The things male farmers don't say out loud

You're not the kind of person who talks about this stuff.

You never have been.

You grew up watching the men around you work through hard things quietly - head down, keep going, don't make it a bigger deal than it is.

Feelings were something that happened to other people, or at least something other people talked about.

You learned early that the way you showed love was through showing up.

Through working.

Through making sure the farm survived and the family was provided for and the thing your grandfather started was still standing when it was your turn to hand it on.

So you worked. And you kept working. And you got very good at not saying the thing.

This post is about that thing.

What you're not saying.

You're not saying that you're scared.

Not about the farm exactly - you've been scared about the farm before and you got through it.

This is a different kind of scared.

The kind that lives underneath the work and the pride and the identity you've built around being the person this farm depends on.

The kind that shows up at 2am when you can't sleep and the house is quiet and you lie there running numbers and scenarios and contingencies until your brain finally gives up and lets you go back to sleep.

The fear that you are one bad season away from losing something that took generations to build.

The fear that you are not as capable as everyone assumes you are.

The fear that the gap between who you are and who people think you are is wider than anyone knows.

You're not saying that you're lonely.

Which sounds strange because you're surrounded by people.

Your family is right there.

Your wife is right there.

And yet there is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being the person everyone depends on.

Because depending on someone and knowing them are two different things.

People need you. They rely on you. They trust you to hold it together.

But who actually knows what's going on inside you?

You're not saying that you're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix.

Not physically tired - you've always been physically tired, that's just farming.

This is something else.

A depletion that goes deeper than your body.

The kind of tired that comes from carrying something heavy for a very long time without ever putting it down.

Without ever being allowed to put it down.

You're not saying that you don't know how to be anything other than this.

The farmer.

The provider.

The strong one.

The person who keeps it all going.

You've been this for so long that you're not sure what would be left if you weren't.

You're not sure who you are outside of what you do.

And that's a terrifying thing to sit with so mostly you don't sit with it. You just go back to work.

You're not saying that you can see the distance growing between you and your family and you don't know how to close it.

You see it.

You're not oblivious.

You notice the conversations that don't happen anymore and the evenings where everyone is in the same room but nobody is really together and the look on your wife's face that you've learned not to ask about because you don't have the bandwidth to handle the answer right now.

You see it.

And it scares you more than anything else on this list.

But you don't say it.

Because saying it might make it real.

Because you don't know what to do about it.

Because the farm needs you and your family needs you and somewhere in the middle of all that needing there is no space for you to also be the one who is struggling.

Why you don't say it.

It's not weakness. Let's get that out of the way right now.

The silence isn't weakness. It's conditioning.

It's a lifetime of learning that the way men in farming show up is by not burdening other people with what's happening inside them.

By being the load-bearer, not the load.

By keeping it together because if you don't, who does?

That's not weakness.

That's a story you were handed and never questioned because it worked. Until it stopped working.

And somewhere in you, you already know it has stopped working.

What happens when you keep not saying it.

The distance keeps growing.

Not because you stop loving your family.

You never stopped loving your family.

But love that can't find a way to express itself turns inward.

It becomes silence and distance and a kind of emotional absence that the people around you feel even when they can't name it.

The fear gets louder.

The things you don't say don't go away.

They just go underground.

And underground they grow.

The 2am anxiety.

The low-level dread.

The irritability that comes out sideways at the wrong moments toward the wrong people.

The farm starts running you instead of the other way around.

When you don't have a self outside of the farm.

When your identity and your worth and your entire sense of who you are is tied up in the operation, you can't make clear decisions about it.

You can't see it objectively.

You can't know when enough is enough because enough was never the point.

The farm always comes first because the farm is you.

And the people who love you (who have been waiting and watching and hoping you'll let them in) they get tired of waiting.

Not all at once.

Gradually.

The way distance always grows.

Until one day the gap is wide enough that closing it feels impossible and neither of you knows how it got this big.

That's the version you're afraid of.

The one you've seen happen to other people.

It doesn't have to be your version.

What saying it actually looks like.

Not a breakdown.

Not a big dramatic conversation where you put everything on the table at once.

Not therapy - not yet, not if that's not where you are.

Just saying it somewhere.

To someone.

Once.

I'm struggling.

I don't know how to close the distance with my family.

I'm scared and I don't know what to do about it.

I've achieved everything I set out to achieve and I still don't feel okay.

The farm is running me and I don't know how to get back in front of it.

Just saying it out loud to someone who isn't going to panic.

Who isn't going to need you to manage their reaction while you're trying to get through the sentence.

Who isn't going to think less of you for having said it.

That's what I'm here for.

There's no emotional charge between us.

No history. No relationship to protect.

You can say the scared thing and the hard thing and the thing you haven't let yourself think all the way through - and I'm just going to listen.

And then I'm going to help you figure out what to do with it.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

Most of the farmers I work with say the same thing after the first conversation: I didn't know how much I needed to say that out loud.

You don't have to have it figured out before you reach out.

You just have to be willing to say the thing.

Once. To someone safe.

That's where everything else starts.

If this resonated, you might also want to read:

The weight of keeping a family farm alive — For the farmer carrying the weight of a multi-generational operation and everything that comes with it

The farm runs well. So why aren't you okay? — When the operation is successful but something still feels wrong

Nobody warned you that hitting your goals would feel like this — When you got there and the feeling you expected never showed up

You've been saying it's fine for a long time.

It's okay if it's not fine.

It's okay to need something different. It's okay to be tired of carrying it alone. It's okay to want your family back and not know how to get there and need someone to help you figure it out.

That's not weakness. That's the bravest thing a farmer can do.

I'm here when you're ready. You can schedule a free chat with me anytime at www.farmcoachkatia.com/work-with-me.