Mastering Fatherhood w/ Kelly Gardner (090)

March 1, 2023

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What is the essential role of a father?

Have you faced your own father-wounds yet?

Or are you still, on some level, holding it against your father for not being all you needed him to be?

Kelly Gardner is a deep, wise man and a father. Kelly is yet another man in my recent series of guests who is a member of my men’s group. For the last few years, I’ve been watching Kelly Gardner model a brilliant flavour of fatherhood to his two boys, Jai & Sol and quite frankly, to many of us men in the group, as well.

I invited Kelly on to MEN THIS WAY because I’ve personally seen the man be repeatedly masterful as a truly embodied leader of masculine and feminine values, his strength of character, his penetrating vision, the man sees things in our group, in each other, in himself, that others fail to see. As well as his capacity for creating deep connection with other men even in the midst of conflict.

Professionally, Kelly has received awards and recognition for his work as the Artistic Director of City at Peace Los Angeles as well as for his educational programming in Washington DC, for organizations including the Smithsonian Institute and Library of Congress.

Kelly was a member of the filmmaking faculty at the New York Film Academy, holding positions as the Director of Community Outreach, Chair of Diversity Equity and Inclusion, and Dean of Students as well as lecturing on the topics of compassionate communication and the art of teaching. Today, Kelly is all in on leading dads towards the next great evolution in fatherhood.

We talk about fatherhood, the essential roles a father plays, and the profound paradox a masterful father knows how to live inside. We talk about the absence of fathers in men’s lives, and what it means to stop “sonning” your father, in other words stop expecting the things a son naturally expects from a father.