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
As I drove out of fire-ravaged Los Angeles this morning, I felt unusually heavy, sad. Normally, I love hitting the road for a long road trip (especially when leaving LA). This time was different. My wife & I have been in a prolonged season of loss, grief, upheaval, and looking for home. I’m driving 20 … 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.
50 years … exquisitely aged. Today. Made it! In the spirit of my enduring attempt to offer useful insights and hard-earned wisdom, here’s the absolute best 10 things I’ve learned in 50 years of life on Earth that I know with absolute certainty are absolutely true: 1. I can know nothing with absolute certainty. The … Read more
“We are so connected the word ‘connected’ doesn’t even make sense.” ~ Rumi ♦◊♦ For over thirty years I’ve been tenaciously throwing myself into the transformational fires of intimate relationship over and over again. For I began a romantic, believing in the popular songs and fairytale movies of my 1980s youth that all promised a … Read more
♦◊♦ In 2010, I spent 12 months in a purple SUV Dodge Durango crisscrossing North America on the most wondrous adventure with five other men, five brilliant musical shamans forever my brothers. That purple Durango – which anyone not color blind (like me) would always insist was blue – held us safe as we made … Read more