Human First: Believe Her the First Time

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Okay, everybody. Welcome to Still Here, Still Trying, with your host, Mike Baker. Before Mike gets all reflective about women’s pain, healthcare, love, belief, and the future of humanity, we need to address what has apparently been happening in this man’s brain lately. A lot? Like a concerning amount of a lot. This man has a full-time job, a family, music, podcasting, advocacy, AI, art, leadership, ADHD, book covers, song ideas, and some casual little side quest called, How do we keep humans from becoming terrible to each other?

Very normal, no concerns. Some people unwind at night by watching a show. Mike unwinds by opening six book drafts, writing three chapters, redesigning a cover, making a song about hope, and asking Chat GPT if this is how we save humanity. Sure, buddy, that sounds restful. And somewhere in all of that late night creative chaos, one phrase kept showing up: human first. That is the book series Mike is kicking off today. The full human first series releases July 1, and over the next few weeks, he’ll be sharing sneak peeks, stories behind the books, and some giveaways for listeners.

The first book in this series is called Believe for the First Time: A Father’s Guide to Endometriosis Pain and Showing Up When It Matters. And that one comes first for a reason. Because before Mike gets into AI, ADHD leadership, menopause, creativity, and whatever else is currently running laps around his brain, he is starting with one of the simplest and most painful questions. When a woman says her body hurts, do we believe her before she has to prove it?

Today’s episode is personal. It starts with his daughter’s hand in his. It moves through endodad, women’s pain, family, healthcare, marriage, and the work men need to do if they want their love to become useful. So settle in. Take a breath. Maybe unclench your jaw. Seriously. Your shoulders are up by your ears. This is the beginning of the human first run. Here’s Mike Baker with Human First. Believe her the first time. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Still Here, Still Trying.

I’m your host, Mike Baker. And this is a show for people who are tired but still showing up. People trying to stay human in a world that just keeps getting louder. People trying to love louder, love better, lead better, create something honest and just keep going without pretending that everything is fine. This week I want to start talking about something that I’ve been building for a while now. I’ve been writing a lot lately. Mostly at night after long and busy days at work.

And then when the day settles down, this other part of me just has been waking up, kind of that creative part, the part that still has something to say after the workday ends. And the part that it’s kind of like me, I just have to clear my head and I open up my laptop or come down to the studio when the house gets quiet. And that part just kind of starts with one idea and somehow ends up with six different books open, way too many browser tabs, three cover designs, a song idea, a podcast outline, and just one very tired brain trying to remember what I ate for dinner last night.

So yeah, it’s been a lot. But it’s also been one of the most meaningful creative stretches of my life. Uh a while back, I wrote The Optimus Way, and that that book mattered to me. It still does. It was my first real book. And it helped me put start putting words around things that I’d carried for a long time: hope, pain, leadership, perspective, and the kind of optimism that has to tell the truth to mean anything. And I’m I’m really proud of that book.

I also know it was a beginning. Uh since then, I’ve grown as a writer, I’ve grown as a creator, I’ve grown as a husband, a dad, a leader, and hopefully just as a human being who keeps getting humbled by life in all the usual ways, and a few bonus ways that I just didn’t order or plan on. Um these new books that I’ve been working on, they feel different to me. Uh they feel more personal, more honest, more useful, and they sound more like me. They carry more of my actual life, including the life I live at heritage, the life I live at home, and the life I keep trying to understand when the world gets loud and people are caring more than they can say.

And they these books came from real rooms in my life, sitting with my daughter while she was in pain, learning how to love Kellie better through the challenges that life brings, leading in healthcare, living with ADHD, thinking about AI, and just watching the world get louder and trying to stay human in the middle of all of it. And that’s where this phrase human first comes from. We’ve we’ve done songs about it, we’ve done shows about it, we’ve talked about it.

It’s just, it keeps showing up in my music and my writing, on my leadership, and the way that I think about the future. Human first means that we start with the person before we rush to the system, the label, the argument, the diagnosis, the title, the technology, or whatever assumption that we carried into the room. So I’ve packed these books up that I’ve been working on, and I’m putting them in what I’m calling the Human First book series. It’s going to start releasing in July.

