Time to follow my heart

It’s time to return to working with men.

When my daughter was born I took a break from all mentoring work, so I could channel energy into nest, baby and mama.

I changed. Everything changed. Life before, life after baby. To honour that transformation by creating space to be with it has felt like the greatest gift Ive ever given myself.

It’s good to have time to re-assess everything. To stop the wheels moving, halt any momentum, dis-identify from any role, title, or business offering.

To get as butt-naked as my baby girl was when she entered the world.

It feels necessary to wipe the slate clean, and re-assess: Who am I? What do I stand for? What is my prayer? My deepest calling?

This first phase of fatherhood discombobulated me… it thrust me so deeply into the liminal realm, sleep-deprived, stretched to the max, all my primal energies directed to supporting my family.

Who am I? Father.

What do I stand for? Making food for my family.

My prayer? For the health of my baby and Anna.

My deepest calling? Be present.

And just like that my universe temporarily condensed so that all my love and power could go into my family nest.

And now the baby is a cheeky, thriving, chunky sausage, who knows her father deeply, and Anna is entering a new phase of motherhood, and my universe is beginning to expand again, from the core of my cracked open heart.

For a while I thought I was done with working with men. In hindsight that was a necessary stage of the journey, to let it all go.

And lo and behold, 9 months later I find there is plenty of heat in the embers. When I tune into my prayer, my highest calling, my unique way of contributing to the flourishing of life, it is to support my brothers who are yearning to embody the wholeness of who they are… who want to grow.

Our world needs confident, strong, loving men.

Men who are living and loving from their hearts.

After all these centuries of imbalance, disharmony, pain and trauma there is much work to be done.

And I’m delighted to say that I feel a resurgence in the brotherhood of man.

I sense and I see more and more men who want to do the work to heal and grow.

To all my sisters out there who ask “where are all these men?”, I say, they are all around us. They may not look like your fantasy of a conscious man, but they are there.

Yes, there are many who in this lifetime may not be ready to crack open… but there are countless men who are on the cusp.

Like popcorn swirling in butter in a hot pan, the pressure and heat intensifies…. Until pop… pop……. Pop pop popoppopopopopopopopopop…. And this is what is happening right now around the world.

Men want to live from their hearts. We want to pop open and reveal the truth of who we really are. Of course we do.

We happen to be born in a time and culture where there were no wise elders, no rites of passage, no sacred brotherhood, no initiations into manhood… and so of course more often than not a man in our culture is a child in a man’s body.

But like the tree grows towards the sun, and the moth flies towards the light…. Us men want to expand, evolve, deepen, ripen, and mature.

We yearn for initiatory experiences.

I can’t be the only man who wanted in some strange way to experience pregnancy… to know what it is to experience rupture on all the dimensions, to be a conduit for new life, to transcend the narcissism of child consciousness.

Us men naturally want to protect, nourish, serve and honour women. It’s in our bones. It’s encoded in our DNA.

Many of us, never got shown how to activate the intelligence of the sacred masculine…. And so unguided by tradition, by fathers, uncles, elders, or rituals…. our masculinity festers… and sometimes it swings into aggression and domination….

And sometimes it swings into submissive, weak-boundried, people pleasing…

and while one might look more benign or friendly than the other… trust me…

both are harmful expressions of the uninitiated man… both are fear borne attempts of child trapped in a mans body to survive… and adult, and somehow try through the mind, through the ego to do what we know are here to do.

I truly believe we are at the dawn of a new age… I feel the fears and pressures so many of us have been feeling are the exact conditions in which pop-corn starts popping.

It’s contagious, this awakening malarky. It’s viral.. its an energetic pulse that emanates from each of our hearts, and those who are on the cusp just can’t help themselves….

We all want to love and be loved. We want to compost our pain and sorrow into new soil. There is a deep aching yearning for it.

For all you men out there, keep your ears tuned. Something is building, and it feels like a groundswell moving from deeper oceans.

It will blend sacred brotherhood, rites of passage, and the integration of these experiences in my most supportive ways I have experienced.

For you women, keep cheering us on, and singing us home.

Thank you for reading. x