“It really goes back to watching men perform badly throughout my life — men who have been my father figures more or less, who in various ways succeeded, but in various ways failed to step up to the moments and been absent when they shouldn’t have been. And I just never wanted my stepson or my biological son to ever feel like they were alone and didn’t have somebody there to support them and to be there for them along the way. So I made a conscious promise to myself that I was going to be a better dad than the men I’ve had as father figures in my life.”
~ Steven Acheson ~
Masculinity In Review
On this 19th interview of Intelligent Masculinity, Nick Paro has an incredibly raw and honest conversation with Steven Acheson — someone who grew up on a fifth-generation Wisconsin dairy farm, enlisted in the Army almost by accident at 19 after a civil engineering apprenticeship fell through, and deployed to Sadr City in 2005 as part of a brigade commander's personal security detail — running over 400 missions through the worst IED corridors in the country, attending more than 60 funerals in 11 months, and sustaining a back injury that ended his forward observer career. He came home, answered his post-deployment health assessment honestly when his NCOs told him to say no to everything, and became the only soldier in his platoon to actively seek mental health treatment — a pattern of choosing clarity over comfort that defines how he operates today. Now 40, living in rural Wisconsin at 100% VA disability rating, he is a stay-at-home dad to a first-grader named Aldo and a freshman in college, a partner to high school science teacher Steph, and an organizer for High Ground Veterans Advocacy alongside his long-time battle-buddy Kristofer Goldsmith. This conversation moves through combat trauma, the power of true friendships, the decision to be present for his kids instead of career-chasing, and what it means to break a family pattern of absent and harmful men — and Steven brings the receipts: a list his oldest sister built for him capturing how she sees him practicing intelligent masculinity in real life.
Steven is the person who found Kristofer Goldsmith after a suicide attempt (listen here). The two met on day one of basic training, maintained a running friendly competition through AIT, were assigned to the same duty station, deployed together, and lived together post-deployment when Kris was at his lowest. Steven's presence in that moment was intentional — it was the product of a relationship built and maintained deliberately over years. This powerful moment reinforces an early discussion with Sharad Swaney in a prior Intelligent Masculinity conversation (listen here): men need at least one person they can cry in front of without explanation, and that person has to be built before the crisis arrives.
As the conversation moves forward, Steven recounted an important moment in a story familiar to too many veterans — answering his post-deployment health questionnaire truthfully at a time when everyone around him was coached to deny everything. He flagged PTSD symptoms that were already showing up physically — chewed-off knuckles, sleep disruption — and went on to seek mental health treatment on his own initiative. The consequence of that honesty was what it always should be — the intentional first steps on a slow path toward processing what happened. The takeaway here is concrete: when a system hands you a form and pressures you to lie on it, answering accurately is not weakness — it is the prerequisite for getting anything useful out of that system.
Moving into the discussion on accountability, Steven names his partner Steph as his single greatest influence, and he is specific about why: she identified language he was using — patterns that came from growing up in a military and rural conservative environment — and named them clearly, without softening the message. He received that feedback, worked on it, and still slips. The model he describes is not one of wholesale transformation but of ongoing, imperfect recalibration. The instruction for men in the audience is not to wait until your language is perfect, but to stop treating correction as an attack and start treating it as information.
While discussing generational trauma, Steven spoke on what he told his younger half-brother directly: it's up to us to end this. He didn't leave it abstract. He said the words. His family history includes men who were absent, harmful, or both — and rather than carry that silently forward, he made an explicit promise to himself that his stepson and his biological son would never feel alone or unsupported the way he sometimes did. That promise is now visible in his daily choices: declining career opportunities, staying home, coaching sports he didn't particularly enjoy, and consistently showing up. Naming the pattern is not sufficient on its own, but it is where the decision starts.
The conversation built as Steven recalled the years spent after leaving the military doing informal counter-recruiting presentations at high schools — writing the full war debt on the board and asking students who they thought was going to pay for it. He describes this as work he eventually stepped back from for his own mental health, but Nick presses the point: progressive and pro-democracy veterans need to be louder right now, because the political right has claimed veteran identity through sheer volume. Using the veteran tag deliberately — not as the whole of your identity, but strategically — is a way of filling a void that gets filled with something else if you leave it empty.
Towards the end, Steven discusses the years spent in the background of Kristofer Goldsmith’s advocacy work — advising and believing in him when others didn't — without needing to be the face of it. The framing Nick introduces, and which Steven affirms, is that not being the main character in someone else's story is a valid and sometimes more important role. The ego-driven version of masculinity requires constant centrality; whereas, the growth-driven version recognizes that your moment to step forward will come, and that building someone else's capacity in the meantime is not a demotion — it’s the plot.
Steven arrives at a particular point in the series arc — after Sharad Swaney’s civic organizing, Kristofer Goldsmith’s institutional advocacy, Jack’s reclamation of identity, and Qasim Rashid, Esq.’s intersection of faith and public service — and brings something these conversations have been approaching but hadn't yet centered on: what it looks like to carry acute trauma and a clear commitment to not pass it forward, at the same time, over decades. His story doesn't begin with a platform or a cause. It begins on a dairy farm, runs through Sadr City, and lands in a living room where he is the one who shows up — for his kids, for his partner, for Kris at his lowest, for civilians who never heard a veteran speak plainly about what war actually costs. What connects him to every guest before him is the through-line which has been building since the first interview with Shane Yirak: intelligent masculinity is not a fixed identity, it's a practice — and the form it takes changes from person to person while the commitment underneath it doesn't. Steven Acheson’s is the version that looks like presence, honesty, and a promise kept.
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Nick’s Notes
I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community!