Um, and over the next few weeks, I’m going to use this show to share pieces of it with you, and I’ll talk about where these books came from, share some sneak peeks, and do some giveaways for listeners. Um, this is not going to be a month of commercials. Like, I really don’t want that. And you don’t need that. I want to bring you into the story behind the work because these books came from the same places this show comes from. They came from the real stuff: family, pain, leadership, love, frustration, hope, mistakes, repair, creativity, and the ongoing work of just trying to stay human.

The first book in the series is really close to my heart. It’s called Believe Her the First Time: A Father’s Guide to Endometriosis, Pain, and Showing Up When It Matters. And that book had to come first, because if human first means anything, it has to start with a simple question. When a woman says her body hurts, do we believe her before she has to prove it? And that question should be easy. A daughter says something is wrong with her body and her father takes her seriously.

A wife says pain is changing her life, and her husband listens without making her manage his discomfort too. A patient says something feels wrong, and the healthcare system hears her before years disappear inside delay and doubt. And that should be normal, but too often it has not been. So this week, the human first series begins with belief. It begins with endometriosis, and it begins with my daughter’s hand in mine. It begins with the women who have trusted endodad with their stories.

It begins with men learning how to become more useful, and it begins with healthcare asking whether people feel hurt sooner or if they it forces them to fight harder. So this is human first, believe her the first time. So let’s get into it. Alright, well, I want to spend a few minutes with a bigger story before we get into the first book, because this series did not come from one clean idea. You know me, I’ve got ADHD and my brain’s just everywhere, but it came from life getting louder.

It came from long work days and quiet nights. It came from leadership leadership decisions that do not stay on paper because real people feel the weight of them. And it came from sitting with my daughter while she was in pain. It came from watching Kellie carry things with strength that she should not have had to use. And it came from ADHD and the way that my brain runs fast, connects the dots, loses details, creates constantly, and then forces me to build systems so other people do not have to absorb the chaos.

It also came from watching AI explode into the world and wondering whether we are building tools that serve people or building a future that forgets what people are worth. And it came from being tired and still feeling called to make something useful out of the tired. And it came from messing up way too often and just trying to repair things. And it came from the same place that this podcast comes from, which is that I do not know how to move through the world without trying to turn the hard parts into something that just might help somebody else feel less alone.

And that is what the Optimus Way was for me. It was the beginning of that work in book form. I was trying to put language around hope without lying about pain. I was trying to say that optimism has to be honest or it becomes decoration. I was trying to figure out how to write something that had enough of me in it to matter. And I am grateful for that book. I also know that I am better now. The work is better now, and that happens when you keep going.

You start with what you know, and then life teaches you more. You write the first book, and then you learn that some of the best sentences live behind the doors that you are afraid to open. And you learn that readers do not need you to sound impressive. They need you to tell the truth clearly enough that they recognize something in themselves. And these new books came from that deeper place. They are more personal, more direct, more lived in. They carry my family, my work, my faith questions, my leadership mistakes, my advocacy, my ADHD, my music, my use of AI, and my frustration with systems and my belief that people deserve better than being reduced to whatever whatever problem they represent

in the moment. And that is just where human first came from. A woman in pain is more than a symptom. A wife going through menopause is more than a mood swing. A woman leader is more than a threat to somebody’s comfort. A person with ADHD is more than missed details, unfinished tabs, and good intentions moving faster than calendars. A worker is more than output, a patient is more than a chart, a creator is more than content, and a future that’s shaped by AI still has to answer to human need.

And that is the series, that is the thread. Start with a human being, start before the labels take over, start before the system gets defensive, start before the man in the room makes someone else’s pain about his discomfort, and start before technology gets worshipped because it moves fast. Start before leadership becomes a title instead of responsibility. And start before a tired person gets told to be stronger when what they need is support. The first book in this series starts with women’s pain, because women’s pain has been one of those places where we have failed this test for very for a very long time.

When a woman says something hurts too many rooms, get cautious instead of caring. People ask whether she is sure. They ask whether it might be normal. They ask whether it might be stress. They ask whether she has tried harder, waited longer, explained it better, tracked it more carefully, stayed calmer, sounded more reasonable, or brought enough proof. And that is a brutal thing to ask of someone already carrying pain. So the first human first book had to be Believe Her the First Time.

