Damn Bowen, This hits home so so so much. Thank you for speaking the truth so powerfully.
We need fathers who can, as Robert Heinlein said of men "change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly." Those skills are not dead, but they require a balance of selfishness (not the right word but the best I have right now) and compassion to get right.
Thanks for this addition to our series, Bowen. I've appreciated your encouragement to live less cautiously. All of this looks different inside a relationship and inside a coparenting arrangement. And I do think that what some see as caution or timidity is often a well-intentioned act of listening or avoiding the trap of entitlement. Even so, I wholeheartedly agree that fathers who take self-denial to extremes or who internalize self-doubt because of social messaging about men need to give themselves a good ice bath of independence.
Because I hope that this series provokes conversation, I want to pose a bit of a challenge to your thesis. Wildness, to me, can be a form of selfishness. I'd love nothing more than to disappear into the Idaho wilderness for three straight months, the way I did as a single person in graduate school. But that would be unfair to my three children. And I'm mindful that how I experience wildness -- in nature, in the form of pushing physical and mental limits -- is nowhere near what my children would find stimulating. My father was wild in all the ways you describe, and many of my childhood memories equate our hunting expeditions or hike with profound suffering, because there was no way I could match his stamina and strength as a 10-year-old or even 13-year-old. And I experienced that as a form of dominance, not a form of love. Our outings always felt like contests, not mentorship. And so I think when men express their own wildness, especially in a mentorship role, they need to do so with the intention of empowering their children, not keeping them in their place, as many fathers have traditionally done with their sons.
There is a reason why Teresa Jordan claims that the history of the West is a history of fathers fighting sons. And there is a reason for the Oedipal cliches. Wildness can take that form just as easily as not.
I think the heart of your narrative, and the part where I join you, is a spirit of reciprocity. Wildness does not exist so the wild man can beat his chest in the wilderness. It exists as a source of wonder, something to be shared, a source of mutual freedom. This has not been how the men in my life have expressed wildness, but it is how I hope to express it myself.
Josh, often my challenger! I appreciate it brother, thank you for your close reading and your comments.
It's true, I have no idea what it's like to be a co-parent, neither in general or in your specific situation, as I don't know what it's like to be my own father, and how he sees himself as never-tamed and yet didn't seem "wild" the way that I'm getting at to me, in my youth.
And, to your point about selfishness... I'd say no, not the kind of wild I'm talking about. I'm not talking about disappearing into the wilderness alone. I'm talking about bringing a sense of the wild into fatherhood—and into masculinity—that I feel is missing, feared, and even prohibited in most avenues of our society today. I would challenge you back to expand or adjust how you experience wildness, in that it could very much include children, and in a way that, at least in general, they could find very engaging. Children, after all, are not yet tamed, which is a big part of what most of us, myself included, become in becoming adults.
I don't know your father or what it was like to be with him, but I'm not talking about a wildness that is insensitive to children or the needs of others—just the opposite, in fact. Without characterizing your father, to me, that kind of wildness is part of the version of masculinity that we are all compensating for now, in our rejection of "wild." That's not what wild is or needs to be.
I'm familiar with the Oedipal battleground, and the how it gets expressed in physical contests. I'm not promoting that—but, and, I also know that there is part of our nature that, just like goats, causes us to butt heads. It happens between men—you and I have a bit of that energy—and it does happen between boys and men, and it needs to be recognized and expressed in a healthy way, not in veiled and silent contests. I think wildness _is_ part of that. Butting heads is part of the goat work, and it's good work to do—you butt heads, or wrestle, or sweat it out together on the trail, for a bit, and then you go back to eating grass.
I'm reminding myself to take your mention of a man 'beating his chest in the wilderness' not as a reading of what I'm putting out, but of your own experience. I don't know any men who do that. I don't even really know what that refers to, actually. What does it refer to?
Bowen, this exchange gives me hope. I've been thinking about it ever since I read your comment last night. We are of one mind here: "I would challenge you back to expand or adjust how you experience wildness, in that it could very much include children, and in a way that, at least in general, they could find very engaging. Children, after all, are not yet tamed, which is a big part of what most of us, myself included, become in becoming adults."
Your goat metaphor makes me laugh, and that is what makes me hopeful. That kind of friction, like metal sharpening metal, is the heart of Socratic dialogue and much good teaching. To embrace pushback and lean into it is how we grow stronger, see farther, imagine more deeply. I appreciate your generosity in addressing my questions and in raising new ones for me.
