I’m a White (Liberal) Man — Am I Okay — and Why Should I do More?

I’m a white, fairly liberal man. I am okay — with being who I am. I should do more for various reasons.

Before I can realistically do more, I need to deal with my own basic “survival”. I have various medical issues that I need to take care of. I am working on them — including my own mental health issues.

Doing more can be a lot of things — obviously! I have a life partner. Doing more outside of my relationship, while neglecting my relationship would be wrong. Doing more within my relationship is important to me. I’ve not always been the best partner. I am lucky to have the opportunity to have a growing, loving relationship. I want to do my best — now — and help be a good partner.

Doing more also relates beyond my wife and my immediate family. Recently, I have been told by several men that within our common men’s community we need to focus our training and our personal work solely on our — individual (immediate) issues. Where I have issues on various parts of who I am, I need to focus my work upon them.

At the same time, our men’s organization is focusing upon “equity and diversity”. We are largely a North Suburban Chicago, upper-middle class, cis-gendered-heterosexual organization which is disproportionately older men. Recently we had a presentation where we white men listened to a lot of the life experiences expressed by a group of non-white men who are veterans (also) of our organization.