Being in Process, Being in Progress
Announcing Men in Progress, new space.
If we cannot heal what we cannot feel, by supporting patriarchal culture that socializes men to deny feelings, we doom them to live in states of emotional numbness. We construct a culture where male pain can have no voice, where male hurt cannot be named or healed.
—bell hooks
The last couple of years brought some personal grief. Gratefully, I found space to think and grow through loss, to articulate new ways of being.
During this time, I read Miranda July’s All Fours, and the ideas around living and vivid self-exploration resonated deeply with me1. I later discovered bell hooks all about love, and the will to change, both of which impacted and amplified many of the insights of the self I uncovered during therapy, the realization that self-leadership and creativity are available wherever the self goes.
“Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail.”
— bell hooks
The manosphere tries to tell men who they are and how to be. What is expected of them, and what is accepted for them. To better access the self, we must remove tired and limiting language. We must keep the world, and all of its shoulds, at bay so that we can drop into an inner place of thinking and sensing.
Self-authership is not limited to how we show up for our colleagues and clients, but also to how we show up for ourselves, how we ground our experience of the world, and how we define power within it.
I am now starting a new space for men in progress.
We will start by reading bell hooks and watching The Sopranos.
https://in-process.net/men-in-progress
I hosted three dinners; here are the conversations we had.