You're quite right that the chest beating reference is a projection of my own experience -- and not just that, but of some fairly hyperbolic expressions of masculinity in my native Montana. Wildness and a refusal to be tamed, in that context, quite often equates with misogyny and absenting. I didn't hear you suggesting anything like that, but I think it's part of the baggage that comes with the term "wildness," and so these definitions do require some care and clarity. Which is what I think we're trying to do with this series.
The Oedipal version of butting heads typically involves defensive maneuvers, takedowns, and zero sum struggles for dominance. I feel like your response here is a perfect alternative to that. Thanks for keeping it real, for extending the conversation in vigor and good faith, and for leaving that escape hatch for us to go back to munching grass. 😂
Reciprocity. Not selfish. Wild. Not tamed by the limiting factors of social norms crushing into a small box. Expanding. Loving. Inclusion. Kindness. Repair. Restoration. Wild and divergent from the sometimes dull mundane that blunts one’s spirit.
Thank you wild men for sharing your dialogue with me.
In the spirit of David Deida and 50 Cent, you delivered the truth bombs about fathers, about men, and how we need to be showing up better for those we love.
Powerful piece Bowen. Like you, my father took me into wild places as a child. I can trace all of my love for mountain adventures in adulthood to this early nurturing in nature. I did not view him as wild...instead he seemed fearless and larger than life in those wild settings. Thank you for the essay and for the reading list. I intend to dive into several that are new to me.
I love reading everyone’s reflections on their own dads. Reading this I kept thinking of how lucky I am to have a wild man as my husband and father to my three kids. But now I’m wondering if my own dad’s wildness created the blueprint for my own partnership. My dad was wild but in a cage. And the pressure cooker of that made him explosive and at times abusive, which scared and scarred me. Yet I still remember traipsing through the woods with him and learning about car engines and how to build just about anything I could dream up and sketch out on paper. My own husband is wild and not caged. Well, not AS caged by far. He’s still working on truly liberating himself, but he’s wild in a way that is inspiring and also liberating for me and my conditioning.
Anyway... thanks for this channeling and affirmation!
Welcome, Ashley, and thank you for reading and for writing in. I so appreciate you sharing about your husband, and your father.
Explosiveness, anger—and violence—are some of the dark shadows that have quite understandably dominated our perception of "wild." My hope is that we can grow into a more expansive wildness, rooted in something deeper and more generative.
It sounds like you and your husband have found some ways of being wild, together. I'd love to hear or read more about that.
Totally agree and I feel that collective shift out of the shadow of wildness too. I think in large part because the restraints are lifting and wild folks can express their wildness in a more free way now, the shadow doesn’t feel the need to be as present. Or it’s been more integrated. And thanks for the prompting to write about our wildness! I’ve been wanting to work together on something with my husband for a long time so this feels like another spur in that direction :)
I definitely did not have a wild father and I think you're right that some wild would be helpful. Yet even just writing that I feel like I'm betraying my own sweet, yet mostly silent, passive-aggressive Dad. So there we have it. Yikes.
I know he loved me with his whole heart and I know he did the best he could. I know how lucky I was to have him as my Dad, yet I can't help but wonder who and what I would be if I had a wild father. The story would look very different.
An excellent article in a fantastic series, thank you Bowen.
I'm adding a little more here after reading your dialogue with Joshua in the comments. You both had good points and I loved the back and forth.
When I think of a wild father in the way you have talked about Bowen I think of a person fully in touch with their highest emotional, physical, spiritual and mental self. Perhaps not in balance all the time, as that may not be realistic, but striving for them all. Coming from that place a father, mother or anyone in a relationship would have a wider perspective that allows for all things, including wildness. From the outside, they may not appear wild but the wildness shows up in deep connection and understanding. A truly heart-centered approach which, sadly, is wild simply because it's so rare.
This is a joy to read, Bowen. At the same time, I feel despondent at not being so eloquent in channelling my own rage against the Machine into such a cogent argument. This will help me to both think and do better.
Welcome Reginald, and thank you for reading and commenting. I hear you man. Same here, although he was more absent than wild, really. I think part of our archetype of "wild" is also *alone,* and part of what I'm trying to get at here is that we need to learn to be wild, together. Wouldn't that be interesting?
