeah, I mean, that was an education for me too. Where I had black friends at school who who were comfortable maybe on campus, but they said, like, you don't go into woods and no, you don't go into these places you don't know. Yeah, and so everybody space is is very much shaped by absolutely by racism and sexism and threats of different kinds of threats of violence.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Mandel :

And so let's use it to pivot to dads. To dads, and can your book. Let's start with that. I I was you sent me a copy.

Speaker 1:

The book is called Two Seasons to Care How Aging Turns Experience into Wisdom and Liberation.

David Mandel :

Right. So I was really touched by the book. It was really felt amazingly heartfelt, open, vulnerable. It it seems part memoir, part self-help to me. You know, it seems like it's can you can you tell us about why you wrote it and and who you wrote it for?

Speaker 4:

Uh you know, it's this thing came together with me thinking about my life, right? And thinking about this space I'm moving into. I'm 60, I just turned 63 years old. And the entire conversation we all just had is a large part of why I wrote that book. Because what we were just talking about is what we understand now about where we came from and what made us who we are.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And there's elements of that that I understood clearly, and other elements that miss me a little bit. And so the only way I could figure out what those things were was to walk back, right? And so, but it started with this question. One day I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were talking about fear and faith, because I'm doing a lot of stuff around fear and faith now. And so I asked him, I said, when was the first time that you were taught to be fearful? I said, because it is a learned behavior. You don't come into the universe afraid of anything. Something shapes you to be afraid. And I said, you know what? No, don't answer that question. I said, answer this question first. I said, when was the first time in your life that you cared about how someone else thought about you or felt about you? And so I we having this conversation, I said, you know what, I'm gonna go home tonight and I'm gonna let me write this down because I got too much stuff swirling around in my head right now. So when I got home that night, I was writing down all the things that I thought, you know, influenced me that I cared about. And I kept going back and back, back. And as far as I can go back, I always landed on a girl. And so every time I went back, I landed on this girl that I wanted to think about me a certain way. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her to be nice to me. I wanted to impress her, I wanted to do all of these things, and that was as far as I could go back. And then I was sitting around and I was like, whoa, wait a minute. That's not the first time I cared about how someone thought about me, and it had to do with a totally different girl. And that girl was my mom. Because growing up in Brooklyn, there was a behavior that you had to adhere to. And back then, there was no time out. It was do as I say, not as I do. And if you don't do as I say, there's a consequence of doing that. And many times those consequences were what inferred fear, right? In in kids. And I started thinking about all the things my mother said to me to instill this level of fear. And then when I went to school, David, the society started telling me these things that I needed to be fearful of. My teachers started to tell me things that I needed to be fearful of. Police started to show me things that I need to be fearful of. Gangs started doing things that maybe to be fearful of. And all of a sudden I realized that I grew up in this atmosphere of being fear guided. And so as I'm writing all this stuff, I'm all this stuff, I'm like, whoa, I gotta pull this stuff apart because all of this stuff is now speaking to why I think the way I think now and why I am the way I am now. So let me just pull. Out one of those things. So I know now, today, that I have a abandonment issue. I don't like to be rejected. I don't like to be ignored. I don't like to be left alone. So the question is, Kenny, what is the thing that has stemmed this abandonment issue with you? And so started with my dad. Because my dad, in my mind's eye, abandoned me. And he was the person who was supposed to show up. And all my life I said I would never allow anyone to do that again. And every time someone did that to me, it put another layer on top of me that made me protective about my heart. So when I met my wife, it was very difficult for her to crack that cold because I had been stacking these things of abandonment and rejection and all of those things now. And I realized that those things triggered me. So I had to go back and realize and figure out all of the places that kind of create the create the created those things, stripped them apart, reconcile them, forgive where I can forgive, forget where I can forget to free myself of this abandonment issue. Because it wasn't about me, it was about how I felt about someone else. And that was really the intro, entry point of the book. It was a self-exploration of my own life to understand me, not anybody else. I was concerned about me. And then once I finished, I thought, you know what? I want to write a book that chronicles this journey of me taking a step back into my life so that I can encourage others to do the same thing in their lives. Because many of the answers that they fail to have now is because they are afraid to step back into their lives to find the truth.

