Anton Nootenboom, recognized to many on social media as “The Barefoot Dutchman,” isn’t your typical document holder.
In 2019, he turned the first and solely particular person to make the 80-mile round-trip hike to Mount Everest Base Camp with out footwear. Two years later, he set the 2021 Guinness World Record for the longest barefoot journey after mountaineering 1,875 miles on the Australian coast. Now he plans to break that document by walking 3,000 miles from Los Angeles to New York City, fully barefoot.
“It sounds crazy,” Nootenboom instructed Yahoo News on day six of his eight-month journey, which started on Feb. 17. He even referred to himself as the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump’ when 30-plus individuals joined him on the first mile of his trek in Santa Monica, Calif. The stroll is an extension of the #CourageousMenSpeak marketing campaign, in partnership with Barebarics barefoot footwear, which calls consideration to male mental health globally and raises funds for charities.
For Nootenboom, who served in the Dutch military for 10 years and accomplished three excursions in the Middle East, it’s symbolic of the psychological battles many males face in silence.
“The roads are tough and every day is full of surprises,” he stated. “I tell myself, ‘It’s just a phase. This road will end, and someday the road will be a little better.’ It’s the same in life: When things get tough, it’s never the end. It’s just a bit of a stretch, and eventually you come out of it. I have wounds on my feet, and they hurt, but I know the skin will grow back tougher than it was before. That’s what gives me hope.”
‘The pain is worth it for me.’
As he crosses the deserts, mountains and valleys of America to attain the Big Apple, Nootenboom will cease in varied cities to deliver academic instruments and assets to native communities. He desires to empower males of all ages to “not be afraid to tell your story.”
“The pain is worth it for me,” he stated of the mission. “I want this challenge to speak to men, and say, ‘Whatever life throws at you, physically and mentally, you can get through it.’”
That’s a lesson he discovered the arduous manner himself. After leaving the military in 2015, Nootenboom fell right into a deep despair and by no means felt snug speaking to anybody about it. The isolation led him to almost take his personal life on the fringe of a cliff in Australia, the place he was residing at the time. The incident turned a wake-up name for him to search assist.
“Being raised by the army to say, ‘Don’t cry, man up!’ I didn’t feel safe talking about what was going on with me,” he shared. “With a lot of resistance, I took the offer of getting help and doing things way out of my comfort zone,” which included remedy and meditation practices.
Nootenboom isn’t alone. Data from Mental Health America reveals that over 6 million males endure from despair annually, and most go untreated. That has grave penalties. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is almost 4 occasions extra prevalent in males than girls — with 39,255 male suicides in 2022, in contrast to 9,825 amongst girls the identical yr.
Experts inform Yahoo News that males with despair go largely underreported due to varied stigmas and cultural norms that discourage them from searching for assist.
“Men are socialized to not show their emotions, and the only acceptable emotions include anger and frustration,” stated Ernesto Lira de la Rosa, psychologist for the Hope for Depression Research Foundation. “This makes it challenging for men to openly talk about their feelings out of fear that they are not strong or that something is wrong with them.”
He added: “If we encourage other men to speak about their mental health, this will validate and normalize that mental health is a part of everyone’s lives, including men.”
Nicholas Balaisis, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, applauds Nootenboom for utilizing bodily exercise as a manner into the dialogue.
“Men often like to help with solvable problems, [but] mental health issues are not as easily solvable,” Balaisis defined, noting that long-distance working will be seen as a metaphor for the trials and tribulations all of us have. That offers a template for males to discuss extra deeply about their “interior life.”
“Men in particular need to develop a relation to their own interiority — thoughts about themselves, impressions from relationships, hopes, dreams, regrets,” he stated. “This happens best with others.”
The Dutch ‘Forrest Gump’
“After I went through some healing, I learned that I wasn’t alone in my feelings,” stated Nootenboom. “If there’s something I learned in the army, it’s to lead by example. I wanted to share my own story in the hopes that it creates a safe space for others to be like, ‘Hey, if you can do it, then I can do it.’”
During the day, Nootenboom walks barefoot with a trolley cart nicknamed “Bubba,” a nod to a personality in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks a couple of man who develops a cult following for working across the nation. At night time, he sleeps in one in all two campers, each pushed by the marketing campaign’s producers who’re following his path across America.
Similar to his record-setting Australian hike in 2021, he expects extra individuals to be part of him as the journey progresses.
“At some point, this will catch momentum and more people will start looking for where I’m at and will join me for the walk,” he stated. “I’ve no doubt there’s going to be a long stretch of road where it’s with a bunch of people. I’ll be like the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump!’”
Nootenboom chooses to “only look forward,” regardless of the hills and valleys forward. Even when it feels not possible, he hopes to encourage others to by no means “give up when there are obstacles in your path.”
“I’m looking at a mountain with snowy peaks, and I know I’m walking around those. At some point, I’m going to the Rocky Mountains and I’ll have to face them too,” he defined. “It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be challenging, but at the end of the day, you’re one day closer to reaching your target.”
Follow Nootenboom’s (and Bubba’s) progress at #CourageousMenSpeak.
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