A new Medium publication that celebrates our relationships with self and others.
“Modern Identities” is a publication about how we identify our authentic self: as an individual, in relation to a loved one, and as a member of society. We’ll share heteronormative and non-heteronormative nonfiction, personal stories. We’ll cover the full spectrum of gender, including men and women, both cis and trans, as well as non-binary and a-gender expressions.
We’ll address changing societal gender norms, sexuality and sexual orientation, and whom and how we love. …
Allow yourself to feel this: “Your work matters. It makes a difference.”
By Phil Drolet
There’s a secret “fuel” you can use to develop greater focus, produce better work, and make a bigger difference in the world.
It’s not some fancy new nootropic, psychedelic drug or breathing technique.
It’s deeper than that.
It’s a secret that the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King and Gandhi have used to become forces of nature and change the world forever.
I have to be honest: this method is not for the faint of heart.
It will sometimes make you feel uncomfortable, exposed and vulnerable.
But it will also help you forge a stronger character while feeling…
According to Shawn Peters, fidelity simply requires less work for some men.
By Shawn Peters
Alone at last, away from prying eyes, she steps close… closer than she should.
“This isn’t right. I’m a married man.”
Her lips pout for a millisecond, before spreading into a grin that is as wicked as it is wanton.
“I know,” she whispers. “I don’t care.”
I am intimately familiar with the above scene … but only because I’ve seen it in hundreds of movies and TV shows, and read it in more than a few books. This is the theatrical, dare I say “romantic” view of how a good man ends up straying. A flirtation…
How Christianity speaks to those who are persecuted & marginalized
As a columnist for the Good Men Project, I get writing prompts from time to time to help spur thoughts and conversations about topics that are discussed on the Good Men Project website. Usually, I don’t need a lot of assistance getting my ideas from “pen to paper”, but this time I thought I’d take a look and see what prompts might pique my interest.
The prompt read: Why is organized religion silent about the persecution of the marginalized?
As I looked at the question, I thought, “Perhaps the writer of the prompt is not familiar with…
How men can find insights for grief in nature.
When men grieve, they often need to do something physical to help them along. Some men build things. I go hiking for a week in Yosemite.
My goal each day is to reach a scenic viewpoint, but I also want to find a place along the way where I connect to something solid and real.
Hiking is a walking meditation.
In the months after my wife’s death, home was an unending flurry of details, doubts and despair, and I was unable to focus on anything for very long. …
Rob Watson was recently asked why he identifies as a “gay dad” rather than “just a dad.” This is his answer…
By Rob Watson
It was supposed to be a simple revelation of ideas, not a confrontation. A friend of mine, Henry Amador, blogger and founder of Dadsquared, addressed a topic in a piece called “The Battle Cry of the Gay Dad” for The Next Family. He captured the essence of the extra effort those of us who are gay dads have gone through to become fathers. He said, in part:
“Only now we too are grown. We finally fit into our skins. We have passed your foolish tests and questions with flying colors. If we made it and we are…
Leo Searle Hawkins experienced an unexpected event in the shower that taught him the body holds the secret to true and complete freedom.
On the afternoon of May 1st 1996, I stepped out of my shower a changed man.
It would be several hours before I could drink anything and many weeks before I could eat properly again. My whole body felt so vulnerable and delicate; it was almost as if a demon, which had possessed me for years, had been exorcised. It left raw nerve endings where once its leech-like tentacles had sucked the life out of me.
Personal growth workshops, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and counselling had been the focus of my life for the previous six years. Driven…
Rick Belden gives readers a name for what they have always known about themselves.
By Rick Belden
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post called “I am a Highly Sensitive Man” in which I shared some of my history and experience as a man who is a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). My post was then reprinted on the Good Men Project website, where it’s been very popular, and has subsequently been reprinted on numerous other sites around the world and shared widely across social media.
I’ve been very pleased that so many people have felt such a strong connection with what I wrote and have found it so helpful. Many of the…
A humorous and heartening story of how a date night and the former Prime Minister of Israel made one man question his identity.
My wife and I love to try new things and recently we were invited to an event in Los Angeles called the Distinguished Speakers Series of Southern California, which regularly puts on events where famous men and women from around the globe who are paid to come and speak to packed houses of eager listeners.
The speaker on this night was is Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel from 1999–2001. If you have not heard of him, you’re not alone as neither had I until last night, and I remember I am Jewish. …
There’s no shame in being human.
I’ve been writing for three years now about a syndrome called Perfectly Hidden Depression.
These are people who are inwardly struggling with depression, at times severe depression. But others would never guess that they were. They can act both intentionally, but also unconsciously, to deny and avoid pain or suffering. And they do it quite well. In fact, perfectly.
But what’s a syndrome?
Here’s what the dictionary offers.
“Pathology, Psychiatry. a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease, or the like.”
In PHD, it’s a set of behaviors, thought patterns, and…