Because belief is one of the first ways we prove whether we actually mean any of this. The title of the book is simple Believe Her the First Time. And that sounds simple because the problem should have been simple. A woman says she is in pain, and the people around her take that seriously. A daughter says something is wrong with her, and her father does not make her convince him. A wife says pain is changing her life, and her husband does not make her carry his insecurity to.

A patient says something feels wrong, and the healthcare system listens before hope gets worn down. And that should be normal. For too many women, it has been a fight. I have heard too many stories from women who were told that their pain was normal, that stress it was stress-related. Maybe they were exaggerating it, maybe it was hormonal, it was emotional, or part of just being a woman. I’ve heard too many stories from women who spent years trying to get someone to connect the dots.

And I have heard too many stories where the women knew something was wrong long before the room agreed with her. And that kind of dismissal does something to a person. Pain is hard enough inside the body, but when doubt gets added on top of it, the whole burden changes. Now she has to manage the pain and the performance of being believed. She has to sound serious enough that people do not brush her off, but calm enough that no one calls her dramatic.

And she has to become informed enough to advocate for herself, but be careful enough that no one decides that she’s been reading too much online. She is she has to describe something deeply personal in rooms that may or may not treat her with tenderness, and that just wears people down. Being believed should not feel like winning in an argument. That line sits near the center of this book for me because it names something that a lot of women know in their bones.

They know what it feels like to walk into a room and wonder if their pain will be taken seriously. They know what it feels like to bring notes, dates, symptoms, photos, medical records, and a carefully edited version of themselves because they have learned that credibility is fragile when women talk about pain. Endometriosis is the doorway into this book, but the book reaches beyond one diagnosis. It’s about belief. It’s about families, it’s about men, it is about healthcare, it’s about the emotional tax of having to prove what your body already knows.

And it’s about what love does when pain changes the room. And it’s personal for me. This book started with Samantha. It started with my daughter in pain. It started with me sitting beside her and feeling more helpless than I knew what to do with. Before there was a book, before there was Endodad, before there were images and captions and followers and comments or anything public, there was my daughter’s hand in mine. Samantha was in in unbearable pain that night.

And I want to be careful with that word right now because people throw around big words when they want a story to sound important. But I mean the kind of pain that changes the air in a room, the kind that pulls every father instinct out of you and then gives those instincts nowhere useful to go. Look that night, that first night, she asked me to sit with her and just hold her hand. That was the whole job. I hated how small it felt. I would have done anything else.

I’d o I would have driven anywhere, I would have called anyone, I would have paid anything, I would have fought anything, I would have traded places if that had been on the table. Every dad part of me wanted a target, a task, a plan, a door to kick down, a way to step between my kid and what was hurting her. And there was none of that. There was my daughter, there was pain, and there was her hand in mine, and there was me sitting beside her trying to look steady while something inside me just broke open.

And that moment changed me. A lot of dads understand some version of this. We carry a story about fatherhood, we we protect, we provide, we fix, we step in, we handle it. And then something comes for your child that has no face, no throat to grab, no simple solution, no clean enemy, and all your love has to sit there in a chair and hold a hand. Endometriosis did not care how much I loved her. That is one of the cruel lessons of chronic illness. Love matters deeply, but love does not automatically fix the body.

A father’s love does not erase pain, a husband’s love does not guarantee relief. A family’s love does not replace good care, access, research, treatment, mental health support, or systems that listen. Still, love matters when it becomes behavior. And that night taught me something I have never been able to just unlearn. Holding her hand did not stop the pain, but what it told her that she was not alone in the room. And at the time that felt like almost nothing because I wanted it to do more.

I wanted the hand holding to be medicine. I wanted my presence to change what was happening in her body, and I wanted fatherhood to have more power than it had. Later, I understood it differently. Presence does not cure disease, but absence adds weight. Belief does not remove pain, but doubt makes it heavier. Love does not solve every problem, but love that becomes practical makes hard things less lonely. After that night, I started searching. I searched the way that people search when they are scared and broken.

