“Women often become the unwitting ritual stewards in relationships with men – the ones who become the initiators of men into mature manhood. Which is not their f*cking job. So much hostility arises between men and women because, on some level, we men crave the initiation yet know it’s not a woman’s job to offer … Read more
I’ve an old wound sourced in childhood that still whispers from the shadowy corners of my brain: “No one cares about what you’re doing.” That painful story took root in the first few decades of my life when my father was largely absent and the rest of my family didn’t know how to show much … Read more
♦◊♦ “Excitement.” Like many men, that’s an emotion I’ve long struggled with. It would usually take a biiiiiig experience to feel for even brief moments the visceral joy that excitement radiates throughout the body like warm sunlight pouring into a darkened room. Take for example, in just 24 hours I’m off to Ireland where 16 … Read more
There’s a dangerous idea floating around our world like poisonous spore that masculine leadership means simply: “man leads, woman follows.” This ideal obviously runs deep in many patriarchal religions, but you’ll also run into it in the world of “conscious polarity” where often charismatic teachers insist relationships work best when a ”man is in his … Read more
Daddy issues.Only women have daddy issues … is what I was led to believe by countless other boys and men I know now were themselves just teeming with unexamined daddy issues.(like nipples, men have ‘em, too.)My father has been overwhelmingly absent throughout my life. I used to think, “How could he have messed me up? … Read more
A lot of men find it challenging to feel fully alive when in a long-term committed intimate relationship. Some men, who perhaps enjoyed being single, who felt lively & dynamic without the responsibilities a relationship brings, may struggle to maintain that vitality while settling into long-term relationship. Being in a two-person system (relationship) requires different … Read more
Earlier this week, my wife showed me three photos of young children, two girls and a little boy each maybe 3 or 4 years old, that she’d made using an app that combined her image with mine. This is what our children might have looked like, children we learned not long ago we are biologically … Read more
As I sit in the serene quietness of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, the memories of these past five days flood my mind. Our annual ELEVATE Men’s Retreat has ended and everyone is returning to their lives, yet the electric energy of countless profound moments linger in the warm summer mountain air. This retreat was … Read more
This week, I’m off to the ancient Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for my annual ELEVATE Men’s Retreat. It is an unspoken epidemic – with unfathomable repercussions – that so many men do not trust other men. For when a man cannot trust other men, it may reflect in the struggle to fully trust … Read more
About a year ago my wife and I lost an unborn baby. Three months later I fully lost my father. In less than a trimester any dreams of fatherhood I still had – of either being one or finally having the one I was born to – were annihilated by Life’s sometimes cruel whimsy.