Leading into the year my marriage fell apart, my father was dying, and my own head quietly came unscrewed, I did what any sensible man would do. I bought fruit trees. A lot of them.
It started with a banana tree. A friend mentioned he’d driven forty minutes to buy one for his kid, and something in me locked onto it like a tractor beam. Within days I was standing in a blue shack on a corner lot in rural Florida, haggling with a chain-smoking tree guru holding his blind cat, over a grapefruit tree I could not afford, for a backyard that did not need it. Over the next two years I took over half that yard. Fruit trees, a greenhouse with no straight angles, a lit path to walk among them at night, classical music piped in to help the plants grow. I grew a Grizzly Adams beard to pull the whole look together. I was, I told myself, a man of the earth now.
What I actually was, it turns out, was a fifty-something man going through andropause (male menopause)with no idea it was happening.
I know how those two words sound. I hated them, but I forced myself to say them in the car, in the shower, in the backyard, to God, and finally to friends, probably a hundred times before I could believe it was a real thing. It doesn’t happen to every guy. But I’ve since met plenty who’ve been through some version of it, and I can tell you it is as real as a cold front. Testosterone slips away as you age like hot brie off a butter knife. The insecurity creeps in. The weight comes on. You stop doing the things that gave you a role, for me it was coaching my son’s lacrosse team, and one morning you look up and feel like you have no meaning as a husband, a father, a man. And the cruelest part is that, while it’s happening, you are completely convinced your behavior is normal.
It isn’t until later that you understand the fruit trees were never about fruit. They were about control, and grief, and trying to grow something at the exact moment everything else in my life was dying. The one thing that finally helped was almost embarrassingly simple: I named it. And once I could name the crazy, see those two words on paper, I could start to navigate it. Here is what I wish the old guy with the blind cat had said to me: “Boy, you got a problem.” But he didn’t and took my cash instead. I had to figure a few things out on my own, but you don’t have to.
Say The Words Out Loud
“Male menopause” is real, and naming it is the whole first step. What you can name, you can manage; what stays nameless just drives the truck. Say it to yourself, then say it to one other person. The relief of discovering you’re not losing your mind, you’re going through something with a name, is enormous.
Get Your Levels Checked Before You Blame Your Character
For a long time I thought I was just failing at being a man. Some of what I was feeling was chemical, a body over fifty doing what bodies over fifty do. See a doctor, get the bloodwork, ask the question out loud in the exam room. It is a medical conversation, not a confession of weakness.
Watch For The Project That Eats Your Life
Mine had leaves. Yours might be a garage full of tools, a motorcycle, a sudden all-consuming renovation. A hobby is fine. An obsession that quietly takes over half the yard is usually a feeling you’re refusing to feel. When you catch yourself pouring everything into something that came out of nowhere, stop and ask what you’re actually running from.
Book The Appointment You Keep Replacing With Purchases
I bought a cherry tree that can’t grow in Florida, rather than spend an hour with a therapist. Every tree was a down payment on not looking at myself. Reverse that trade. The single most useful thing I did all year was sit in a chair across from someone and talk, and it cost less than the grapefruit tree.
Don’t Go Through It In The Backyard Alone
Men are experts at toughing things out in silence, and silence is where this stuff grows. Tell a friend the unflattering truth. Ask him if he thinks you’ve changed. Let your partner in, even when the honest version makes you look foolish. I lost a lot in that year, but the isolation was the only part that was fully my own doing.
My marriage still ended – my ex and I split the blame evenly. We’re both better for the honesty, and it’s paid off in many way. I came out the far side of andropause with my head clearer than it had been in years, and with a backyard that, against all odds, actually bears fruit now.
If you’re a man somewhere north of fifty and you’ve started doing things that don’t quite add up, you don’t have to understand it all today. You just have to be brave enough to say the words, and to let somebody help you carry it. The trees can wait.
Author Bio
Skip Van Gardner is a businessman, storyteller, and lifelong sailor who spent two decades living and working in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., before settling outside Orlando, Florida. His multi-award winning debut book, Pivoting From Blue: One Year of Death, Divorce & Discovery, is drawn from a single year of his life — February 2025 to February 2026 — and chronicles the divorce, the loss of his father, a mother with Alzheimer’s, and the near-death crossing to the Bahamas that changed how he moves through the world. Learn more at skipvangardner.com.