Speaker 1:

Right. There's so much in there that I can feel so deeply. And there's a concept that I've been taught about how many uh First Nations people view relationship and men and fatherhood. And that is, as I've been told, that men are the heart, actually. And that men's hearts and men's emotions being shut down and not being able to safely, you know, feel and process those emotions or self-reflect on their heart has actually been one of the greatest woundings of how we've been trained in society. I don't know, I don't know if that resonates for you or not, but I'd love to hear.

Speaker 4:

So let me tell you why that is. Our humanity is in our heart. So you want to know why I don't act with any level of humanity, is because you've you've forced me to shut that off.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

I can't tap into my humanity unless I can tap into my heart. And I've been raised to say that that's a that's not a good thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And so now my calling, you know, in 2003, I contemplated taking my own life because I was in a really bad place in my life. And my call out was to return to what my mother taught me growing up, which was our faith. You pray. When you don't have answers, you pray. My relationship with God was a little different. It wasn't the formal praying, it was my conversational conversation with my God. That's how we conversate today. And I know his voice. So when he's speaking to me, his voice is very clear. Um, and my I can tell the difference between my voice, his voice, and everybody else's voice. But what I needed to do was to really figure out for myself how I was going to reconstruct my own life by listening for what he was going to say to me. And sitting on that couch, he simply said, speak to the hearts of men. My request to him was, Father, give me something to get up off of this couch, because if you don't, this is where they'll find me.

Speaker:

That's very powerful.

Speaker 1:

That's very powerful.

Speaker 4:

So over time, this 20 some odd one years, I've been pulling apart the importance of why he said speak to the hearts. Because no one wants to speak to the hearts of men. Everybody wants to speak to the mind of man, but no one wants to speak to the heart of man. Heart is so critically important. We have a progressive change model at Fathers Incorporated, where we do our work, our curriculum, and everything that we do that says that if I can change a way a man feels, I can change the way a man thinks. If I can change a way a man thinks, I can change what he does. But I have no shot in ever changing what he does if I don't change how he's thinking. And I don't have a shot in changing how he thinks unless I change how he's feeling. So I always have to start with the heart.

David Mandel :

I love that. And like Rosa, there's so much there. I'm thinking about how much men can avoid talking about fear. And I think a lot of times we'll focus on anger, or we'll focus on that as you know, men feel more comfortable talking about being angry, and or people and people feel more comfortable talking about men being angry. I mean, there's and there's reasons why, because a lot of men will show that to other people and not show the other things. But I appreciate you really leaning in with that question, that question that brought you to writing the book about so when's the first time you felt afraid? And that exploration, and it it reminds me when I was running groups for men who had been arrested for being violent, we didn't talk about anger with them. We said, talk to me about time this week you felt powerless or afraid. You felt powerless or afraid and handled it without violence or being controlling to other people. And to me, that was the heart of the work, right? Because as a human being, you're gonna feel afraid, either because it's come from inside or coming from outside. Doesn't matter, either one. That's human. And you're gonna feel powerless. And I'm not talking about mostly like threats, physical threats. I'm talking about scared your kids are gonna do drugs, scared your kids are are gonna, you know, not do well, they're gonna get their heart broken, their kids are gonna get sick, you know, that you're not gonna have enough fun. Scared your partner leaving. You know, these are things we all deal with as human beings, men or women, you know. But can you say more about the the journey of the exploration around fear for men? Because I think it's as you and I both know, it's such a critical area that's often not comfortable for men.

Speaker 4:

Fear like anger for me is a secondary emotion. Whenever I talk to someone who is angry, my question is what triggered your anger? What's the emotion that triggered your anger? Sadness can trigger emotion, jealousy can trigger emotion. Every emotion on the spectrum can trigger anger, right? And so the same thing with being fearful. Whenever someone tells me they're scared, I'm always wanting to know what's the emotion that's making you scared, right? Not the thing that's making you scared. What is the emotion that's making you scared? Because we don't like speaking to the hearts of men, we always, so my brother and sister were seven years, seven and eight years younger than I. So I literally grew up in my household almost like a single child. So when they were seven, when they were, you know, seven, four, you know, so when I got to 14, they were little babies. When I got to 21, I was out of the house. So I never really spent any sibling time with them. But the time that I did, you know, spend with them. Lost my whole train of thought where I was going with that.

