I’ve had three items posted on the Good Men Project website this month, as follows:
* My video poem “secret children”.
* My video poem “falling though” with my accompanying written commentary about my fear of feeling and expressing grief and sadness.
* My poem “use everything” (video version is available here).
For a complete listing of all of my work on the Good Men Project site, you can visit my author page at http://goodmenproject.com/author/rick-belden.
My article “Healing Is Not for Wimps” is now featured on the website for the Good Men Project. Here is an excerpt:
Sadness scares me. Grief, the experience of grief and grieving, scares me. But I also know that grieving, that being with grief and sadness, is one of the most powerful and effective ways of being with and transforming pain. When I let my grief and my sadness speak, when I allow those energies to stir in my belly and my chest, to move up through my heart and my throat, to enter the world as tears and moans and sobbing and wailing, I am cleansed. I am lifted. I can see again. I feel real again. Human.
But entering that process is challenging for me. It’s tricky. Sensitive. I almost have to be taken by surprise. Like so many men, I’ve been conditioned not to feel such things (not directly anyway) and certainly not to express them, not even privately. The messages are clear: “Be a real man. Take charge. Control yourself. Don’t cry. Be tough. Don’t be a wimp.” If you are a man who is suffering, keep it to yourself. If you have to feel something, feel angry. Anger is manly and therefore safe to feel. Grief and sadness are not.
Grief work is hard for many of us as men, and so much has to be learned (and unlearned) in order to do it. You have to be tough and soft at the same time, and you have to be present with what you’re feeling without losing yourself in the intensity of it. It’s not easy. Healing is not for wimps. The real tough guys are the ones who can do the work …
You can read the full article at:
http://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/healing-is-not-for-wimps
Zen in the Art of Photography, by psychotherapist and photographer Robert Leverant, is a gracefully tight articulation of philosophy and process that reads like poetry. This little book is beautiful in both appearance and content. It even feels good in my hands. I’m neither a photographer nor an expert on Zen, but I enjoyed this book nonetheless, and I think that says something about the universal truths contained within.
Many of the insights offered about the process of creating a photograph echoed my own experience as a writer and poet. Leverant speaks of photography as “an art of waiting” and “an art of listening.” If the photographer listens well enough, if he has developed sufficient discipline, the photo takes itself. I’ve often told others that I feel as if my poems write themselves, but this only happens when I’m able to give them the time and space they need to emerge.
The processes and philosophy in this book may be specific to photography, but I believe that anyone engaged in creative activity who reads it can gain some valuable insights into the value of waiting, listening, and allowing art, whatever the chosen medium, to find its own path.
“WAKING UP: Men Reclaiming Our Inspiration” is a 12-meeting study and process group for men in the Austin area that starts on August 31 and ends on November 16. The group will meet at Sol Associates in Austin and will be comprised of six members and two leaders, Steve Milan and Rupesh Chhagan. Here are the details:
WAKING UP: Men Reclaiming Our Inspiration
Would the boy you once were be inspired by the man you’ve become? – Nic Askew
This 12-meeting study and process group for men will explore the pathway to discovering our masculine gifts, and offering those gifts through our relationships, families, friendships and work. The group will be a place of refuge, challenge and acceptance where members will engage with new ideas about relating to ourselves, our partners and families, and our work in the world. As a process group, we will look at our interactions within the group as a reflection of our interactions with the world. As a working group, we will support each other in identifying and working through the challenges which keep us from living our lives more fully.
The primary work in meetings will be the focus on consciously finding our right relationship with ourselves, our lives, and each other. We will look at physical, spiritual, emotional, sexual, and psychological ways of offering our gifts to the world, and pathways to doing that. The group will do a small amount of reading each week from writings by David Deida, Rick Belden, Chogyam Trungpa and others to open up new areas for exploration of our full role in the world. We will explore mindfulness, and use this skill to explore barriers to true engagement with ourselves and our world.
This group will be comprised of six members and two leaders. All members will commit for the duration of the group. (It is understood that absences are unavoidable at times.) During the group, the leaders will offer experiential training on what is needed to develop and maintain an effective on-going, self-sustaining group. If there is interest, the foundation of this subsequent group will be established from interested men in the group with the support and consultation of the group leaders. After the initial stages of the new group, leaders will be available in a consultative capacity as needed.
Details
When: 5:30 – 7:00pm on Wednesdays beginning August 31 and ending November 16
Where: Sol Associates, 3400 Kerbey Lane
Group leaders: Steve Milan, LCSW and Rupesh Chhagan, LAc
Cost: $50 per session payable at the start of each month. Discount available if paid in full in advance. If finances are the only barrier to joining, please contact us to discuss accommodations based on need.
Please call Steve at 589-5164 or Rupesh at 917-3404 to sign up or to get more information.
Signing Up: Anyone interested in participating must meet with Steve or Rupesh once before the group starts to assure that the goals of the group are clear, and that this group is an appropriate venue for this work. There is no cost for this meeting.
This is a great opportunity for men in the Austin area who are ready to explore the possibilities of deeper relationship with self and others in a safe, supportive environment, and I’m honored that some of my work will be included as a resource.
I recently had the pleasure of corresponding a bit with Dr. John Ashfield, an Australian author, educator, and psychotherapist. Dr. Ashfield is Director of Education and Clinical Practice for AIMHS, the Australian Institute of Male Health and Studies, and is the author of the recently published book Doing Psychotherapy with Men: Practicing Ethical Psychotherapy and Counselling with Men.