That would be amazing. I'm the ambassador of 'wild' in my family. But the prospect of being that way with my wife and children is a dream I want to make true.
Brilliant piece. My childhood vacations always felt like a heavy resistance to 'The Machine', travelling through the Australian desert with little more than a paper map, a VHF radio and a sack of water on the roof. My father was in his domain out there. He would make fires, find campsites, do all sorts of mechanical repairs on our Toyota with rudimentary tools, cross rivers, winch the car out of bogs over and over, fight off venomous snakes with sticks, ward off strange bush men with wild threats - you name it. The man appeared a damn savage, yet he was more calculated, composed and content than I'd ever seen him in the so-called real world. His creative streak flourished, his heart swelled, his insane sense of humour was let loose, and so too (though he wouldn't believe in this concept) was his soul.
He's a man that successfully negotiated The Machine, but I think that came at the incredible cost of conformity and inauthenticity. All these years later I still no him better from those memories out in the harsh Aussie bush. And that's probably why as we speak I find myself adrift, with all my loved ones thinking I've lost the plot, and well outside convention. In time I'll probably get stuck in a machine cog once again, but I doubt I'll ever forget to embody the wild man.
To "embody the wild man" in a world that's taken us as far from the wild as possible... that's the challenge. I feel it, sitting here at my computer, flipping between windows, searching for something... something, anything that feels like *something.* So far from the wild that I know well, and feel something like as comfortable in as your father did. Staring at my tax bill, tax accountant's bill, property tax bill, and health insurance bill. Wishing to simply X them out in bright red Sharpie. Take an axe to not just the tax bill but to the entire, hopeless web they represent and have ensnared us in.
And yet, I do love typing into this little window...
Cheers, Dan, thanks for reading, and for your comments!
Almost 35 years ago, before I was a father, I sold my 2000sq ft bi-level I had custom built and moved to the outskirts of the city into a 700 sq ft (on two floors) abandoned mink ranch backing on to a decommissioned gravel pit with my reluctant girlfriend in tow. Fast forward, our two daughters got to experience waking up to deer in our backyard and coyotes howling at night. It’s been a wild ride, sometimes too wild. See, the pit attracts dirt bikes, and one day the incessant noise reached a boiling point in me. Fulled with alcohol, I ran barefoot through the bush intent on tearing of some human limbs. Fortunately there was no encounter and all ended well. Except, I “decided” to have a nap in the bush which initiated a search party and subsequent loss of my glasses. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a liver. It’s sober October and the fall North winds have arrived at our lake Winnipeg. Should be pretty wild!
This was quite an amazing blend of of intelligence and insight, all delivered in a muscular prose, which gives me hope that there is still something we might call and "authentic" male experience--so different from the aggrieved, whiny victimization I hear spouted every day by whiny, mostly white guys, their standard bearer being Donald Trump. Being a poet and fiction writer and coming from a working-class background, I struggled for years to figure out just what a "real" man is, finally realizing there was no answer to that question. See my three part post from March 13 on how Trump has manipulated this "man grievance." https://johnsonp.substack.com/p/whatever-happened-to-white-guys
From your linked article. “A habit of anxiety.” Wow. Yep. And this psychological “schema” of another person becoming present in self. I wonder and contemplate at my own schema and how I might cognitively process those, move away from them, and “whole” myself through practices I live out in myself (as you outlined in the article). This new awareness realizing there are multiple schema that can be understood, processed out, and a new ones established. I’ll go on that meditation retreat and practice with you asynchronous and synchronous. May each of us find the cultivation of wholeness in self as Bill Plotkin describes in his writings and at his institute called Animas.
Damn Bowen, This hits home so so so much. Thank you for speaking the truth so powerfully.
We need fathers who can, as Robert Heinlein said of men "change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly." Those skills are not dead, but they require a balance of selfishness (not the right word but the best I have right now) and compassion to get right.
Thanks for this addition to our series, Bowen. I've appreciated your encouragement to live less cautiously. All of this looks different inside a relationship and inside a coparenting arrangement. And I do think that what some see as caution or timidity is often a well-intentioned act of listening or avoiding the trap of entitlement. Even so, I wholeheartedly agree that fathers who take self-denial to extremes or who internalize self-doubt because of social messaging about men need to give themselves a good ice bath of independence.