David Mandel :

You're talking about emotions and about emotions behind the fear.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And so, you know, with with with with my with my siblings, uh, so the boys in my family, not so much the girls, right? We're gonna stick with boys. And so I always ask parents that have young boys. So you ever standing next to your two boys, whether they're sons or brothers, cousins, friends, whatever, and they can be standing and not even paying attention to each other, and one minute one of them is hitting the other, and the next minute they're tussling, and the next minute, you know, it's it's it's turned into a whole thing. Yeah. And I said, and did you ever pay attention to your response to that? And typically the response is, what are you thinking? And the normal response from boys is I don't know, or nothing. The challenge and problem with that is you think they're lying. They don't know. It's instinctive. That's what boys do, that competitive nature. So fear in of itself is not the danger, it is the emotion that creates the fear because that's what you're responding to. My stepfather was an abuser and I was young. And he was an abuser at a time that abuse one could say was normal in the household, right? 70s, superfly, shaft.

David Mandel :

I read you, read you, you talk about shaft in your book, and you know, anyway, go ahead. We could talk about we could talk about those things too, but go ahead.

Speaker 4:

He was that dude. He he left Mississippi, came to New York to join the movement, whatever that was. Right, right. And so, but it was normal for him to drag my mother into the back room and beat her like he beat me, right? But on the other side of that door was this powerless little eight-year-old boy who could not do anything about that. Because I was an eight-year-old boy. Fast forward, about 15, 14, 15 years old, my mother sent me, and this is my stepfather, he sent me up to stay with him for a summer. And him and I got into an argument over snow. And so I don't even know why I was up there in the winter. He lived in Syracuse at the time. And I was, I don't know why my mother sent me to go. I went up there to go to school. Now I kind of know because he, this is a great guy. Whole nother story. Ultimately, he turned into a better guy, a much better person. So we got into this argument. We're in the kitchen. He's asking me how come I didn't go to school. And I said, look out the window. There's like 15 feet of snow out there. This is Syracuse. Like they went to snow, they didn't care. They went to school with whatever. And so we got into this argument. We end up tussling and fighting. He grabbed me from behind, choked me. And there was a window behind me. And my mind was I was gonna throw him out the window. And I lunged back to throw him out the window. And when I lunged, my foot slipped, and we fell at the base of the window. And we fell at the base of the window, I said, I'm not scared of you. You will no longer beat me like you beat my mother. And he let me go, and it changed our relationship. It changed our relationship. But I bring that up is because at that moment, the same fear that kept me harnessed by him didn't exist anymore. Because I felt I was bigger and stronger. But it was my mind's eye that said, I'm not afraid of you. Right? And my response to his fearful tactics were different. When I finally talked to him many, many years later about his growing up, his story to me was exactly mine with his father. And he was regurgitating this story about how his father, how they were scared to be in the house and scared to hear their father come home and scared to do this. So long story and long way back to your original question about fear and really taking our time with men. Even in cases of domestic violence where men are the perpetrators, I am clear that safety is first. Safety has to happen first.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 4:

However, there has to be some work that is done on the mind and the heart of the individual because if you don't, he will go and do it again.

David Mandel :

Yeah. Absolutely. 100%. You know, and we we hear that. We hear that. I I think, you know, many women, when I would work with their husbands, their partners, they would say, I don't want to be with him anymore because he's hurt me too much, but I want you to help him so he can be a better dad to our kids, right? You know, and I would hear that. And I would work with grown men whose dads were violent, who still were working through their feelings.

Speaker 2:

Right.

David Mandel :

And he was still important.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

David Mandel :

And and so I I think the oftentimes the very dismissive attitude, you know, well, he's a bad dude, and that's the end of it, end of conversation. You we have to be clear about safety first. We have to be clear about that growing up with it doesn't give you an excuse to perpetrate it on somebody else. That's not okay. Yeah, but you have your you have your story matters, but don't use an excuse to say, oh, it's okay what I did.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

David Mandel :

But but but we I want to hear that story, I want to pay attention to it, I want to help you heal, but I'm not gonna let you. It's and it's I think people struggle with this. I'm not gonna let you manipulate. Yeah, that's right. Manipulate me or somebody else using that story to say, well, that doesn't hurt. Well, you shouldn't be upset that I treated you this way. You should feel bad for me. Because I think that's what we see happen, right? We see people say, You should feel bad for me. Look what I grew up with. It's gotta stop somewhere and it's gotta go back to go back to the fear.

