You’ve heard it by now: Buffalo Bills, Safety: Damar Hamlin, after making a tackle on the field, during Monday Night Football– rose up, then suddenly fell backward, prone and unmoving on the turf.

The NFL players are men who are paid millions to trade off, to hope to fulfill their dream, yet to risk their lives every game, for the NFL owners’ bounties…

Thus on Monday night, instead of taking a break and continuing the game as some higher ups may have wanted, the NFL players gathered round the fallen man, guarding him, kneeling to pray over him, shaking and weeping.

Why?

There have been countless injuries over the decades in this increasingly heavyweight, brutal-collision sport that for the sake of Mammon alone, had turned its back on critical injuries, and yes, death on the field.

Why is this time different? It is a different time when men are no longer raised to be cardboard act-alikes, but fully human, with their own unique thoughts, ideas, creativity, talents, hopes, feelings and insights.

We had a deep draft of that uniqueness, no longer follow orders, when a certain player Kaepernick took a knee for a reason he thought righteous… then many others followed him in defying what others, more monied, wanted.

What? Football players that think for themselves? Some jeered, “Unthinkable” some screeched, “just entertain us, risk your lives, dont play a sissy game, arouse me, excite me, satisfy me, or else I will call you names, demean you…” even in fantasy football for heaven’s sake.

But there’s more than just that men who are built like giants are different than what some came to expect and want re feelingless men in sports… the sudden appearance of Lady Death.

In the old days and in people who live close to the earth still, people carried a sense often that Death was always near, not greedy to take lives, but just waiting to ‘walk them home,’ that is, for the right time as decided by Greater–that people would walk on.

However in modern so-called culture, not the young, but those who comment on the young have perpetuated the myth –through what they jeer and cheer about in the young- that they young are somehow magically invulnerable. Thereby the young are groomed by those older and who ought know better– to think themselves impervious to death and injury, when they are not so.

Too many commenters on the young, encourage the young far too often to think setting aside one’s safety in order to win the brass ring, is ‘manly.’ And while many boys and girls are daring and in some ways fearless, they are not, unless influenced adversely, reckless.

Today, the Bengals’ and the Bills’ deeply talented athletes showed what ‘manly’ is for real: compassionate, protective, deep feeling for another human being, right conduct, grave concern, and yes, shock… for they saw Lady Death right before their eyes, a person, colleague, friend, perhaps dying, the life seeping out of him for a time…

The NFL players showed their manliness that has nothing to do with team owner billionaires buying and selling and owning humans bodies by paying them off… That is, the young men wept and prayed. That Death would pass by their compadre. That he would live again.

PTSD, does not mean weakness as some Generals at the VA were wont to say during WWI and WWII, Korean war, and war in Viet Nam… dooming literally millions of fighting men to lives of deep depression, nightmares, terrors, after the wars ended.

PTSD means the decent sensibilities and sensitivities of a person’s psyche, as given and inborn by Creator/ Greater into all persons… has had a sudden shock during and after which for a time, one is thrown into and walks/staggers in two worlds, the mundane reality, and another reality one has never or hardly ever seen before…

a reality that is brutal, real, and comes from seeing, hearing, smelling, sensing the veil of Death hovering over the life of oneself or the life of another or others.

It will take time to come back from this shock, and it is done by talking to an able listener about what one thought and felt, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, heart-wise during the shock, being reassured that yes they saw what most never see, never hope to see…

that yes, they are strong but also… they are decent and human and under the guidance, not of ‘owners’ but of Greater–Who has given them a full set of gifts with which to feel, apprehend, think, create and to be fully human in the best of ways.

There is a neurobiological aspect to this kind of sudden shock, and it will take time for all bodily chemistry to re-aright itself again. Symptoms might show themselves as sleeplessness, replaying the shock over and over, staring, disinterest in things formerly enjoyed, sudden emotional surges and more…

these are all the signs of the psyche and body being shocked by the appearance of near death.

And one of the best helps to this kind of physiological shock may ironically be literally using the body energy up daily, working out, running, whatever allows the body to come to more peace in coming days.

One of the worst attempts to deal, is via alcohol, drugs and other addictive ways.

Having the time to sift through all these, is critical. Otherwise it is like letting a broken bone heal as it will, rather than being reset so all can take time to mend and be strong and be well again.

I imagine the NFL players unity will ask for, fight for this if need be. They are a whole new generation of young men to be proud of in many many ways.

May all be healed, helped, be given the time to process all that has and will occur now, not let being ‘under contract’ interfere with one’s health off the field, let alone on the field. May all loved ones of those affected, also be cared for in effective ways that truly help.

I leave you with this poem I wrote for love of the men who strive so hard and sometimes are misled by the overculture, but can ever come back to True Self again. That it be so.

THE MUDDY ANGELS
“We don’t choose
The Heroic Journey,
it chooses us.

In ancient tales,
the hero first
seeks self-knowledge,
hoping to answer to no one/

then begins to die
from heartache,
lack of meaning/

tries to be
‘the good boy’/
becomes lost/
may try
being a tyrant/

but must rise
to save his own life/
and sometimes
the lives of others/

then works ‘to deal’
with monsters of the past/
and forges ways
to truly love.

When men,
whom I affectionately call,
‘the muddy angels,’
are in any
of these challenge phases,
they are actually
in the midst of
rowing back to True Home.

Let Soul lead.
Please know you are
daily prayed forward
by a world who needs
Wiseman/
Strongman/
and Tenderman
to survive,
all in one.

Courage, dear brave Soul.”
No lack of love,
Dr. E.
_______________
Collage and text excerpt from forthcoming audio series: 12 Tasks of Hercules, by Dr. C.P. Estés, ©2015

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Reyés is mestiza Latina [bi-racial native American and Spanish] in service of the voiceless; as a post-trauma recovery specialist, psychoanalyst of 52 years clinical practice; and as a journalist covering stories of human suffering and hope. Her doctorate is in ethnographic-clinical psychology, the study of diverse cultural, political, corporate, and religious groups– with emphasis on world indigenous history.

As post-trauma recovery specialist, she served at Columbine High School and community for three years after the massacre. She continues to work with 9-11 survivor families on both coasts, and is known internationally for her Estés International Post-trauma Recovery Protocol used to deputize citizens quickly to help in the aftermath of disasters. Her first and continuing works since 1965 began at Hines VA hospital near Chicago, with emphasis on combat veterans suffering from PTSD.

Raised in a war refugee and deportee family who could not read or write or did so haltingly, her La Sociedad de Guadalupe cohort gives grants to churches, libraries, schools and literacy foundations in USA and abroad, that support adult literacy.