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.
The great crises of our time for countless men: a persistent incapacity to fully feel our aliveness, and no elder guidance to show us another way.
For this potent drug, a man is his own dealer, and his needle the phone in his pocket.
“The more fragile a man feels internally, the more likely he is to try building an outer shell to hide this fragility.” ~ Guy Corneau (Absent Fathers Lost Sons) ♦◊♦ Throughout my life I have been plagued by the enduring fear that I’m never quite successful enough, whatever my actual successes. Which has been at … Read more
“When someone comes to you with their pain, they’re not asking you to decide if their experience is valid.” ~ Silvy Khoucasian ♦◊♦ Through all my adventures in intimacy, I spent way too much time evaluating the validity of my partners’ upsets and frustrations – often deciding they are NOT valid, especially when directed at … Read more
I never understood why the women I loved were so often angry at me. Until one day, in the painful midst of another lover-spat going nowhere, I finally got it …
For years I couldn’t feel my feelings, and my intimate relationships suffered awfully as a result.
Not long ago, I just knew my relationship with my fiancé was over.