Speaker 4:

Let's let's let's stay on this fear piece, right? Because when I first started doing fatherhood programs, the biggest issue with society wanting us to do fatherhood programs is they felt that we were going to connect fathers back to relationships to which they were harmful. They couldn't see the good in doing responsible fatherhood and strengthening families by strengthening fathers because of the domestic violence piece of it. So in the state of New York, I had to do a lot of talking to domestic violence agencies and speaking to women who were victims of domestic violence to understand what their issues were, right? And having conversations and sharing my story and hearing their story. And so the element in all of it is that everybody is fearful of something. In this storyline, it is we have a fear of putting a mom in a vulnerable a woman in a vulnerable position with a man. That is a real fear, cannot be ignored. You have to deal with it, you have to address it. But I have to be as vigilant in her safety and the safety of anybody else that he encounters. I can't lock him up for the rest of his life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

I gotta unlock something in order for to get him where he needs to be. The key for me has always been in the vast majority of men that I've worked with that had anger issues, was this very question. What are you afraid of?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I have a lot of feelings about that question because I I feel like as a person whose father did abandon her, you know, he and this is a Latino father. And I just want to state that the research says that that black and and men of color are much more active parents, even if they're not inside the home. They're much more connected to their children than other populations when they are not inside the home. And and and I really wonder a lot of times if the ultimate fear is feeling as if you are you're bad and you failed and you did harm and you did wrong, and there's no way to go back and turn the clock back, and you don't know what to do. And also, I'm really aware that if when these fear narratives have come up because of real behaviors that we've had to endure as children, and we had to navigate around, and that were being modeled to us by adults and by institutional adults too, in schools or police, or you know, I grew up in an institution. Very much that violence and the and the use of fear was uh was a tool to keep us all in line, to keep us all moving and everything efficient and clean the clean the bathrooms and clean the the spaces and do the landscaping. You know, that fear was used for a purpose. And I I feel as if ultimately at the end of the day, though we can talk to men about their fear they're causing other people, what are we talking to them about? The fear that is inside themselves, the self-abuse that's happening inside their own minds, the anxieties and the expectations that they have to be in control and they have to dominate people, because if they don't, then they're not a man or they're in danger or they're being taken advantage of. And and I I really feel that we are really not okay if we can't look at people who have been taught those behaviors systematically. Routinely, in their intimate lives as children and in institutions, and all say together that that means that we collectively have to do better to support them to heal and to retrain those reflexive emotional and behavioral pathways that they've learned over a long period of time and with a lot of input. They came by their trauma honestly. That's what I say. They came by their trauma honestly, but they're causing trauma.

David Mandel :

Right.

Speaker 1:

And that's the dishonest part of it.

David Mandel :

Just one thing, and then and then I'll go back to Ken with a question about dads. I just I agree with everything Ruth you're saying.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

David Mandel :

And for me, the lesson personally, and a lesson I I try to teach the men I used to work with is that your fear belongs to you. You may have been given, it may have been given to you and honorably earned. But every time you make somebody else responsible to fix your fear, you're not only likely going to hurt them, but you're actually putting yourself at a disadvantage because you're actually saying, well, until you do something, I can't be okay. You have power. Until you act a certain way, and you lose that that that's that power. So I think we want I want to make room, always want to make room for that vulnerability in that heart, but also that responsibility. And so Ken, I don't know if you if that's a good thing.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, no, responsibility and accountability, right? So the accountability piece of it is fear in and of itself is not a bad thing. Right. Yeah. What you do with it is the bad thing. Anger, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Right. What you do with it is what is bad, right? And so the fear piece of it, we can have a conversation about, we can ask questions and we can explore. Where we draw the line is in the action. That's right. As a result of that. And so that's where we give space to being able to talk and being able to understand and being able to figure out, with the caveat being, this is all contingent on your actions must change. That's right.

Speaker:

And we need to give people skills too, get them the support. That's right.