I was online, I was looking at articles and symptoms and stories and medical information, personal accounts, anything that just helped me might make sense of the pain, the helplessness, the fear, the anger, and the grief of loving someone through suffering that I could not remove. And that search eventually led me into AI art. At first, it was survival. I needed a way to see Samantha beyond the pain. I needed an image strong enough to hold what I knew about her and what the disease kept trying to hide.

She was hurting, she was exhausted and pulled into a fight that she never asked for. She was also fierce. She was still herself, and she was more than what hurt. And those images became language when I did not have enough words. And then other women started seeing themselves in the work that I was doing. People living with endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, medical dismissal, and the exhaustion of just being doubted for years. They saw something in those images that said what they had been trying to say for a long time.

That they were still here, that they were still fighting, that they were more than what hurt. And that is how Endodad began. It began with my daughter’s hand in mine, and it changed how I understood my wife. It changed what I knew as a healthcare leader, and it became a public voice that I did not plan for. But once it started speaking through me, I knew that I had to follow it. And now it has become the first book in the Human First series. And I need to be clear about my role in this because it matters.

I’m not writing believe her the first time as the expert on women’s pain. Women living with endometeurosis are the experts on their own bodies and stories. Their voices belong at the center of this work. I am writing from my actual place in the story. I am a dad. I am a husband. I work in healthcare. I created endodad. I’m a man speaking to other men because men are part of the environment that women women suffer inside. And that sentence matters.

Men are in the house, men are in the exam room, men are in the bedroom, men are in the workplace, men are in the clinic, men are in the boardroom, men are in the family system, and men are in the church and in the group text. We are fathers, husbands, partners, sons, brothers, friends, bosses, clinicians, coaches, pastors, co-workers, and leaders. Sometimes we help and sometimes we hurt. Sometimes we love deeply and still make the woman in pain feel alone.

And that last one is hard to admit, and it should be hard. A father can love his daughter and still make body conversations feel unsafe. A husband can adore his wife and still let painful intimacy become a place where his insecurity takes up too much of the room. A partner can mean well and still ask questions that sound more like cross-examination than care. And a leader can believe in compassion and still build systems that force people to prove suffering before they re receive support.

A clinician can care about patients and still underestimate how a rushed comment lands on someone who has spent years being dismissed. Good intentions do not erase impact. And that truth is part of why this book exists. I am not interested in pretending that men are all terrible. That would be lazy and it would not help. A lot of men who need this book are trying. They love someone, they feel scared, they feel helpless, they want to be better, but they keep reaching for the wrong tools.

We reach for logic when she needs trust. We reach for fixes when she needs presence. We reach for perspective when she needs comfort and we reach for our own frustration because helplessness makes us feel weak. We want her pain to make sense before we fully accept what it is doing to her life. And that is where we have to grow. A lot of men hear the phrase believe her and think, I do believe her. Maybe you do. Maybe in your mind you know that her pain is real.

Maybe you would say the right thing if someone asked, and maybe you would defend her in public. Maybe you are not sitting there thinking that she’s making this up. That matters. It also falls short if your behavior tells a different story. The woman you love is not only listening to your official words, she reads the pause before you answer. She hears she hears the tone when you say again. She feels the mood shift when plans change. She knows when you are trying to be supportive while quietly hoping that the pain does not ruin the day that you wanted.

She can tell when you ask because you want to understand, and when you ask because part of you is checking whether her story adds up. And that may sting a little, but let it sting. Men need to understand that doubt has weight, even quiet doubt, even polite doubt, even the kind of doubt that never calls her a liar but keeps making her explain herself from the beginning. When a woman feels doubted, the disease gets heavier, pain stays in the body, the loneliness gets added, and shame gets added, anger gets added, that awful little voice that says, Maybe I am being dramatic, gets louder.

Even when her body has been telling her the truth the whole time. A woman should not have to become a trial attorney for her own body before the people closest to her decide to care. And Endometrios has already asked too much. It reaches into school, work, marriage, sex, fertility, mental health, money, family plans, friendships, identity, and hope. It takes energy and then it makes her explain why she has none left. It takes intimacy and then makes her comfort the partner who feels rejected.