Because I hope that this series provokes conversation, I want to pose a bit of a challenge to your thesis. Wildness, to me, can be a form of selfishness. I'd love nothing more than to disappear into the Idaho wilderness for three straight months, the way I did as a single person in graduate school. But that would be unfair to my three children. And I'm mindful that how I experience wildness -- in nature, in the form of pushing physical and mental limits -- is nowhere near what my children would find stimulating. My father was wild in all the ways you describe, and many of my childhood memories equate our hunting expeditions or hike with profound suffering, because there was no way I could match his stamina and strength as a 10-year-old or even 13-year-old. And I experienced that as a form of dominance, not a form of love. Our outings always felt like contests, not mentorship. And so I think when men express their own wildness, especially in a mentorship role, they need to do so with the intention of empowering their children, not keeping them in their place, as many fathers have traditionally done with their sons.
There is a reason why Teresa Jordan claims that the history of the West is a history of fathers fighting sons. And there is a reason for the Oedipal cliches. Wildness can take that form just as easily as not.
I think the heart of your narrative, and the part where I join you, is a spirit of reciprocity. Wildness does not exist so the wild man can beat his chest in the wilderness. It exists as a source of wonder, something to be shared, a source of mutual freedom. This has not been how the men in my life have expressed wildness, but it is how I hope to express it myself.
Josh, often my challenger! I appreciate it brother, thank you for your close reading and your comments.
It's true, I have no idea what it's like to be a co-parent, neither in general or in your specific situation, as I don't know what it's like to be my own father, and how he sees himself as never-tamed and yet didn't seem "wild" the way that I'm getting at to me, in my youth.
And, to your point about selfishness... I'd say no, not the kind of wild I'm talking about. I'm not talking about disappearing into the wilderness alone. I'm talking about bringing a sense of the wild into fatherhood—and into masculinity—that I feel is missing, feared, and even prohibited in most avenues of our society today. I would challenge you back to expand or adjust how you experience wildness, in that it could very much include children, and in a way that, at least in general, they could find very engaging. Children, after all, are not yet tamed, which is a big part of what most of us, myself included, become in becoming adults.
I don't know your father or what it was like to be with him, but I'm not talking about a wildness that is insensitive to children or the needs of others—just the opposite, in fact. Without characterizing your father, to me, that kind of wildness is part of the version of masculinity that we are all compensating for now, in our rejection of "wild." That's not what wild is or needs to be.
I'm familiar with the Oedipal battleground, and the how it gets expressed in physical contests. I'm not promoting that—but, and, I also know that there is part of our nature that, just like goats, causes us to butt heads. It happens between men—you and I have a bit of that energy—and it does happen between boys and men, and it needs to be recognized and expressed in a healthy way, not in veiled and silent contests. I think wildness _is_ part of that. Butting heads is part of the goat work, and it's good work to do—you butt heads, or wrestle, or sweat it out together on the trail, for a bit, and then you go back to eating grass.
I'm reminding myself to take your mention of a man 'beating his chest in the wilderness' not as a reading of what I'm putting out, but of your own experience. I don't know any men who do that. I don't even really know what that refers to, actually. What does it refer to?
Bowen, this exchange gives me hope. I've been thinking about it ever since I read your comment last night. We are of one mind here: "I would challenge you back to expand or adjust how you experience wildness, in that it could very much include children, and in a way that, at least in general, they could find very engaging. Children, after all, are not yet tamed, which is a big part of what most of us, myself included, become in becoming adults."
Your goat metaphor makes me laugh, and that is what makes me hopeful. That kind of friction, like metal sharpening metal, is the heart of Socratic dialogue and much good teaching. To embrace pushback and lean into it is how we grow stronger, see farther, imagine more deeply. I appreciate your generosity in addressing my questions and in raising new ones for me.
You're quite right that the chest beating reference is a projection of my own experience -- and not just that, but of some fairly hyperbolic expressions of masculinity in my native Montana. Wildness and a refusal to be tamed, in that context, quite often equates with misogyny and absenting. I didn't hear you suggesting anything like that, but I think it's part of the baggage that comes with the term "wildness," and so these definitions do require some care and clarity. Which is what I think we're trying to do with this series.