David Mandel :

But it but it but it but it but I you know what? This is where I'm gonna, even though I'm trained as a therapist, yeah, where therapy overcomplicates it. Therapy spends, you know, there's certain kind of clarity, simplicity when what Ken say, but I think sometimes the mental health field misses.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

David Mandel :

And you know, sort of they get caught up. My peers get caught up in the inner world and people's childhoods and forget the here and now every day. Like, no, you're responsible. Like, so yeah, you were hurt. That's real. I'm sorry, I'll listen. Yes, you you know, you're feeling afraid that she's cheating on you. I'm here, I'm gonna listen. But you're not, it's not okay for you to chase her down with a car. It's not okay for you to follow her around. It's not okay for you to grab her and throw against the wall because she came home 10 minutes later from work. Like, like there's nothing there, like there's nothing that that is unclear or should be confusing to people.

Speaker 1:

That's gonna cause you pain, and that's gonna cause you fear because you're gonna be afraid of losing that relationship because you are because you're just making it worse. That distance between yourself and that person, you don't have the trust that you need. Yeah, totally.

David Mandel :

So I want I want to like I want to. No, no, no, we keep going. I just I just but you know what?

Speaker 4:

Just before you move on, I just I love everything about this conversation. I think this conversation should be louder, broader. We should be able to have this conversation without people feeling like we have motives behind it. Right. That's right. That's other than the safe health and well-being of everybody in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

David Mandel :

Thank you. And I think that's that's that's that's actually a beautiful pivot. Because I think sometimes in the public sphere now, as I listen to the news, some people would react to this and say, Well, you're shaming men. And there's nothing here about shaming men at all. And you you and I know this, Ruth knows this. And there's in fact, it's it's driven actually by and it makes me really upset actually, because I I'm on social media and I get accused of being anti-male when I say things like this and talk about you know being angry or being not not as even much hurt. Angry, like, so do you not understand this is actually looking out for men, looking out for their kids, looking out for their sense of connection, looking out for their sense of place in the world, because if we can't talk about these behaviors that hurt other people that men engage in, we're not helping men. We there's no way to help men if we label that as shaming men somehow, to be honest and direct.

Speaker 4:

So interesting because I saw your post. Yes, and I read it and I said, hmm, okay. You might be bad, but at least you're talking. Now let's talk about something productive. That's right. Because the conversation was around, couldn't you wait another day? Couldn't you wait next week, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, today is the day to talk about it.

David Mandel :

That's right.

Speaker:

And and you should give people background.

David Mandel :

No background. I posted, so I posted. So anyway, so again, thanks for following me on LinkedIn. You know, but um, I was trying, I was trying to be general for the audience, but I posted on international Men's Day, which I'm I'm I have some ambivalent feelings about. And again, I you know, I I want to say this, I'll say this here. I don't see this on LinkedIn. I I've got a close intimate relationship with my brother. I've got a group of men I've been friends with for 40 years. You know what I mean? Sort of this idea that I'm somehow anti-male is just sort of absurd to me, and I don't I don't even give it space. I have some best friend, like my best friend from college. We've lived apart for 40 years, but I he and I talk on the phone two or three times a week. You know, like like I have intimate relationships with with men in my life, emotionally connected, like I care about men. So, like anyway, but so on Unindressful Men's Day, I posted about the fact that that 95% of homicides are perpetrated globally, crime statistics are perpetrated by men. Well, men are not 95% of the population, and 80% of those victims are male. And if we're concerned about men and boys' health, UN, World Health Organization, everybody agrees that violence, either the victimization or perpetration, is a major men's health issue. Right. And I just posted about that on a day that's supposed to be dedicated to men's health. And I got by a few people, I got attacked for for just uh disgracing the day somehow. So anyway, right, but but there's this constant kind of like thing, which is if you if you mention that men can act violently and that some men do, some people will accuse you of shaming men if you talk about the behaviors, if you talk about and and uh to me that's sort of uh it doesn't make any sense I mean I understand where it's coming from.

Speaker 4:

I mean I'm saying what but I live in the world, but I just your body of work speaks for it. Yeah, thank you. There were years ago, years, years ago. Yeah. I remember Spike Lee, our our Brooklyn brother. I about to say that was interviewed by someone, and it was after one of his movies, I can't remember which movie it was, and the question to him was, how do you feel about producing all of these controversial movies? Something like that. I can't remember which one it was. And his response was talk to me after you've seen the entire body of my work. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Don't talk to me after this film. Don't talk to me after the next film. Talk to me after you've seen my body of work. Right, oh right.