It takes work days and then makes her worry that she looks unreliable. It takes plans and then makes her apologize for canceling it. It takes hope and then makes her smile so nobody knows how close she feels to the edge. And then people ask her to prove it. Prove the pain, prove the fatigue, prove that looking fine does not mean feeling fine. Prove that intimacy hurting is not rejection. Prove that canceled plans hurt too. Prove that she has tried.

Prove that she is still trying. Prove that the disease is real enough to deserve compassion. And that is a brutal thing to ask of somebody who’s already carrying a disease. So belief has to move. It has to leave your mouth and enter your behavior. And that is one of the most important ideas in believe her the first time. Belief changes how you listen, how you plan, how you touch, how you parent, how you lead, how you show up at appointments, and how you act when pain changes the day.

Belief handles dinner without turning it into a production. Belief cancels plans without making the room colder. Belief learns the disease without making her teach it every time. Belief talks about sex with maturity. Belief protects privacy. Belief gets support instead of making her carry your fear. And belief raises sons who do not grow into men women have to recover from. And that is what the book asks of men. No perfection, no performance, no hero worship, no pretending that we instantly know what we are doing because we’re clueless.

I am still learning too. I still mess things up in my own ways. I still feel too much and sometimes move too fast. I still want to fix what cannot be fixed. I still have to watch my ego, my defensiveness, and my need to be seen as a good man. And that is why I’m not writing from above anyone. I’m writing from the room where my daughter hurt, where I broke, where all I could do was hold her hand. Dads need to hear this in a very special way. Your daughter needs more than your love.

She needs your courage around the real words. A lot of dads get strange around anything connected to periods and pelvic pain and bleeding and hormones, birth control, reproductive health, painful sex, fertility, or mental health. Some of us were raised in silence. Some of us learned through bad jokes, embarrassment, shame, church baggage, locker room garbage, and the quiet message that women’s bodies were something men either sexualized, ignored, or left for women to manage.

And that training does harm. A daughter should know that her dad can handle the truth about her body. She should know that he will not make a gross joke. She should know that he will not panic so loudly that she has to comfort him. She should know that he can hear the words without flinching. And she should know that he believes her pain before a doctor, test, scan, or surgery gives him permission. Girls learn early which rooms are safe. They learn which adults believe them.

They learn which subjects make people tense. They learn whether pain creates compassion or irritation. And they learn whether their bodies are treated as normal, shameful, inconvenient, dramatic, tempting, or too complicated to discuss. A father is one of the first men who teaches about that lesson, and that should stop us cold. No good father wants his daughter to grow up protecting men from discomfort while asking for less than she needs. Sometimes we help create that without meaning to.

We may mean to give her privacy, but she may feel alone. We may mean to defer to her mother, but she may hear that dad cannot handle this. We may mean to lighten the mood, but she may feel mocked. We may mean to stay calm, but she may read distance as disbelief. And we may mean to protect her, but protection can become control if we forget that she is the one living in the body. Dads can go wrong in more than one direction. Some disappear emotionally because they are uncomfortable.

Others overcorrect and become controlling. They dominate appointments, they talk over their daughter, they interrogate providers, and they let fear or discomfort crowd out the voice of the person living inside the pain. And that right there is fear wearing a dad costume. Your daughter is not your project, her body is not yours to manage. Your job is to support her agency, respect her privacy, and believe her when she tells you the truth. Husbands and partners need their own honest conversation here too.

Endometrioses can change the texture of a relationship. They can affect plans and sex and energy and money and mood and household roles, fertility conversations, and the future two people thought that they were building. When belief is weak, every one of those changes become a place where resentment grows. Painful intimacy is one of the places where men need to grow up fast. When sex changes, a man might feel lonely, he may feel rejected, he may miss the ease that the relationships used to have.

Those feelings need a responsible place to go. And they do not belong on the top of her pain. No one should have to comfort a man’s ego while her body is telling her to stop. When sex has caused pain before, the body remembers, the nervous system remembers, the muscles remember, the mind remembers. A woman may want closeness and still be scanning for risk. She may want to relax while her body braces. She may want to enjoy the moment while another part of her listens for the first sign that pain is coming.