The Oedipal version of butting heads typically involves defensive maneuvers, takedowns, and zero sum struggles for dominance. I feel like your response here is a perfect alternative to that. Thanks for keeping it real, for extending the conversation in vigor and good faith, and for leaving that escape hatch for us to go back to munching grass. 😂
❤️ 👁🗿
Reciprocity. Not selfish. Wild. Not tamed by the limiting factors of social norms crushing into a small box. Expanding. Loving. Inclusion. Kindness. Repair. Restoration. Wild and divergent from the sometimes dull mundane that blunts one’s spirit.
Thank you wild men for sharing your dialogue with me.
So good to see you here brother!
In the spirit of David Deida and 50 Cent, you delivered the truth bombs about fathers, about men, and how we need to be showing up better for those we love.
Deida and Fiddy! Yesssss! Quite the plaudits! Thank you brother 👁
Powerful piece Bowen. Like you, my father took me into wild places as a child. I can trace all of my love for mountain adventures in adulthood to this early nurturing in nature. I did not view him as wild...instead he seemed fearless and larger than life in those wild settings. Thank you for the essay and for the reading list. I intend to dive into several that are new to me.
Epic. Necessary read for all people.
Still learning. Thank you Bowen. 🙏🏼❤️
Btw, I’ll need to digest before I can answer, but still thinking too I suppose.
I love reading everyone’s reflections on their own dads. Reading this I kept thinking of how lucky I am to have a wild man as my husband and father to my three kids. But now I’m wondering if my own dad’s wildness created the blueprint for my own partnership. My dad was wild but in a cage. And the pressure cooker of that made him explosive and at times abusive, which scared and scarred me. Yet I still remember traipsing through the woods with him and learning about car engines and how to build just about anything I could dream up and sketch out on paper. My own husband is wild and not caged. Well, not AS caged by far. He’s still working on truly liberating himself, but he’s wild in a way that is inspiring and also liberating for me and my conditioning.
Anyway... thanks for this channeling and affirmation!
Welcome, Ashley, and thank you for reading and for writing in. I so appreciate you sharing about your husband, and your father.
Explosiveness, anger—and violence—are some of the dark shadows that have quite understandably dominated our perception of "wild." My hope is that we can grow into a more expansive wildness, rooted in something deeper and more generative.
It sounds like you and your husband have found some ways of being wild, together. I'd love to hear or read more about that.
Totally agree and I feel that collective shift out of the shadow of wildness too. I think in large part because the restraints are lifting and wild folks can express their wildness in a more free way now, the shadow doesn’t feel the need to be as present. Or it’s been more integrated. And thanks for the prompting to write about our wildness! I’ve been wanting to work together on something with my husband for a long time so this feels like another spur in that direction :)
I definitely did not have a wild father and I think you're right that some wild would be helpful. Yet even just writing that I feel like I'm betraying my own sweet, yet mostly silent, passive-aggressive Dad. So there we have it. Yikes.
I know he loved me with his whole heart and I know he did the best he could. I know how lucky I was to have him as my Dad, yet I can't help but wonder who and what I would be if I had a wild father. The story would look very different.
An excellent article in a fantastic series, thank you Bowen.
I'm adding a little more here after reading your dialogue with Joshua in the comments. You both had good points and I loved the back and forth.
When I think of a wild father in the way you have talked about Bowen I think of a person fully in touch with their highest emotional, physical, spiritual and mental self. Perhaps not in balance all the time, as that may not be realistic, but striving for them all. Coming from that place a father, mother or anyone in a relationship would have a wider perspective that allows for all things, including wildness. From the outside, they may not appear wild but the wildness shows up in deep connection and understanding. A truly heart-centered approach which, sadly, is wild simply because it's so rare.
You just gave me pause.......sombering sefl reflection. As I get kids ready for school like a robot, I CAN DO BETTER. Thank you!
AWESOME!!!
As a retired father myself, my one wish is that my children see me as the man who was caged for a long time, but never tamed.
The spark of child that now reminds them during their adulting years to never forget and never give in.
Bawdy, irreverent and free. Intelligent, wise and ever-loving.
Play in the system if you must, but never be subsumed by it and never lose sight of who you are.
And don't be afraid.
Thank you for speaking to this.
This is a joy to read, Bowen. At the same time, I feel despondent at not being so eloquent in channelling my own rage against the Machine into such a cogent argument. This will help me to both think and do better.
My dad was very wild. But he was wild AND absent. He raged against the machine, but had no sense of balance.
