Men’s Health Month: Making Space for the Conversations That Matter

June is Men’s Health Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness of the physical, emotional, and mental health challenges men face and encouraging meaningful conversations about well-being. While men’s health is important every month of the year, June offers an opportunity to shine a light on issues that often go unspoken.

At Active Balance Health Centre, we recognize that many men carry significant responsibilities, expectations, and pressures while finding little space to explore their own thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness—it is an investment in health, resilience, and personal growth.

We are pleased to welcome Matt Groeneveld, Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC) and Counselling Therapist, to the Active Balance Health Centre team beginning July 16, 2026. Matt will be accepting new clients and brings a thoughtful, compassionate approach to counselling, supporting individuals as they navigate life’s challenges, relationships, life transitions, self-discovery, and mental wellness.

In recognition of Men’s Health Month, Matt shares the following reflection on the often-unspoken experiences many men carry beneath the surface and the importance of turning toward ourselves with curiosity, honesty, and compassion.

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After and between the checklists of projects, tasks, and go-tos, the stressors of work, the juggernaut of uncertainties, and the obligations to do, to accomplish, and to be productive are the hands of men.

The motivations, the responsibilities, the desire to be whatever we need to be, and the demands of our day-to-day. We carry on, trying to keep steady while being both the mountain and the breeze, and somewhere within stirs an eddy of (perhaps) unspeakables. Also feelings.

And what are those? To know and to communicate how one is doing can be difficult. It doesn’t occur to us to think about it, and when we do, we’re at a loss.

“Uh… it’s been… good, I guess.”

We do it anyway. Deny the self. Wishes get banished; the interior framework gets gutted. Thoughts and self-beliefs don’t get voiced, and the accompanying feelings are left to drift and circle around.

Until it comes out in other ways.

To feel life as it is experienced is to digest the feeling. The weather changes, and the weather within, held loosely, will too. The mental gymnastics required in denial, shutting down, or numbing become exhausting, and it hurts. It hurts, and the pain calls for further denial and deeper shutting down.

And it’s human. If there’s fire, we pull the hand away. If our feelings seem dangerous, we’ll avoid them. The gnawing condemnations, visions, and voices of guilt, shame, regret, and the mounting pressure to be who we’re not. Ideas and interpretations carry over like some tense and dissonant bassline, or an undercurrent, giving us rules, conditions, and stipulations.

“I shouldn’t have these thoughts.”

‘I should be further ahead.”

“I should be more like…”

We compare and we condemn ourselves. Our choices, missteps, actions, and inactions. Much of what brought us here wasn’t chosen. Yet we hate ourselves for them anyway.

We forget that we’ve changed with the times and seasons around us. The stance taken up in the accusation is from a place of perspective. The you of yesterday didn’t have the information you have now. Didn’t know how things would go. Seeds tossed in the moment have created a meadow of unforeseen grasses and weeds and flowers too.

The you of tomorrow needs the present you now.

Love your fate by making it yours.

Yesterday cannot be changed, but the inhibitions of today can be addressed. What’s the bit you can work on, nurture, or weed out?

Bite the bit you can and care to, and you’ll thank yourself later.

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If this reflection resonates with you, counselling can provide a supportive space to explore your experiences, strengthen self-understanding, and develop tools for navigating life’s challenges. Matt Groeneveld will be accepting new clients at Active Balance Health Centre beginning July 16, 2026.