06/09/2026
June is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and as I look at these photos, my heart feels incredibly heavy.
When I captured this session, I watched Chandler’s cousin Halie sit right next to the empty chair holding space for a man who should still be here. When I started the Stay Another Day project, my goal was to create a safe harbor for raw, unfiltered storytelling. I wanted to create a place where pain could be shared so that someone else might find the strength to stay.
Out of all the incredibly brave people who have submitted their stories to this project so far, I have only had one single male step forward. Just one.
I am so incredibly grateful for his bravery. But it also made me stop and really think about why it's so rare. The deeper I look into it, the more I realize that this silence represents a devastating reality for men.
The statistics tell us exactly what that silence means:
•Over 40% of men won't talk to anyone, not even their closest friends or family about their mental health.
•Men are far less likely to seek help, often masking their pain behind anger, fatigue, or just "staying busy."
•Because they fight in the dark, men account for nearly 80% of all su***de deaths. Terribly, 60% of those men had no known or documented history of mental illness before they passed.
So many are struggling, but they are keeping it entirely to themselves. They feel like they have to bear the weight of the world on their own because society told them that vulnerability is weakness.
To the one man who already trusted me with his story: thank you for wanting to be a light.
And to the rest of the men on my feed: Your story matters. Your pain is valid. Asking for help or sharing your burden does not make you less of a man—it makes you human.
My inbox is a safe space. You don't have to have it all together to sit in front of my lens. If you are a man reading this and you are ready to let a piece of your story be seen or if you just need a safe place to say "I'm not okay" please reach out to me.
Let's break the silence. Let's make sure there are fewer empty chairs.