David Mandel :

That's it. That's right.

Speaker 4:

And so that's that's what you ran into. People that want to dismiss the body of your work. I I'm I could be edgy sometimes too in places. And I mean, I I think one of the things that I always is just a little different from that when I'm talking to anyone and in public, I always say, while I understand that 95% of all domestic violence cases are perpetrated by men, yeah. I am also very clear that all men are not perpetrators.

David Mandel :

Right. Absolutely, 110%. Right. That's an absolute fact. Most are not, in fact.

Speaker 4:

You know, that's that's right. So let's start here. And that doesn't dismiss the small number that's doing it because one is too many. Right. Right, right. In any space. That's right. Whether it's somebody dying of cancer, whether it's somebody, whatever. One is too many. We are clear about that. But until you level level set this table with all the information, how can you possibly have a conversation that's going to get you to a solution if people want to hide things that they don't want to address?

David Mandel :

That's right.

Speaker 2:

Right.

David Mandel :

So wait, I know you want to ask something because you have the book open. I do. But I just want to I want to claim Spike Lee as from John Dewey High School, right? Not only Brooklyn, but he went to John Dewey High School right to high school. I just needed to just take that one. Okay.

Speaker 1:

If Spike Lee is ever listening to this, I just uh reunion may be the most famous alumni in high school.

David Mandel :

I went to Brooklyn.

Speaker:

And David Spikely in the roof.

David Mandel :

Yes, I would love that. Is he is Spike Lee the most famous New Yorker?

Speaker 4:

Brooklynite. Brooklyn.

David Mandel :

Yes, I think I think I think he might be. I don't know at this point. Yeah, but he's he's uh but literally he went a couple years earlier than me, but he went to John Dewey High School where I went to.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

David Mandel :

And so we claim him.

Speaker 1:

I'm seeing something happening here.

David Mandel :

You know, because anyway.

Speaker 1:

So so I do have I do have a thought because I I really feel that a lot of times why we we go to that place where we are so on way, you see me waving.

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

So here's my other here's my bed.

Speaker:

Oh my goodness, it's like a partner meeting. Yeah, how are we doing?

Speaker 4:

She's gonna go on, yeah. And you got it on the green shirt. That's why you give it a shirt. Oh, that's just fun with the green screen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'll see you, but we're having we're having like a partner meet up here. Nice to meet you.

David Mandel :

Yeah, lovely meeting.

Speaker:

Well, you as well. My name is Ruth. Tracy.

David Mandel :

I'm Tracy. I'm David. Nice to meet you. Yeah, I do.

Speaker:

Love your shirt, okay?

Speaker 4:

This is this is there.

David Mandel :

This is no, look at that.

Speaker:

It's the book swap.

David Mandel :

Okay, this is really great.

Speaker:

So all right, it's so nice to meet you, Tracy.

Speaker 1:

