Material from Iron Man Family Outing and Scapegoat’s Cross will be used in the group as follows:

The group will do a small amount of reading each week from writings by David Deida, Rick Belden, Chogyam Trungpa and others as a starting point for seeing our full role in the world. We will explore mindfulness, and use this skill to explore barriers to authentic engagement with ourselves and our world.

I’m honored that some of my work will be included as a resource and encourage men in the Austin area to consider what they might gain from participating in this group experience.

For full details about the group, click here. For additional information, contact group leader Steve Milan.

Material from Iron Man Family Outing and Scapegoat’s Cross will be used in the group as follows:

The group will do a small amount of reading each week from writings by David Deida, Rick Belden, Chogyam Trungpa and others as a starting point for seeing our full role in the world. These writings have very different takes on the journey, and we will work with their ideas to find our own path.

This is a great opportunity for men 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.

For full details about the group, click here. For additional information, contact group leader Steve Milan.

Update (05/26/10): I received an email from Steve Milan this week announcing that this group is full and he is now in the process of forming a second. Here’s the message from Steve:

I’m again happy to announce that our first summertime Living Fully As Man group which I announced two weeks ago is full and we had some additional interest, so I am looking at adding a second group (co-led this time by Shelley Imholte, LMSW) …

Our second group will start in one or two weeks depending on how long it takes us to get enough participants. This second group will take place from 7:30 until 9PM, also on Wednesday nights. It will be 9 or 10 sessions long with the final meeting on August 4th …

I have led a similar group in the past with Shelley, and she is quite a courageous woman and talented therapist. She was well accepted and appreciated by the group members, and the work was astounding.

Please contact group leader Steve Milan or co-leader Shelley Imholte if you’re interested in joining the group or need more information.

BEING MAN (click here for details)
Group leader: Steve Milan, LCSW
Group Co-Leader: Shelley Imholte, LMSW

LIVING FULLY AS MAN (click here for details)
Group leader: Steve Milan, LCSW
Assistant leader: Rupesh Chhagan

Material from Iron Man Family Outing and Scapegoat’s Cross will be used in both groups as follows:

The group will do a small amount of reading each week from writings by David Deida, Rick Belden, Chogyam Trungpa and others as a starting point for seeing our full role in the world. These writings have different takes on the journey of being, and we will work with these alternative perspectives to find our own path.

These groups are a great opportunity for men who are looking to move forward into deeper relationship with self and others, and I’m honored that some of my work will be included as a resource.

Hello,
I’m writing to offer you a complimentary copy of my book, Iron Man Family Outing. I believe this book may be of interest to you. I would be very happy to provide you with a copy at no cost to you, shipping and handling included.

There’s no catch here and no hidden agenda. The simple fact is that I printed more copies than I’ve been able to sell, and I don’t want the remaining copies to go to waste.

Over the years, I’ve received many positive, enthusiastic responses from folks who’ve read and enjoyed this book. I’ve also discovered just how difficult it is to promote and distribute work of this nature. My primary interest now is to get the remaining copies of my book to people who would find it personally meaningful.

I’m enclosing some introductory information about the book, including a brief excerpt. Please contact me if you would like to receive a copy or if you need any additional information.

Regards,

Rick Belden
Author, Iron Man Family Outing

With that, Iron Man Family Outing, published in the fall of 1990 and then forgotten and presumed dead for the next seventeen years, was reborn.

I didn’t have a website two years ago today. I didn’t have a blog. I didn’t have even one reader review for Iron Man Family Outing at Amazon, or anywhere else on the web for that matter. All I had was a closetful of unsold books and a renewed conviction that it was important that I get them out to people who could make use of them.

In the two years since that day, I’ve contacted over 1800 individuals and organizations around the world, and sent out nearly 900 copies of Iron Man Family Outing to recipients in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. It’s now being used worldwide by therapists, counselors, men’s groups, and organizations that work with men as an aid in the exploration of masculine psychology and men’s issues, and as a resource for men who grew up in dysfunctional, abusive, or neglectful family systems. It’s been ranked in the top 20 poetry books and the top 35 books on father-son relationships at Amazon.com, based on reader reviews. I’ve made new friends and allies all around the world who are working to help men grow and heal. And I have the most unexpected result of all, the completed manuscript for a brand-new book: Scapegoat’s Cross, my first new work in nearly twenty years.

It’s clear to me now, in retrospect, that events in my life had been leading me back to my unfinished business with the Iron Man Family Outing project since 2004, but I didn’t know that two years ago today. All I knew was that I woke up on a Sunday morning with a letter in my mind and an undeniable imperative to finish what I’d started all those years ago, to see my original vision for the book through to its completion, even if I had to give away every copy I had to do it.

I don’t know where this process will lead me in the future. Two years ago, I never expected to be where I am with this work today. I hadn’t written a line of poetry in over fifteen years. I was haunted by my failure to find an audience for Iron Man Family Outing and considered myself dead as a writer. Fortunately, things have changed.

Well, not everything has changed. I’m still fighting the battle of “soul versus survival” daily. Some days are harder than others. As I wrote almost a year ago in a blog entry entitled “go crazy or starve”:

Every morning when I wake up and don’t have time to write because some meaningless job is demanding its daily pound of flesh in exchange for a little more survival time, I feel like I’m terminating a pregnancy. It’s absolutely wrenching. I start the day sad, furious, and hopeless.

It’s still happening. It happened yesterday. I could feel something coming and I made some notes, but there was no time to allow it to develop or complete. It may come back to me. It may not.

But I’m fighting to keep the channel open, even if it means suffering the pain of losing all those things I never get to finish, because the last two years have shown me that it matters that I keep trying and do what I can, and because two years ago today I began to remember, for the first time in over fifteen years, who I am and what my life is about.

A meaningless job is going to eat my morning again today, but I woke up about two hours ago at 4 AM, after a couple of hours of restless semi-sleep, and realized I couldn’t let this anniversary go by without observing it in some way. This is my life now. The work drives me, it nags at me, it makes me miserable and keeps me awake until I tend to it.

It’s hard, it’s demanding, it’s draining, it doesn’t leave me much time for anything else, and sometimes it feels like it’s just too much for me. It also keeps me alive. And I’m okay with that.

The group will do a small amount of reading each week from writings by David Deida, Rick Belden, Chogyam Trungpa and others as a starting point for seeing our full role in the world. These writings have very different takes on the journey, and we will work with their ideas to find our own path.

Click here to read the full announcement about the group.

This group, which will be held at Sol Associates in Austin, looks like it will be a great opportunity for everyone who attends, and I’m honored that some of my work will be included as a resource for the group.

For additional information, contact group facilitators Steve Milan and Shelley Imholte.

Update (09/04/09): I’ve been informed that the facilitators of this group will also be using material from my new, yet-to-be-published book, Scapegoat’s Cross, in the group. I’m very happy to see this new material being put to such good use so soon.