Too many men live with unspoken wounds, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and family trauma that shape their lives but are rarely addressed. Silence and shame have kept brothers from healing for generations.
Researchers have found that at least 1 in 6 men have experienced sexual abuse or assault, whether in childhood or as adults.
Founder of the Survivor’s Circle and co-creator of the Brother’s Healing Male Trauma Mastermind, Robert “Dr. Rob” Marshall Jr., will be hosting Atlanta’s first-ever Male Trauma Mastermind conversation on Saturday, Dec. 13, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
This three-hour interactive experience will provide men and the women who support them with the tools, truth, and safe space needed to start or strengthen their healing journey.
The gathering, Marshall says, is a thought-leadership and healing experience where men, particularly Black and Brown men, will openly share the stories we’ve often been forced to carry alone: childhood abuse, sexual trauma, fatherlessness, incarceration trauma, violence, emotional wounds, grief, shame, and identity struggles.
These conversations will be filmed for a national project designed to bring awareness to the silent epidemic of male trauma. But more importantly, this event is about creating tangible solutions, safe spaces, and healing pathways for our brothers.
The idea of this event came from Marshall’s own experience with sexual abuse, fatherlessness, and realizing he never had a safe space to process.
“I never thought I would be working with men because of my story, and I realized now, as a survivor of bullying, as a survivor of sexual abuse, as a survivor of all types of just different traumas, I’m realizing more than anything, men need a place to talk,” he said.
Marshall says he has always asked the question, “Where do broken and hurting men go?” and the answer is always that they go to incarceration or a premature grave. With this information, he said he realized men need a space to talk and process.
“When I say men, I mean all men. I’m not talking about just a cultural definition of what a man is,” he said. “I’m talking about a space where men from all walks of life, regardless of their religious beliefs, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, can have a safe space to process and deal with the things they cannot talk about.”
During the interactive experience, guests can expect a safe space to begin their journeys, Marshall says. Also, guests can expect healthcare professionals and therapists who are specifically trained for this dialogue.
“Healing is a journey and wholeness is the destination, and we began our journey to wholeness one healing step at a time,” he said.
To do this, Marshall says men must at least realize and be honest with themselves about where they are, what has happened to them, and what they’ve experienced.
“What we want is this event to create a safe space where they can talk about the things they’re either demonized for talking about or they’re afraid to talk about,” he said. “For some men, they do not even know it’s happened, and they don’t know they don’t have the words for it, and a lot of times, black and brown men collectively, we experience things in our lives we don’t have verbiage for.”
Men, Marshall says, often do not know it’s there until one day, they realize it’s affecting and changing their relationships and how they show up for work, their finances, who they love, how they love, and receive love.
“We’re not here to fix anybody; we just want to create this space to begin that journey of healing,” Marshall said.
Traumatologist Tray Groce, who will be at the event as well, said when starting a journey like this, there is a piece at the beginning, especially for men, which is getting them to connect with a version of themselves that society doesn’t always allow.
“It’s the little boy in us that a lot of times society doesn’t allow us to heal,” he said. “We want to create this environment that is curated for safety because some men begin to open up in a way that their little versions of themselves that have been longing for where the trauma started, and we hope to make an atmosphere where, beyond all societal norms, can be seen at the core of who they are.”
This event is urgent for Atlanta, Groce says, because there’s an urgency at the prevalence of what we see going on, specifically in black and brown communities.
“Atlanta has a beautiful metropolitan DNA to it, and so with that in mind, if we can just start off with twos and threes of one man at a time, like one home, one family, one space , and allow that to multiply, healing is contagious,” he said.
The significance of this conversation also coincides with the concept of recent holiday depression, Groce said.
“It’s now more than ever appropriate to start hopeful conversations at a time where black and brown men are not feeling seen or heard,” he said. “There are many men out here longing for help, so we want to create this space to offer that.”
For advice, Marshall says healing is a journey and wholeness is a destination.
“I want men to know there’s a place called wholeness. I remember growing up thinking I would never be good enough, and I grew up in religious spaces, so I grew up believing no matter what, I was never good enough,” he said.
He also says men will not be broken forever, and they don’t have to stay that way by finding the courage to begin their own journey.
“It takes courage, because you must silence the voices that are in your head from your past. You must silence the fears that are trying to speak in your present, and you must combat lies that are coming from your future,” he said. “It’s never too late to become who you should have been.”
The most dangerous man in the world, Marshall says, is a man who has hope, and the most dangerous man in the world is a man who doesn’t have hope.
Furthermore, looking at data around Atlanta and surrounding regions, Groce says one in six men experience sexual trauma, and 39.9%, give or take, have experienced intimate partner violence. If 40% of the people in a city have gone through some form of this violence and traumatic experience, he says, the message of hope is one that needs to be resurfaced.
Marshall says it’s one of the reasons why they are here, because of those stated statistics and how they are incorrect.
“The Survivor’s Circle is also a research organization, and those stats are wrong because black and brown men don’t have a healthy relationship with police or the healthcare industries, which is where those data statistics come from,” he said.
Subsequently, they believe it’s more like 80-85% of boys and men in urban communities have this worldwide, not just in Atlanta, and not just black and brown. Marshall says it’s more about urban social at lower socio-economic spaces.
“80-85% of boys and men have experienced some form just of sexual abuse, and that’s not talking about all the other compounded trauma,” he said. “It can be sexual trauma with fatherlessness trauma compounded on top of it, or poverty, or gang violence. There’s something bigger going on here.”
Furthermore, Marshall says he wants men to heal and begin their journeys in a safe, nonjudgmental, and supportive space.
“We want men to heal,” he said. “I believe if you heal a man, you can heal a family. If you can heal a family, you can heal a community, and if you heal a community, we can heal the world. It takes a lot more patience, but a man, the results, and what you get out of that will change the world.”
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Isaiah Singleton
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