And she may be wondering whether saying stock will change the room. And that’s a lonely way to live inside a relationship. Men need to take pressure off the table. Do it with care. Tell her that affection does not have to lead anywhere. Tell her you want closeness that feels safe. Tell her you miss her, the whole person, not only sex. Tell her you want to learn how to be close in ways that do not make her body brace for pain. And then mean it. Do not say no pressure with the emotional energy of a man holding a clipboard and tracking results, right?

That’s not how it works. Do not make her thank you for basic decency. Do not say the right thing once and then sulk the first time affection stays affection. Just trust, trust takes repetition. Her body may need time to believe that your kindness does not come with a hidden invoice. And this is one of those places where men need to grieve privately and behave lovingly at the same time. You may genuinely miss that intimacy. You may miss spontaneity, you may miss the way things were.

You may feel lonely or confused. And those feelings deserve care, but they do not give you permission to make her pain about your deprivation. Find a responsible place for your feelings, a therapist, a trusted friend who will not turn loneliness into resentment, a journal, a walk, a real conversation at the right time where the focus stays on connection. A better question is how do we protect intimacy when pain has changed the rules? And that question has love in it because real love keeps meeting the person in front of you.

The person who has lived, labored, hurt, aged, carried, adapted, loved, laughed, and kept going. The person whose body may not cooperate with the script that’s in your head. A healthy, intimate life has to grow with the people inside it. Sometimes intimacy is passion, sometimes it is laughter in the kitchen, sometimes it’s laying close after a hard day. And sometimes it’s touching without expectations, sometimes it’s making room for the body in front of you instead of chasing an old version of what intimacy used to be.

A man should have enough respect for the woman he loves that he does not treat her body like a service that God interrupted. Her body is her home. And when that home has pain in it, you do not barge in angry that the lights are off. Healthcare has to sit inside this conversation too. I work in healthcare. I love healthcare. I believe in the people doing the work. I have seen extraordinary care. I have seen clinicians and nurses, MAs and counselors and front desk teams, and dentists and community health workers just show up with skill and compassion that can change lives.

And I’ve seen how systems fail people, even when the people inside those systems mean well. Women’s pain has been minimized, delayed, normalized, and pushed aside for too long. Good intentions do not give back the years that women lose trying to be heard. That sentence matters to me because I do not get to talk about this only as a dad and husband while pretending that healthcare is somewhere else. Healthcare is part of my responsibility too. Trust is not a soft extra in healthcare.

Trust changes whether people come back. Trust changes whether they tell the whole story. And trust changes whether they believe that help is possible. When someone has been dismissed before, she does not walk into the next room neutral. She walks in carrying the last room with her. A rushed comment matters, a dismissive tone matters, a narrow assumption matters, and a system that makes someone repeat her story every time matters. A person saying that is normal, without curiosity, it matters.

Every unclear next step adds labor to someone that’s already hurting. For women living with endometriosis, the medical maze is not abstract. It is appointments and bills and delays and conflicting answers. It’s medication side effects and surgery decisions and fertility questions and mental health strain and the exhaustion of becoming a full-time manager of your own suffering. Women should not have to become perfect patients to receive imperfect care.

They should not have to be calm and organized and grateful and articulate and persistent while bleeding, hurting, grieving, and scared. They should not have to bring a man to be believed, and they should not have to lose years before someone says this is real. Until systems change, the men around them need to stop adding to the maze. Learn where you can help. Respect where you do not belong. Believe her when the answers are incomplete, and stay steady when the plan changes.

Do not punish her for the symptoms and the system’s uncertainty. Do not confuse your frustration with her responsibility. When she comes home from another appointment carrying more questions than answers, she may not need you to solve that maze that night. She may need you to just sit beside her and say, I’m sorry, it’s this hard. I’m here and we’ll keep going. Sometimes that’s the beginning of the next door. And I think about this a lot at in the work that I do at Heritage Health.

Women’s health belongs in pri in the primary care conversation. It belongs in how we talk about pelvic pain and endometriosis and reproductive health and perimenopause and menopause and nutrition and chronic disease and whole person care. It belongs in care navigation. It belongs in the way that front desks talk to people, the way that providers listen and the way that leaders design access and the way systems respond when someone says, I’ve been trying to get help for years.