Welcome Reginald, and thank you for reading and commenting. I hear you man. Same here, although he was more absent than wild, really. I think part of our archetype of "wild" is also *alone,* and part of what I'm trying to get at here is that we need to learn to be wild, together. Wouldn't that be interesting?
That would be amazing. I'm the ambassador of 'wild' in my family. But the prospect of being that way with my wife and children is a dream I want to make true.
Brilliant piece. My childhood vacations always felt like a heavy resistance to 'The Machine', travelling through the Australian desert with little more than a paper map, a VHF radio and a sack of water on the roof. My father was in his domain out there. He would make fires, find campsites, do all sorts of mechanical repairs on our Toyota with rudimentary tools, cross rivers, winch the car out of bogs over and over, fight off venomous snakes with sticks, ward off strange bush men with wild threats - you name it. The man appeared a damn savage, yet he was more calculated, composed and content than I'd ever seen him in the so-called real world. His creative streak flourished, his heart swelled, his insane sense of humour was let loose, and so too (though he wouldn't believe in this concept) was his soul.
He's a man that successfully negotiated The Machine, but I think that came at the incredible cost of conformity and inauthenticity. All these years later I still no him better from those memories out in the harsh Aussie bush. And that's probably why as we speak I find myself adrift, with all my loved ones thinking I've lost the plot, and well outside convention. In time I'll probably get stuck in a machine cog once again, but I doubt I'll ever forget to embody the wild man.
Thanks for this article Bowen, amazing stuff.
To "embody the wild man" in a world that's taken us as far from the wild as possible... that's the challenge. I feel it, sitting here at my computer, flipping between windows, searching for something... something, anything that feels like *something.* So far from the wild that I know well, and feel something like as comfortable in as your father did. Staring at my tax bill, tax accountant's bill, property tax bill, and health insurance bill. Wishing to simply X them out in bright red Sharpie. Take an axe to not just the tax bill but to the entire, hopeless web they represent and have ensnared us in.
And yet, I do love typing into this little window...
Cheers, Dan, thanks for reading, and for your comments!
Almost 35 years ago, before I was a father, I sold my 2000sq ft bi-level I had custom built and moved to the outskirts of the city into a 700 sq ft (on two floors) abandoned mink ranch backing on to a decommissioned gravel pit with my reluctant girlfriend in tow. Fast forward, our two daughters got to experience waking up to deer in our backyard and coyotes howling at night. It’s been a wild ride, sometimes too wild. See, the pit attracts dirt bikes, and one day the incessant noise reached a boiling point in me. Fulled with alcohol, I ran barefoot through the bush intent on tearing of some human limbs. Fortunately there was no encounter and all ended well. Except, I “decided” to have a nap in the bush which initiated a search party and subsequent loss of my glasses. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a liver. It’s sober October and the fall North winds have arrived at our lake Winnipeg. Should be pretty wild!
That was a wild ride, from start to finish. Bloody brilliant!👏✍️
Cheers Kevin, that’s definitely part of what I was aiming for!
This was quite an amazing blend of of intelligence and insight, all delivered in a muscular prose, which gives me hope that there is still something we might call and "authentic" male experience--so different from the aggrieved, whiny victimization I hear spouted every day by whiny, mostly white guys, their standard bearer being Donald Trump. Being a poet and fiction writer and coming from a working-class background, I struggled for years to figure out just what a "real" man is, finally realizing there was no answer to that question. See my three part post from March 13 on how Trump has manipulated this "man grievance." https://johnsonp.substack.com/p/whatever-happened-to-white-guys
Thank you for reading, and for writing in, Peter! The great news from my point of view is that a "real man" is whatever we want it to be. Thought you might enjoy this piece as well: https://bowendwelle.substack.com/p/anxious-masculinity-things-fall-apart
From your linked article. “A habit of anxiety.” Wow. Yep. And this psychological “schema” of another person becoming present in self. I wonder and contemplate at my own schema and how I might cognitively process those, move away from them, and “whole” myself through practices I live out in myself (as you outlined in the article). This new awareness realizing there are multiple schema that can be understood, processed out, and a new ones established. I’ll go on that meditation retreat and practice with you asynchronous and synchronous. May each of us find the cultivation of wholeness in self as Bill Plotkin describes in his writings and at his institute called Animas.