In a chapter called “Being Your Own Man” from his previous book, Matters for Men: Staying Healthy and Keeping Life on Track, Dr. Ashfield wrote:
Father and son relationships are often fraught with tension and conflict, because of a failure to understand that a son must chart his own course, and must best his father in some way, in order to become a self-respecting equal with him in the world of men. Sons must not only be snatched away from mother’s apron strings, but must also decisively cease their dependence on or acquiescence to father. Many men, even in middle age, experience the continuing inertia of unrealized manhood because they are still preoccupied – often unknowingly, with lamenting an absent (or less than ideal) father, or living in their father’s shadow. There may be no simple formula for success in life, but there is a simple formula for failure: to betray and abandon the person we could become, and the life that we could have, in order to placate and please other people.
The decision to be ourselves and to be responsible for ourselves – to shape our own destiny, rather than living on the leftovers of someone else’s, is no small matter. It can be a frightening thing to take the first few steps into a future governed by our own volition and choices. But no other option can give us the dignity or manliness of a life that is, for better or for worse, uniquely and satisfyingly ours and ours alone.
Dr. Ashfield’s comments remind me of one of my favorite quotes, attibuted to Rudyard Kipling:
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
I’ve found, as Dr. Ashfield has written, that separating from my father, from both the man he was and the man I needed him to be, has been crucial to my coming into my own life as a mature man. It’s been a long process, a “hard business” as Kipling put it. It’s also been both necessary and well worth the time and the effort. I know there’s more work to do (there will always be more), but nearly 35 years after taking my first conscious steps out of my father’s life and into my own, I’m finally beginning to feel, in ways I never have before, that I am becoming a man at last.
Still I am, as Kipling said, “lonely often, and sometimes frightened,” frequently more so than I would prefer or care to admit, but I also have a tolerance and an acceptance of both of these states that I didn’t have even a few years ago. I understand now that standing up as a man in this world doesn’t guarantee me anything – not love, not success, not companionship, not fidelity, not health, not safety – and this understanding has liberated me, not from wanting all of those things, but from expecting them as some sort of reward for doing what I believe is right.
It is only by standing firm in my own authenticity and integrity that I can truly be fully present in this world and in my own life, with all of the inevitable pain, confusion, and disappointment that come to each one of us who lives. This is a lesson my father could not teach me, having never learned it himself, and I could only learn it by stepping out from the long, angry shadow he cast over my life as a child, a shadow that covered me like a second skin and nearly obliterated my life as a man.
Kathleen Freeman is a poet in the UK who’s recently been posting some incredibly lovely, vital work on her blog in a series of poems entitled “Legacy for a two year old”. Today I’m featuring a very poignant piece from her new series, just started, called “Slouching Beyond Two”.
House Rules
Sit up straight don’t slouch.
Stop crying I will give you something to cry for.
Don’t answer back.
Pull yourself together.
Do as I say pay attention.
Don’t fidget sit still.
Those who ask don’t get.
Those who don’t ask don’t want.
If the wind changes your face will stay like that.
Speak when you are spoken to.
Little girls should be seen and not heard.
You must make the best of yourself.
If you don’t abide by my rules you can leave.
Don’t stare it’s rude to stare.
Stop that now rude girl.
I am not staring I am looking.
I am searching I am yearning.
Where are you?
Kathleen Freeman
Choosing one poem from among the many fine pieces Kathleen has written so far was a rather hard decision. You can see more of her work and keep up with her latest posts at http://kathylambie.blog.com.
My poem “reverie” is the featured “Poem of the Issue” in this week’s edition of The Austin Chronicle. This one is just about a month old, although I actually started it in January 2010. Started it, got stuck, forgot about it, and then picked it back up and finished it about 18 months later. Very unusual for me to do that. Usually, if I don’t wrap ‘em up within a day or two, the moment passes and that’s the end of it.
“Coming to Terms with an Absence of Elders”, an article I wrote and posted on this blog in November 2010, was published recently on the website for The ManKind Project Journal. Here’s an excerpt:
I’ve been thinking recently about the deficiency of appropriate, effective male mentoring in my life and how it’s affected me. I’m 52 and it’s still affecting me, just as it’s affected me at every stage of my life. There’s a huge hole in my life where my father should have been (and still should be), but as big as that hole is, it’s merely the center of a much larger hole, the product of a male culture that is woefully inadequate to meet the true needs of men and boys …
The link for the article is:
http://mankindprojectjournal.org/2011/06/5779
A second article of mine entitled “My Life with Iron Man” was also published on The ManKind Project Journal website last month. The article is located at:
http://mankindprojectjournal.org/2011/06/my-life-with-iron-man
“My Life with Iron Man” was originally published on the Masculinity Movies website in October 2010 in conjunction with my review of the movie Iron Man.
My article “Broken Bones and the Father Wound” was published a few days ago on the website for the Good Men Project as one in a series of articles being posted in observance of Father’s Day. The link for the article is:
http://goodmenproject.com/fathers-day/broken-bones-and-the-father-wound
This article is an updated version of a blog post I originally wrote in November 2009 while recuperating from a broken shoulder and wrist. Many thanks to the folks at the Good Men Project for including it in their Father’s Day 2011 series.
Exciting news! My video poem “secret children” is now featured on the “Survivors Speaking Out” page on the MaleSurvivor website at http://www.malesurvivor.org/speaking-out.html.
I wrote “secret children” just about 20 years ago and knew I had something of universal significance in my hands, but I couldn’t get anybody to look at it. I really couldn’t get anyone to look at anything I’d written at that point. Discouraged, I put “secret children” away and more or less forgot about it until I started writing again in 2008. Quite a long wait, to be sure, but it’s finally getting out there.
