Jesse Holden is fundraising
"Rise Up Run" 24hrs of Mt.Pisgah
The who:
I'm raising money to benefit Umbrella, and any donation will help create an impact. Thanks in advance for contributing to this cause, which means so much to me.
More information about Umbrella: Umbrella has been elevating the voices of women, families, and survivors of interpersonal violence in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont since 1976. Our programs seek to enhance the lives of everyone in our community by promoting safety, respect, development, and education throughout the lifespan. From improving access to quality early child care and education to providing advocacy, emergency shelter, crisis services, and community education to those affected by domestic and sexual violence and stalking.
My why:
My name is Jesse Holden, and I am a momma’s boy. As a child, I loved running up to my mom on the couch and burying my head onto her lap and into her baggy clothes that always smelled the same, as she read me my favorite stories. I loved to sing, dance, wear bright clothes with elaborate patterns, watch romcoms with fairy tale endings, and grow my hair out long and bleached blonde like my ideals at the time the Back Street Boys. I felt and loved deeply when I saw people in pain, I felt their pain and wanted so badly for it to stop for them.
Then around age 11 or 12, everything changed and that beautiful boy that felt deeply and loved unabashedly had to put on a mask and suppress and bottle up much of himself. I remember that it started my 5th-grade year on the school bus ride, which was an hour long. I started to get picked on mercilessly due to the length of my hair and the color of my clothes. “What are you a girl”? “Look at Jesse he is so gay”! “What a fairy”! I so was confused. I was pretty sure that I was a boy, I had no idea what gay meant, and the whole fairy thing made no sense at all. It only got worse from here and I started to experience physical abuse by these older boys, it got to the point where I used to hide at the bottom of my road so I would miss the bus and hopefully, my mom wouldn’t want to drive me to school. This was my first indoctrination into the world of toxic masculinity which involves cultural pressure for men/boys to behave a certain way. Toxic masculinity generally refers to the idea that some people’s idea of “manliness” is displayed through toxic traits such as domination, misogyny, homophobia, and aggression.
I had to go to school, mom said so! So, I did the only other thing that I could think of to survive there; I put on a mask. I cut my hair, I started wearing clothes that were less bright, and then I started practicing relentlessly to become a better athlete. It didn’t take me long to see that all the “men” looked up to athletes, the alpha males. So, I practiced and I practiced and I practiced some more shoveling off the basketball court and shooting for hours in gloves until I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. If you saw me walking around those days, I would have been dribbling a basketball no matter when or where. The practice paid off and in a few years, I was better than most at my sports of choice basketball and football. “Hey look I have really made it; I was the man”! One of the best athletes at my school, popular, and had the prettiest girlfriend. Then why was I so sad, so angry all the time, so depressed?
My depression, anxiety, and feelings of inadequacy followed me like a shadow because I was never enough, never strong enough, never fast enough, never smart enough, never rich enough, and never Man enough! See that’s the thing, that’s the trap, there is always going to be someone better than you so we end up chasing this unicorn that only leads to sorrow and feelings of never being good enough. Never fitting perfectly into this square box that society tells us is manhood.
It took years and years to be able to remove the mask I lived in and this only happened through being around smart, kind, incredibly passionate women, through my own education, therapy and ironically having to be the very thing that I tried so hard to push down, and the thing that I am doing right now as I stand in front of you; being vulnerable. My vulnerability became my power, and affords me the ability to no longer wear the mask! Now I feel alive and ready to be who I really am, I have the strength to talk about my experiences and do as much as I can to help others who may experience the same struggles. Every year I do a fundraiser for Umbrella (a local non-profit that combats domestic/sexual violence against women and works to educate the men that inflict this harm). I write articles for the paper and just bring as much awareness to the topic of healthy masculinity as I possibly can. For this year’s fundraiser on December 30th I will hike/run up and down Mt.Pisgah in Westmore, VT for 24hrs. I’ll let you all know how that turns out!
My name is Jesse Holden and I am a momma’s boy, I like to sing and dance, wear bright clothes with elaborate colors, love, and feel deeply, I am man enough!!
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