What the Mountain Reminded Me
a note on practicing repair
I was sitting outside with my family, looking at Mount Hood, when it came to me.
Not “came to me” like a revelation. More like a tap on the shoulder. The words surfaced the way they sometimes do when things get quiet: what doesn’t change.
That phrase has been my touchstone for a while now. I use it when I’m flooded, when the ground feels unstable, when I need to find something solid underneath whatever’s moving. And in that moment, sitting outside in the middle of an unexpected family event that had pulled me under the night before, it worked. I felt the mountain. I felt the ground.
And then I remembered I was supposed to be leading a men’s group.
Not in an hour. Right then. Eleven in the morning. I looked at the clock. It was 11:10.
I grabbed my phone and got word to them as fast as I could. I wasn’t in a state to show up for it, and they’d already started without me. A group of men who had shown up, on time, for something I had agreed to be part of, and I wasn’t there.
I want to be precise about what happened inside me when I realized that.
In the past, that kind of lapse would have lit me up with shame. I know that version of myself. Years ago, I got fired from a woodworking job I loved. I’d put my own construction debris in the work truck the night before, showed up late, handled it badly. I knew it was wrong while I was doing it. I dissociated anyway because I didn’t know what else to do. And when it cost me the job, I really came down on myself. Hard. The kind of hard that doesn’t help anything and just makes the next mistake more likely.
This time was different. I felt the lapse. I felt the broken agreement in my chest, the weight of having let people down. But I didn’t spiral into it. I just... held it. And then I went and did what needed doing.
I’m not saying that to show off my equanimity. I’m telling you because I genuinely wasn’t sure I was capable of it until it happened.
And I think that’s what years of this work actually looks like: not the absence of mess, but a different relationship to the mess when it inevitably arrives, when the mistake gets made, when the lapse in judgment or attention knocks you sideways.
The following Sunday, I came back to lead the group.
I could have opened with an introduction. My background, the work I do, the frameworks we’d be exploring. I could have apologized briefly and moved on, which is the move I’ve seen plenty of leaders make. Quick acknowledgment, pivot to content, everyone pretends the air is clear because nobody wants to be the one who slows things down.
I didn’t do that.
I opened by naming what happened. Directly. No defense, no over-explaining. I said: I agreed to be here last week and I wasn’t. That matters to me. If it had an impact on you, I want to make space for that before we do anything else.
A few men said they hadn’t been there either. One said the conversation that emerged in my absence had been unexpectedly rich. Another said he appreciated the opening even though he, too, hadn’t been there. The room settled in a way that I could feel, something cohering that I think wouldn’t have been there if I’d just glossed over the thing.
What I said to the group afterward was something I’ve found to be true over years of sitting in circles and leading them: the most healing moments in this work don’t always happen inside the curriculum. They happen in the margins. In the lunch line at a retreat. In the moments before a session starts, or in the goodbyes afterward. In the repair that nobody planned for but somebody needed.
The agenda brings men together. The relationships we build are the skin in the game, the connective tissue that builds resilience for the harder moments, and makes the celebrations richer.
I’ve been slowing down my posting here recently. Spring showed up and life reorganized itself around that, as it does. Going forward through the end of August, I’ll be posting twice a month rather than weekly. Slower. More room to breathe between pieces. That feels right for the season.
In the meantime, I’ve paused paid subscriptions through the end of August. Enjoy your summer. Thank you to each of you for your support - it really, really helps.
If you’ve been here, thank you for staying. If you’re new, glad you’re here.
There’s more coming. Just at the pace the work actually asks for.
If this material landed for you: Bowing In is a guide for men who’ve decided to stop going it alone in the dark. 49 frameworks across 8 domains. Built to be returned to, not completed. The guide is the map. If you want a guide for the territory, apply to work with me 1:1.