The Human Journey We've Accidentally Gendered

Women have built an enormous language around personal growth over the last 20+ years, while men haven’t had the same cultural permission or infrastructure for those conversations

One of the biggest surprises since joining Substack hasn’t been the number of women finding their way here.

I’ve spent years writing about women, talking to women, creating courses for women, and trying to put words around the experiences so many of us seem to share as we move through midlife.

What I didn’t expect was the number of men appearing in the comments saying,

“Me too.”

At first, I almost brushed it aside. Not quite sure how to respond because it felt so far out of my comfort zone.

Then it kept happening. Again. And again. And again.

Almost every time I write about identity, self-trust, people pleasing, loneliness, starting over, performance, purpose or stepping away from the life you thought you were supposed to build, another man raises his hand and says,

“Me too. Am I welcome here?”

It’s made me question something I’d never really stopped to question before:

Have I accidentally been describing a human journey through the lens of being a woman?

I’ve always written “women” because that’s the only experience I can honestly write from. I know what it’s like to be a daughter, a girl, a woman, a wife, a childless woman moving through midlife.

I don’t know what it feels like to experience life as a man, and must admit I’ve never really given it much thought.

But maybe I’ve been asking the wrong question. Making the wrong assumptions.

Maybe the question isn’t whether women and men experience these things differently, maybe it’s whether we’ve convinced ourselves that the questions themselves belong to one gender.

Who am I beneath all these roles?

What actually matters to me?

What if I stop performing the version of myself everyone expects?

What does success mean now?

Can I trust myself?

Am I allowed to choose a quieter life?

I’ve always thought of these as conversations women were finally giving themselves permission to have.

Now I’m wondering if men have been carrying exactly the same questions, only without quite the same language bank or permission to speak them out loud.

One comment in particular stopped me in my tracks…

A man wrote about how frightening it would be to step out of the socially constructed role he’d spent his whole life performing. He wondered what would happen if he stopped constantly performing for the world. He spoke about guilt. Shame. About the possibility that he might finally have to look after himself emotionally, physically and spiritually, and how uncomfortable that felt.

I sat there reading it thinking - women say this too.

Not the exact same circumstances. Not the exact same conditioning. But the exact same feeling underneath.

How much of our lives have we all spent performing?

Women have often been expected to perform goodness. Caregiving. Selflessness. Beauty. Emotional availability.

Men have often been expected to perform strength. Success. Stoicism. Competence. Control.

Different costumes on the same stage.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether personal growth is all about slowly laying those costumes down.

Not because we stop caring, but because we become curious about who we are without them.

I don’t know what this journey feels like for men. I genuinely don’t. And I don’t want to fill in the gaps with my own assumptions. That’s why I’m writing this.

If you’re a man reading this, I’d love to know.

What has this journey looked like for you?

Have you reached a point where you’ve started questioning the roles you were handed?

Have you found it easy to talk about?

Or have you felt as though you’ve been walking it largely alone?

One of the things Substack has taught me over the last few months is that every time I think I’m writing about women, someone reminds me I’m also writing about being human.

And maybe that’s the conversation I was looking for all along.