You as well. Take care. So I've I have your book open and I have it open to chapter eight, and that is authentic relationships, building connections that matter. Because for me, that feels like a really important and central point. And that is, you know, I know that in machismo culture and in Latino culture, there's a real view of men divorced from that connection, as if they're above it, as if engaging in it somehow, and and the need for that connection and the realities of how those sustain us and sustain our mental and emotional health and our well-being can be severely cut out of the conversation. And that we often assume that men and boys don't need that connection. And there's a lot of research around early childhood and how boy children are treated differently than girl children. And that is around touch and the length of time that we breastfeed children and eye contact and the way we speak to children, and that boy children are often from the very start treated more roughly, have less emotional contact, are left longer to cry because as particularly the society tells us that boys are supposed to be tough. And so we don't often see boys in the context of really needing that connection, those relationships to be healthy, to be trusting, to be reciprocal, to not be violent, to not be exploitative, to be consensual. But all of those things are so necessary, not only for men's health and well-being, but for women's and children's and you know, whatever you identify as relationship and connection is so vital to our humanity and our health. And we have really destroyed those. We really we really played into a belief about men as parents, men as fathers, men as partners, which has severed them, like you said, from their heart, but also their connections. I don't know if you want to go a little bit into that relationship and connection piece.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, there was a lot wrapped up in there. Um I want to tackle. First, I will say this we have become a world of dealing with symptoms. We don't want to deal with the issue in and of itself. We just want to deal with the symptom, right? Because we feel a certain way about the system the symptom itself. One of the things that when you started talking about friendships and you talk start particularly about boys, one of the reasons that Dave and I are so connected with respect to this Brooklyn thing. For me, I don't know about for you. I left my childhood in Brooklyn when I left. And every time I went back to Brooklyn, I went back in search of my childhood. I went back looking for my friends I grew up with. Unfortunately, they were all in jail, they were all under the ground, they were all on drugs, they were all, it seems like my entire young life in terms of friendships have been wiped out. So when David speaks about those things in Brooklyn, it is my heart still finding my childhood in everything that he was saying. Everything that he was saying. It is critically important for men to have friendships to which they can connect not only with the outer man, but the inner boy. Right? Because it is the inner boy in us that drives everything that we do. When I lashed out at my stepfather for beating my mom, it wasn't the grown man was acting, but it was the little boy who was speaking because he was the one without power. That day I was able to save the little boy in me. And I was able to stand up for the little boy in me. That little boy is always in me. And so when we're working with men in particular, we always want to deal with the man and we don't want to recognize that the boy still exists. And here's where I don't do that, and I do it in different ways for both of them. But when I think about my daughters who are all grown, I treat them like women, but I never forget that they are still my little girls. Right? And so the way I embrace them, the way I love them, the way I talk to them, the way I deal with them, I deal with them from my little girl perspective, knowing that our relationship is based on how I have always treated the little girl. The big one is different. That's a check, that's money, that's I need this. It wasn't until I got older and had my last child, which was my son, who is now about to turn 17 in a couple of weeks that I was very clear in raising him. That as much as I wanted to raise him to be a responsible, loving man, that I could never forget that the little boy in him will always exist. So there are times that I speak to the man that I want him to become, but there are other times that I cultivate the boy in him so that boy will always feel safe around me and speak the right things to the man when he gets older. I don't want him to ever feel like he has to save the little boy in him. I will save him. I will make him strong. I will make him that. And I think that's the element that we miss in dealing with men is men don't have Ayanna Vanzan. I interviewed her years ago when I did my documentary called Spit and Angle on Father Absence. And I was interviewing her and she says, Kenny, she says, men have never been given an acceptable language to speak about their emotions. She says, so the language we use when we talk about emotions is not a safe language for them because when they use those words, those words have consequence in their peer circles. So they can't use I'm emotional. They can't use I'm scared. They can't use any of those other things. So how are we teaching our little boys the acceptable language so that they will always feel comfortable in speaking about their emotions? That's not the takeaway from I still want my son to be able to both protect and provide for his family, right? That is locked into me, right? And I believe both men and women can do both of those things, but they do both of those things differently. And there are reasons that they do those things differently. We can't dismiss those things. This is where I'm getting back to symptoms, right? Because the symptom is men are dominating the space, and they're dominating the space because of their strength, and they're creating a gap between men and women. That's the symptom. But that's not the issue. The issue is that we have not dealt with men in a way that allows them to be able to function in understanding that while we may be different in some areas, we're alike in many areas. Which is why, from my Christian background, why you leave your parents and cleave as one. You have all of the attributes tied into the two of you. They just look different and they maneuver and they and they feel different. So the question, Ruth, is how do we fix this? Where do we start with it? The high level answer is at home. It can't be at school, it can't even be at church. There can be a foundation in supporting it. But the initial work in building strong boys and girls needs to. Take place at home. And then the work that you and I or that we are doing is in the preventive, is in the reactive space, which is trying to harness the danger that has been done by dysfunctional relationships, parenting households, and those things. And at the same time, do the preventive work. That's right. We have abandoned the preventive work. That's right. We stay locked into always reacting to what the symptoms are saying and not dealing with the thing in and of itself that's creating what it is we're trying to deal with. I don't know if that helped your answer. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I I I think too, you know, we're not willing to name the influences in society that are really feeding into that. And those, excuse me, we can all name, you know, they're pretty consistent. We know that coercion, that institutional harm that's happening. Excuse me. You know, so I think that that's part of it. But I I I'm this has been one of the most emotional interviews so far, and I'm very quiet about it. But so much of what you're saying is it lands for me, you know, as a person who is raised without my father and in an institution, who deeply feels that our drive is always that we want our we want a relationship with our parents. That no matter how old we get, that that is our parent. And I try to internalize that in myself as a person who didn't have a real childhood as well, who worked a lot and grew up in an institution and was separated from my family. I try to hold that in myself that when I interact with my children, that they are my children. I am the parent. I am here to parent them and love them as children, and they will always be my children. That dynamic is never going to change. That has beautiful sides and that has challenging sides. But particularly when we have trauma and we've gotten really bad training, behavioral training, and we've been traumatized or harmed physically, emotionally, sexually, whatever, that it does take a lot of support. It does take people who can really help us to unlearn behaviors and support us in parenting, support us in being good partners, support us in uh traveling that journey of our reflexive responses to challenge, to fear, to relationship conflict. And I'm a real believer in conflicts. I use conflict as a strategy to try to uncover other people's biases and the and the latent biases that we have in ourselves. I I love to push people just a little bit in that regard and say that conflict in and of itself is not the problem. It is what we do with conflict, it's how it separates us, and how it it is it's how it harms our connections and our trust and the way that we can we can uh work together as families, as parents, as partners, whatever. But I love the way that you bring your heart to this, and I can really feel it. I can feel that it's it's it's real. And this is what we are very much lacking, especially in this country, is that focus on the heart and supporting the heart and supporting our connections and supporting our healthy connections, supporting us to be well together. And that is uh the necessity is to focus on men, but it's also that in that focus, we also focus on women and children and what our collective responsibility is. So people who get very defensive about the focus on men. There's no way for us to exist together happily in society and in our relationships and families without us helping men to be well. There's just no way. And why would we ever not want to do that? When these are our family, this is our family, these are our loved ones. So I really love what you're bringing. I love the heart focus. It's beautiful.

