Fatherhood & Healthy Masculinity

We've read Miranda July's "All Fours," have heard how Gen X women are having the best sex of their lives, and know at least one woman in her 40s who is leaving her marriage.

So, yes, the zeitgeist is here.

But, what I don't hear talked about as much is - The Men.

For the first time in history, more men are choosing 50/50 custody and are raising their kids on their own half of the time.

And enjoying it and doing an excellent job!

It feels hard to underestimate the positive impacts this will have on the men themselves, on the kids, and the mothers who are getting more breaks than ever before.

Change is happening so rapidly these days.

Children being raised healthily and happily by their fathers half the time feels like such an exciting development. For the family system to break out of the inscribed societal parts. To see both parents play both roles. Fathers doing it their way, without being criticized or emasculated. Not only making lunches and separating the clothes for laundry, but also dipping into the pscyho-emotional realm.

Looking for wins these days and I think this is one!

What Kind of Support Do You Need?

Therapy can be many things—practical, spiritual, emotional, directive, gentle, fierce.

But what kind of support do you need most?

Here are a few forms of support that therapy can offer:

✨ Advice & Guidance

- You want a clearer path or direction

- You appreciate tools, frameworks, or insights

- You’re looking for help sorting through options or next steps

- You want your therapist to weigh in—not just reflect back

🌿 Safety & Comfort

- You want a calm, grounding presence

- You need space to process without pressure or fixing

- You’re seeking warmth, trust, and emotional refuge

- You want to feel held, not pushed

🔍 Honesty & Transparency

- You want a therapist who will be real with you

- You appreciate being gently called out or challenged

- You’re curious about your patterns—and ready to name them

- You don’t want sugar-coating; you want truth

💛 Empathy & Compassion

- You want to feel deeply understood

- You’re craving emotional resonance, not just analysis

- You’re not looking for quick fixes—you want someone to be with you in it

- You value presence more than performance

🔥 Encouragement & Empowerment

- You want someone who believes in your potential

- You’re ready to be stretched and supported

- You’re looking for accountability as much as affirmation

- You want to feel energized, not just safe

So, what kind of support do you need?

It might shift over time. It might be a mix.

Therapy can be many things.

What do you need right now?

📷: Tippi Hedren, 1962 by Philippe Halsman

Saying No to a Blow Job

Here is a raw & WoW excerpt from Allie Hoffman's substack about her ongoing process of sexual exploration:

"Sometime long ago, I downloaded a code that male desire + satisfaction were my responsibility.

I move thru the world with a fierce desire to be chosen, desired and wanted;

I continue to have to ‘learn’ my sexuality, and its expression: it can feel like a force that – when not thoughtfully directed – spews and sputters;

I say all I want is to tell the truth – and at key moments – I sublimate the truth for being ‘agreeable’;

I make my story of someone else’s experience, more important than my own;

And perhaps the most scary: when it comes to my pleasure and my desires and my sexuality - I (still) really struggle to know what I want and I struggle even more to summon the words to express it all."

*

🫥 It's frightening how relatable this is and I think Allie has done an incredible job giving it words.

➡️ Please check out The Feels, her IRL dating experience inspired and informed by a somatic lens. It is a great alternative to the apps and a new way to explore the dating world.

🫶 In my opinion, Allie is standing out in this overly saturated IG psycho-spiritual world by talking about things in a bold, fresh and unique way.

💙 She is inspiring me and I hope you catch her feels too!

@catchthefeelsirl

@alliehoffman

📷: @jensingvarsson

Expressing Your Needs

You know the Five Love Languages, right? 

The idea is that we each give and receive love in different ways and that relationships can be improved when we know what works best for us and for our partners. 

The Five Love Languages:

Acts of Service

Words of Affirmation 

Physical Touch

Quality Time

Gifts

But, it’s not so simple. 

One of the challenges is that you have to be in tune enough with yourself to know your own needs. And then you have to express them! Not the easiest task for anyone slightly on the codependent spectrum, where it's difficult or foreign to have ... "needs."

The other tricky part is figuring out what your loved ones actually want. Our habitual ways of showing up may not actually do much for them. 

You may be leaving them special love notes and feeling all snazzy about yourself and surely your partner enjoys them, but does that realllly make them feel super-duper-loved?

Perhaps you noticed them ogling a little gift shop on your evening walk. If you go back and get them a little trinket from there, they may be extremely touched that you noticed and remembered their interest in the shop.

Part of the fun of being a good partner or friend is to know the other person well enough to help read the subtext of their desires, without them needing to say.

Because it can be hard to ask for what we need.

It’s not our job to read each other’s minds.

But in every conversation there is text and subtext.

And the most skillful communicators understand that not everything is said out loud.

Image: Hilma af Klint: "Possible Worlds"

Freeze State

The overwhelm we feel is the point, a political strategy to overload people with so much alarming information and sudden changes that our ability to process is compromised.

Being emotionally flooded can cause a stress response that triggers fight or flight - or perhaps one of the lesser known survival responses - to fawn or freeze.

My default is freeze. In an acute moment, I go numb, mind blank, I don’t know, I don’t care. I stare at a spot on the floor.

Living in an ongoing freeze state, which I’m in now, is disorienting. I want to tune out, shut down, remain helpless. But I’m also operating in constant low level panic. Small stressors - someone not texting me back - can build in scale. Resources are low, irritability peaks. Relational disputes flare.

Since the LA fires and the inauguration, it has been one thing after the next, and I have been unable to regulate my nervous system. In states like this, for me, the answer is always the same: sound & body.

I need sustained periods of NO sound. Music & podcasts off, driving or cooking in silence. Without the din of distraction. This helps me get under the layer of noise and calms me down. Being in nature is nice, but can’t always get there.

When I’m sleeping, I listen to binaural beats - meditations that play music to bring your brainwave patterns into specific frequencies, such as the delta waves, known for deep sleep and healing (I love the app Brainwaves).

I need physical movement. Exercise and walking, yes. I get weekly hands-on somatic therapy to physically release the trauma that is stored and stagnant in my body.

And my latest hook - fad warning - is this vibration machine (pretty cheap on Amazon) that shakes my body for 10 minutes. Shaking activates vagal tone, which is the calming part of the nervous system that helps regulate heart rate and promote relaxation.Shaking can help the body reprocess trauma in a way that allows the nervous system to discharge the trapped energy, rather than holding it in.

What each of us needs is unique, so these are just some ideas.What are the ways you guys are supporting yourselves?

Art by Willem den Browser