Human first in healthcare means the person does not disappear behind the process. The process matters, documentation matters, diagnosis matters, standards matter, but none of those become weaker when compassion is present. Care gets more precise when we stay human. And for men who are invited into healthcare spaces with the women that they love, your job is to support her voice, not replace it. Take notes if she wants that. Help remember questions if she asks.

Share what you have witnessed at home if she wants you to. Ask clear questions without taking over the room. And if someone minimizes her, help make space for her to be heard. Use your voice to support hers because that distinction matters. Men can become dangerous when we finally understand something late and then rush into the room with too much confidence. We discover that endometriosis is serious, and suddenly we want to direct the care plan and explain the disease and challenge everyone, post everything, and become the loudest person in the advocacy space.

Had to learn that lesson. Slow down. Your awakening matters. Her voice matters way more than that. Believe her the first time, and then listen to how she wants to be supported. And that is the pattern. This is why believe her the first time had to be first. The human first series moves into other rooms after this. The next one is Man versus menopause. This book looks at marriage and midlife and hormones and sleep and sex and what men need to understand when the woman they love is changing.

Another one, called Get Out of the Way, asks what men need to learn about women leading, power, misogyny, and the systems that we inherited. Another one, beautifully unfocused, is about ADHD, leadership, creativity, shame, systems, and building a life with a brain that refuses to sit still. The Future Still Needs Us is another book, and it looks at AI, power, fear, water, energy, work, creativity, and the kind of future that we choose to build. And then I wrap it up with this book won’t fix your life.

This one is for the person just trying to get through the day with a little more honesty, humor, and oxygen. Those books sound different on the surface, but they came from the same place, human first. A woman in pain is more than a symptom. A wife in menopause is more than a problem to manage. A woman leader is more than a disruption to the comfort of men who got used to being centered. A person with ADHD is more than the details they missed. A worker is more than output.

A creator is more than content, and a future shaped by AI is still supposed to answer human needs. And this whole series is my attempt to say that from every angle that I know how to reach. And yes, these books are better than the Optimist Way. They should be. Growth should show up in the work. I want the next thing that I make to have more truth in it than the last thing. And I want the sentences to feel more lived in. I want the reader to feel like I stopped trying to sound like an author and started sounding like the guy who actually sat in those rooms, who held those hands, who made those mistakes, asked those questions, and kept writing until the truth sounded human.

And that is what these books feel like to me. More heart, more honesty, more useful, more me. The full series releases July 1st, and over the next few weeks I’ll share more through this podcast. There will be sneak peeks and giveaways, and I’ll talk about the books, but I also want to talk about the life underneath them. The point is not to spend a whole month doing commercials and pitching books. That’s yeah, great if they sold and people bought them.

But the point is to invite you into the work before launch day, to show you why these books exist and to let you let each episode stand on its own. This week stands with the women who should have been believed sooner. And if this episode makes you think of someone, send it to them. If you know a woman living with endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, medical dismissal, or the exhaustion of having to prove what her body already knows, send it with care.

If you are a man who loves a woman in pain, listen without turning defensiveness into your first response. If a woman hands you this book when it comes out, understand what that moment means. She is trusting you with something. Do not waste that gift by making her convince you again. This book is for the dad who loves his daughter but gets awkward when the conversation turns to her body. It’s for the husband who misses parts of the life that pain has changed and needs to talk about that without making his wife feel like the problem.

And it’s for the boyfriend who thinks, tell me what to do, counts as full support while she is curled around in pain. It’s for the brother, friend, co-worker, pastor, coach, boss, and clinician who has no idea how much harm casual dismissal can do. And yes, it is for the woman who might hand this book to a man and say, Please read this. I need you to understand. To her, I want to say this clearly. A book does not give back the years, it does not erase the appointments where you were dismissed, it does not undo the nights that you curled up in pain and wondered if maybe you were being dramatic because the world had trained you to doubt yourself.

It does not carry the grief, the anger, the exhaustion, or the private fear that people are getting tired of your body needing care. But I hope it says something that you should not have to say so many times. Your pain is real. You deserve to be believed sooner. The men who love you have a responsibility to learn how to love you better. And that is why I wrote it. Because it started with my daughter’s hand in mine, and it changed how I understood my wife.