David Mandel :

So I unfortunately am in the role of saying we're we probably should be wrapping up. And this is sort of like this again.

Speaker:

Yeah, I want to do this again.

David Mandel :

I've got like uh we, you know, I I wanted to talk to you about the the so-called crisis of boys and fatherhood and fatherlessness, but but we went exactly where we needed to go, Ken. And and I really do share the the feelings about the importance of the hearts of men. Yeah, talking about fear, making space for men's little boys, and without that being permission to act out on other people, I think because that's the other part of it that we've talked about. Yeah, and also Brooklyn, just Brooklyn, just Brooklyn, just Brooklyn, man. Just Brooklyn, just Brooklyn, because Brooklyn made both of us, and it really does, you know, it's still there. I I agree with you. I I it shaped me the row house on Bachelda Street, you know, with a postage square front yard and a common driveway in the backyard, and 800 square foot house, you know. People were like, What do you mean? I'm like, you pull out the you pulled out the the kitchen table, three kids, and I got put in the corner and put in, and the table was pushed back, and they're like, What's the dining room table? That's for company. That's for company, you know. The the you you eat in the kitchen, that's the size, it's like eight by eight. Anyway, sorry, we could like the board is in the wall. No, we had a trundle, we had a trundle bed. We'd never been in the wall, we had a trundle bed. So the bed pulled out, went up during the at night, and then went back on the news during the day.

Speaker 1:

He thought his brother sleeping in the trundle bed meant that he he would get eaten by the monster. Oh, yeah.

David Mandel :

My bigger brother, he was getting eaten by the monsters first, of course. Yep. But anyway, so Ken, just you know, we're we're really pleased. We will have you back on people listening. Yeah, Ken's book is Too Seasoned to Care, How Aging Turns Experience into Wisdom and Liberation. It just came out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

David Mandel :

And it's it's it's a really powerful read. And particularly, I would say the letters to himself. Uh, you know, don't jump to the end, they're at the end, but but they're they're they're very powerful. They're very powerful. Yeah. And and Ken, thank you for being on the show.

Speaker:

Yeah, thank you.

David Mandel :

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Let's stay connected. Let's stay connected.

Speaker 1:

Stay connected.

David Mandel :

And you've been listening to Partner with Survivor, and I'm still David Mandel.

Speaker 1:

I'm still Ruth Rabundo Mandel.

David Mandel :

And please follow us, like this podcast, go to safety dot com and all the things, and we will find you on another show in the future. We are out. We're out.