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The Uncle Wound

There is often talk in the men's movement about the father wound. And rightly so. Men need to know that their fathers, largely unknowingly, did not guide them into a healthy manhood. They neither witnessed this manhood nor knew enough to teach it. Most in the men's movement know that this wound was endemic in their father's time and is little less so today.

The father wound has been passed down now for a number of generations, at least as long as the dominance of the patriarchy. In fact, one of my definitions of the patriarchy is a rule by ignorant fathers. In a patriarchy fathers need to control sons. Most ignorant fathers control sons in order to prepare them for fitting into the patriarchy. They are well meaning, though misguided. To these fathers movement outside the patriarchy is self destructive if not downright tragic. In a patriarchy fathers always know best. In the case of good intentioned fathers patriarchal success is their best wish for themselves and their sons.

Patriarchal success having to do with measuring self worth by net worth then becomes the only viable game in town. All that matter is matter. Outer status is unknowingly traded for inner peace. This is how the patriarchy propagates itself. Through fear and ignorance.

So fathers who are wounded themselves end up wounding their sons. It is most often in midlife that a man starts feeling the wound. Then he starts to realize that his ladder of success is on the wrong wall. He starts to realize that he has been betrayed. It is then he either shuts out the voices deep inside that are whispering this betrayal or he listens and begins a journey that leads to initiation (See Toward Manhood on this site).

I have always thought of this wise, truthful voice deep inside as the elder voice. This is the part of us who sees that the patriarch is stark naked. This is the voice from our collective unconscious that has the wisdom of ancestors or angels. This is the inner voice that teaches another way, if listened to.

However, as I experience voices inside I am starting to wonder whether there is a wise inner voice from another source. Let me explain.

For indigenous people, people who are our ancestors as well as our brothers, fathers did not as a rule raise their sons. It was not their primary responsibility. Maybe these people knew what a temptation a father would have, because of ego needs, to make a son in his own image. Or maybe these people realized how a father can so easily get in competition with his son, the hallmark of the patriarchal system. In any case, other men of the village of the same generation as the father would be given the responsibility of guiding the young son. This could be a whole cohort of men or just one special man who was a relative of the father. These men would be considered what we call uncles. They had major responsibilities to ultimately prepare a boy for being taken by elders for initiation.

In reality every man in the tribe was responsible for every young boy. No initiated man was allowed to ignore inappropriate or self-destructive behavior by any boy in the tribe. In every tribal day uncle voices must have been ubiquitous. To a young boy uncle eyes must have seemed everywhere. This kind of presence may sound claustrophobic to some. But I imagine boys felt cared for and safe rather than spied on. And I imagine boys felt confident in the knowledge they were being taught all the tools they would need to pass their initiatory tests on their way to full manhood.

So maybe in this modern world fathers are given a bad rap. Maybe other men have let us down, betrayed us. Maybe our real wound is an uncle wound. And maybe the voice that initially tries to wake us up is the uncle voice.

This is the voice of uncle ancestors deep inside ourselves trying to prepare us for initiation. This is the first voice heard inside that starts to recognize our discomfort or downright numbness in our daily life and whispers this awareness to our conscious self. Maybe this is the voice that speaks to us of a feeling of emptiness even when patriarchal goals have been reached or a beloved has committed to us. Maybe this is the voice that tries to awaken us from a trance of hypnotic cultural suggestions of what is important in life.

What I do know is that those of us who have followed this voice toward or into initiatory inner transformation have a responsibility to be uncles, at whatever stage we have learned about initiation, to any boy or youn man we come in contact with. This may be a moment or a momentous relationship. We cannot hold back as if that boy is not ours. We have the duty to share our experience, to extend ourselves. We need to trust this uncle voice inside to tell us when to be an uncle outside. We need to help heal uncle wounds. We, men, may not all be fathers. But we are all every boy's uncle.

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