It challenged what I knew as a healthcare leader, it became endodad, and now it becomes a guide for every man who loves a woman in pain and does not want to become one more person she has to convince. Well, this is where the human first series begins. It begins with a woman in pain, a daughter whose father had to learn that holding her hand was not nothing, a wife whose body deserves tenderness, maturity, and respect, patients who deserve care before their hope gets worn down, men who need to become more useful, and families that need to stop making women carry pain, proof, logistics, and everyone else’s discomfort by themselves.

The first book is Believe Her the First Time because belief is one of the first tests of whether human first means anything. Believe her the first time, and then act like belief changed something. And when healing moves slower than anyone wants, stay close enough that she does not have to carry the slow parts alone. The Human First series releases July 1st. Again, over the next couple weeks, I’ll share more sneak peeks and pieces of the books and stories behind them.

We’re gonna give some books away. Just keep an eye on MikeBakerHQ.com and my socials and keep listening here because this is where I want to bring the story behind the work. If this episode helped you, please send it to someone who needs it. If it challenged you, sit with that before you defend yourself. And if if it made you think of a woman that you love, tell her that you believe her. And then show her what belief looks like in your life. This is still here, still trying.

I’m Mike Baker. Stay human, believe women, keep showing up. I’ll see you next week. Alright, well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Uh, it’s gonna be a fun series. I can’t wait for y’all to read them. Um, look, I want to leave you a song this week called. Hope in slow motion. And after an episode like this, I do not want to end by pretending that everything gets fixed because someone finally listens. That would be too easy, and it would not honor what women with endometriosis and chronic pain actually carry.

Belief matters, support matters, better care matters. Men becoming useful matters. Families learning how to show up matters. Even with all of that, healing often moves slowly. And that is where this thing fits into this journey. It’s called hope in slow motion. It’s about the kind of hope that does not arrive with fireworks. It is the quieter kind. The kind that makes you show up when you make the bed, even though you woke up tired of trying. The kind that shows up when you eat today and count that as a win.

The kind that shows up when you look in the mirror and speak to yourself with a little less cruelty than yesterday. There’s a line in this song that says every scar, a soft refrain that says, You are not the pain. And that is what I want to leave with anyone listening who has been living inside a body other people have misunderstood. You are not the pain. You are more than the diagnosis, you are more than the appointment that went badly, you’re more than the doubt that someone else placed on top of what you already had to carry.

You are still here, you are still breathing, you’re still more than what hurts. And for the men listening, let this song remind you that hope does not always have to look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes hope looks like staying close, sometimes it looks like believing her without making her explain everything again. Sometimes it looks like learning, remembering, apologizing, changing the plan, holding the hand, sitting in the quiet and letting slow progress count.

The human fear series releases July 1st, and Believe Her the first time is where it begins. Over the next few weeks, we’re gonna continue to share the stories, we’re gonna share more songs. But for now, I want to leave you with this song because it carries the spirit of the episode in a gentler way. Hope can move slowly and still be real. Here’s hope in slow motion. I hope you enjoy it. A soft lie through the window. Without needing to escape. Sometimes I wake up tired of trying, but I still make the bed.

I don’t believe all my thoughts now. I listen in silence instead. But I’m not fixed, but I’m breathing. Not okay, but I’m here. Progress being loud or glowing. It whispers through the tears. Open slow motion, moving like honey through fear. One breath and another. Suddenly I’m still here. Open slow motion. No flash, no grand design. But I look up at the sky, and it doesn’t feel like goodbye. I ate today and didn’t hate it. That’s a kind of win. I spoke kindly to the mirror.

Felt the stillness sinking. All the broken doesn’t mean I’m done. I’m a song that’s still being sung. Every scar, a soft refrain that says you’re not the pain. Open slow motion. Moving like honey through fear. One breath and another. Suddenly I’m still here. Open slow motion. No great design. But I don’t go back to the doesn’t feel like goodbye. I’m not hoping I’m here. I hope don’t need to scream. I’m not home, but I’m healing. Not loud, but I’m alive.

Hope don’t need to scream to keep me surviving tonight.