Meet the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump’ who’s strolling barefoot throughout America to lift consciousness for males’s psychological well being

Anton Nootenboom, identified to many on social media as “The Barefoot Dutchman,” isn’t your typical document holder.

In 2019, he turned the primary and solely individual to make the 80-mile round-trip hike to Mount Everest Base Camp with out sneakers. Two years later, he set the 2021 Guinness World File for the longest barefoot journey after mountaineering 1,875 miles on the Australian coast. Now he plans to interrupt that document by strolling 3,000 miles from Los Angeles to New York Metropolis, fully barefoot.

“It sounds loopy,” Nootenboom informed Yahoo Information on day six of his eight-month journey, which started on Feb. 17. He even referred to himself because the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump’ when 30-plus folks joined him on the primary mile of his trek in Santa Monica, Calif. The stroll is an extension of the #BraveMenTalk marketing campaign, in partnership with Barebarics barefoot sneakers, which calls consideration to male psychological well being globally and raises funds for charities.

For Nootenboom, who served within the Dutch military for 10 years and accomplished three excursions within the Center East, it’s symbolic of the psychological battles many males face in silence.

“The roads are robust and on daily basis is stuffed with surprises,” he stated. “I inform myself, ‘It’s only a section. This street will finish, and sometime the street shall be somewhat higher.’ It’s the identical in life: When issues get robust, it’s by no means the top. It’s only a little bit of a stretch, and finally you come out of it. I’ve wounds on my ft, and so they damage, however I do know the pores and skin will develop again harder than it was earlier than. That’s what offers me hope.”

‘The ache is value it for me.’

As he crosses the deserts, mountains and valleys of America to achieve the Massive Apple, Nootenboom will cease in varied cities to carry academic instruments and sources to native communities. He desires to empower males of all ages to “not be afraid to inform your story.”

“The ache is value it for me,” he stated of the mission. “I need this problem to talk to males, and say, ‘No matter life throws at you, bodily and mentally, you will get via it.’”

That’s a lesson he discovered the exhausting manner himself. After leaving the military in 2015, Nootenboom fell right into a deep despair and by no means felt comfy speaking to anybody about it. The isolation led him to just about take his personal life on the sting of a cliff in Australia, the place he was residing on the time. The incident turned a wake-up name for him to hunt assist.

“Being raised by the military to say, ‘Do not cry, man up!’ I did not really feel protected speaking about what was occurring with me,” he shared. “With loads of resistance, I took the supply of getting assist and doing issues manner out of my consolation zone,” which included remedy and meditation practices.

Nootenboom isn’t alone. Information from Psychological Well being America reveals that over 6 million males endure from despair every year, and most go untreated. That has grave penalties. Based on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, suicide is almost 4 occasions extra prevalent in males than ladies — with 39,255 male suicides in 2022, in comparison with 9,825 amongst ladies the identical 12 months.

Specialists inform Yahoo Information that males with despair go largely underreported attributable to varied stigmas and cultural norms that discourage them from in search of assist.

“Males are socialized to not present their feelings, and the one acceptable feelings embody anger and frustration,” stated Ernesto Lira de la Rosa, psychologist for the Hope for Despair Analysis Basis. “This makes it difficult for males to overtly discuss their emotions out of concern that they aren’t sturdy or that one thing is fallacious with them.”

He added: “If we encourage different males to talk about their psychological well being, this may validate and normalize that psychological well being is part of everybody’s lives, together with males.”

Nicholas Balaisis, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, applauds Nootenboom for utilizing bodily exercise as a manner into the dialogue.

“Males usually like to assist with solvable issues, [but] psychological well being points aren’t as simply solvable,” Balaisis defined, noting that long-distance working will be seen as a metaphor for the trials and tribulations all of us have. That gives a template for males to speak extra deeply about their “inside life.”

“Males particularly must develop a relation to their very own interiority — ideas about themselves, impressions from relationships, hopes, goals, regrets,” he stated. “This occurs greatest with others.”

The Dutch ‘Forrest Gump’

“After I went via some therapeutic, I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my emotions,” stated Nootenboom. “If there’s one thing I discovered within the military, it is to guide by instance. I needed to share my very own story within the hopes that it creates a protected area for others to be like, ‘Hey, if you are able to do it, then I can do it.’”

Throughout the day, Nootenboom walks barefoot with a trolley cart nicknamed “Bubba,” a nod to a personality within the 1994 movie Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks a few man who develops a cult following for working throughout the nation. At night time, he sleeps in certainly one of two campers, each pushed by the marketing campaign’s producers who’re following his path throughout America.

Much like his record-setting Australian hike in 2021, he expects extra folks to affix him because the journey progresses.

“In some unspecified time in the future, this may catch momentum and extra folks will begin searching for the place I am at and can be part of me for the stroll,” he stated. “I’ve little question there’s going to be an extended stretch of street the place it is with a bunch of individuals. I’ll be just like the ‘Dutch Forrest Gump!’”

Nootenboom chooses to “solely look ahead,” regardless of the hills and valleys forward. Even when it feels unimaginable, he hopes to encourage others to by no means “surrender when there are obstacles in your path.”

“I’m taking a look at a mountain with snowy peaks, and I do know I am strolling round these. In some unspecified time in the future, I will the Rocky Mountains and I’ll must face them too,” he defined. “It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be difficult, however on the finish of the day, you’re at some point nearer to reaching your goal.”

Observe Nootenboom’s (and Bubba’s) progress at #BraveMenTalk.