Women are taught to be strong. Men are taught to appear strong. And there’s a big difference between the two definitions that will change our lives as we know it.

Being strong requires endurance, transparency, empathy, patience, nurturing, and open-mindedness.  Appearing strong is rooted in fear and insecurity. It is brittle and fragile because it is inflexible, immovable, which is what leads to cracks, implosions, and explosions under pressure.

Being strong is natural like a tree, the earth. It knows and embraces the natural order of things: The necessity in giving and taking, buckling and wobbling, for survival and longevity, and thus is flawed by design and necessarily collaborative, symbiotic. Appearing strong is man-made and conditioned, intrusive and immovable, and thus, disconnected, close-minded, defensive, volatile, and at the mercy of its surroundings, limited.

How do you know which version of strength you have been taught? The clue could be in your response to everything above.

If you feel betrayed, uncomfortable, slighted, attacked, and/or the need to protect yourself, then you might have been taught to appear strong.

If you feel intrigued, assured, affirmed, pushed, and enlightened, you might have been taught to be strong.

We must unlearn in order to learn society’s best kept secret: that as men and women, we are (and need) each other. To believe anything else is to live a life committed to feeling broken, with no hope of ever being whole….


“How? Why? Where’s the proof? What the fuck? Keith….really, though?”

If you’re screaming those questions in your head (or out loud), the key is in the text; it’s all there in plain sight, even though our experience and conditioning may render it invisible. But in order to pick up on the nuance in what is being said, let us focus on what is NOT being said.

Never did I say women are stronger or that men are weaker.

We are both human, which means we are taught, influenced, and conditioned by those around us. Just as men are taught to appear strong, women can be, too. Just as women are taught to be strong, men can be, too.

Never did I say men are stronger or that women are weaker.

This isn’t a war between the sexes, but a moment of truth, clarity. We have all been tricked to believe that genitalia dictates character and that gender is fixed and predetermined within a set conditions of right and wrong.

Here’s what I did say: Both men and women have the capacity to be strong, together.

The only way we can override the destructive and damaging belief that men and women are not only different, but that one is inevitably weaker and more fragile than the other, is to embark on the necessary (and sometimes painful) process of re-searching, re-thinking, re-building.

We are one in the same. The problem is not each other, but the flawed, divisive, and misguided teaching and conditioning that says we aren’t the same, that we are of and from different “worlds” and thus, inevitably meant to misunderstand one another, forever.

We must unlearn in order to learn society’s best kept secret: that as men and women, we are (and need) each other. To believe anything else is to live a life committed to feeling broken–with no hopes of ever being whole–because the key to our existence lies in each other. Point. Blank. Period.

Women are taught to be strong. Men are taught to appear strong. And there’s a big difference between the two definitions that will change our lives as we know it.

Do you know what version of strength you’ve been taught? Regardless, let the unlearning begin, for all our sakes.