Featured Guest Article
New on TheHPI BlogSpot
“You Need a Pastor... But Sometimes You Don’t”
Written by: Elexio Bailou
Originally Published: Facebook Post https://www.facebook.com/elexiob/
Published on The Healthy Pastor Initiative™ with permission. All rights reserved.
Editor’s Note (The Healthy Pastor Initiative™):
The following commentary, written by Elexio Bailou, echoes some of the necessary conversations surrounding pastoral health, accountability, and the tension many leaders feel in today’s church culture. At The Healthy Pastor Initiative™, we believe honest dialogue like this helps sharpen the Body of Christ and point us toward healthier leadership models.
This article offers a bold and honest reflection on the challenges of pastoral accountability, leadership structures, and the real tensions many believers feel in today’s church culture. It invites leaders and pastors to engage in necessary conversations we often avoid—but desperately need.



The Silent Weight Men Carry
The truth is: men carry weight they often don’t know how to speak about.
For generations, many were taught to suppress emotion, to equate vulnerability with weakness, and to bury pain beneath performance. They were told:
"Man up. Be strong. Don’t cry. Provide. Protect. Perform."
So they learned to survive by shutting down.
But beneath the silence, the pain remains.
The boy who never heard “I’m proud of you” grows into the man still craving approval.
The young man who never received affirmation searches for it in achievement, relationships, or addictions.
The father who was never fathered struggles to give what he never received.
This silent weight is why many men struggle in areas we don’t always connect to fatherlessness:
Anger issues
Control issues
Emotional detachment
Workaholism
Addiction
Broken relationships
Depression that looks like isolation
Anxiety that looks like rage
Mental health battles that never get acknowledged because "real men don’t talk about that."
And sadly, for some, the silence becomes unbearable — leading some to self-destruct, walk away, or give up altogether.
This is why Men’s Mental Health matters.
Not because men are weak, but because for too long they've carried wounds they were never given permission to heal.

