Why I’m Spending a Year Exploring Love and Fear

It started with men going on adventures together. That was the original idea. Get guys into the woods, push them out of their comfort zones, and build something meaningful around campfires at night.

But the deeper I went, the more the questions changed.

I kept running into the same pattern. Behind the loneliness, the anger, the disconnection that so many men carry, there was something else. Fear. Not the useful kind that keeps you from walking off a cliff. The cultural kind. The kind that tells boys to stop crying before they even understand what tears are for.

That pattern pulled me away from planning adventures and toward something bigger. A year of exploring where love and fear actually show up in our lives. Not just in men’s lives, though that’s where it started. In all of our lives. In our relationships, our workplaces, our politics, our faith communities, our relationship with money, and even in how we raise our kids.

This isn’t a research project with a predetermined conclusion. It’s an adventure. Some weeks I’ll share what I’m reading. Other weeks I’ll share what I’m feeling. There will be conversations around actual campfires. There will be science. There will be days when I don’t know what I think yet, and I’ll share those too.

The operating belief is simple: the world works better when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. Whether that holds up is part of what I’m here to find out.

The trail is open. Come along if you’re curious.

Read the full piece on Substack

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org