welcome to kinhood
kinhood is a men’s wellness organization committed to growing men’s capacity to receive and reciprocate care.
we offer courses, retreats, and community where men can learn to meet ourselves and our relations
in care, compassion, accountability, and love.
we are gathering together.
growing a new kind of culture for men.
a culture of nurturance, connection, and belonging.
this community is for you.
if you’ve ever felt isolated.
if you’re seeking a place and a way to share what’s on your heart.
or if you’re yearning to be seen and met in life’s transitions.
if you want to unpack the ways you’ve been harmed or caused harm.
if you’re wanting more support and accountability.
or if you strive to be in right relationship.
if you’re examining what it means to you to be a man.
if your fullest self hasn’t always fit in societies’ narratives of masculinity.
or if your expression of gender has blossomed beyond what “man” means to you.
if you desire a more authentic, thriving life.
if you want to access more intimacy in your relations.
and if you’re looking for community with whom you can
grieve, celebrate, dance, release, rejoice and ritualize with.
here, you belong.
kinhood is a place for men to be authentically who we are.
for too long we’ve been told that masculinity must look and act a certain way.
we don’t want to be limited anymore. we are welcoming our whole selves here.
we are unearthing the full potential of our being. all of you belongs here.
we envision a world where all people live beyond toxic masculinity,
in liberated, nurturing and interdependent expressions of self and community.
we are growing a new culture of masculinity.
these are the principles that guide our way.
accountability
we approach this work with an awareness of gender-based harm and of our positions of privilege and power at the intersections of systemic oppression. the process of being raised as boys in this world has in many ways taught us to perpetuate harm, and has also harmed us in order to pass along these teachings. we understand that these wounds can cause us to reproduce and amplify the violence done to us, and we are holding ourselves and our kin in love as we meet this painful truth. we believe that accountability is about being courageous, asking for support, and offering a hand or an embrace to another who is struggling to break free of their socialization. it’s calling in someone who we’ve been taught to cast out. It’s loving and healing the parts of ourselves that we’ve normally looked upon with shame and dissociation. and, most importantly, it’s not doing any of this alone.
connection
we see men’s work as a form of village building. we are aware of the pain and harm that stems from male isolation, and we are meeting it with connectivity. our community is here to support us in connecting most authentically with ourselves and one another. many of our male relationships have only allowed for surface-level connections, forcing some of the most meaningful aspects of our identities and experiences to be hidden from sight. we are here together to go deeper and welcome our truest selves. through authentic relating exercises and intentionally-facilitated spaces, we are creating connections which encourage community members to really see and be seen by one another.
expression
we believe in a wide and brilliant spectrum of what it means to be a man, and we’re coming to realize that the world we’ve come up in hasn’t made room for all of us to be our full selves. patriarchal conditioning, toxic masculinity and homophobia have limited our ability to know and fully express ourselves and left many of us feeling marginalized, cast out, and hurt. we don’t believe that masculinity is defined by gender or sexuality. we see the need for a “queering” of masculinity, for a revisiting of what we’ve been told is normal and a reimaging of who and how we can be. this community is for all men and any person with a male experience. the experiences and perspectives of queer, non-binary, gender expansive, and trans men are fundamental, honored, and centered in our collective understanding and evolution of masculinity.
access
this community is for everyone who desires to be here. every person that feels they can benefit from our spaces should have access to them. we recognize that identity, expression, and financial status keep many people from participating in spaces and programs such as ours, and we are committed to dismantling those limitations. we strive to create a diverse and inclusive community reflected in the multitude of voices of our facilitators, advisory council members, and participants. we understand that access and inclusivity starts with creating a safe space for all participants, and we work hard to do that by bringing in an array of voices and experiences to our leadership, facilitation, and advisory teams.
emergence
life is inherently dynamic and we are learning to embrace change and trust the present moment. there is always room for even the most well thought out plan to be paused, reconsidered, and shifted when we notice something more urgent or true to the moment. when we let presence lead, we invite in shared connection and creation that can deeply and holistically serve us all.
adrienne maree brown, author of emergent strategy, teaches us principles of emergence that help shape our work: the large is a reflection of the small. change is constant. there is always enough time for the right work. there is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. never a failure, always a lesson. move at the speed of trust. focus on critical connections more than critical mass. build the resilience by building the relationships. less prep, more presence. what we pay attention to grows.
embodiment
the body is the site of true healing. through dance, movement, massage, food, nature encounter and more, we invite each other to listen to our bodies as guides to knowing ourselves. as men we spend so much of our time in our heads, approaching our lives as problems to be solved or challenges to be conquered. when we return to our bodies we are able to access what our needs and desires really are. as we witness all around us a world that is becoming more digitized and analytical, we invite men to step away from that, if only for a moment, and tune in to their internal experience.
nurturance
so much of male culture is conditioned around violence, as Nava Smolash writes in her popular essay, “the opposite of rape culture is nurturance culture.” we are creating safe and supportive spaces where men learn together how to embody and demonstrate care. we are breaking through walls of physical disconnection, many of which have their roots in homophobia and stories of our value tied to expected portrayals of masculinity, and remembering what it means to embrace each other. we are discovering the importance of tending to our own needs so that we may cultivate the capacity to care for our relations and communities.
ritual
in his book, ‘ritual: power, healing and community’, writer and spiritual leader Malidoma Some teaches us that "a sacred life is a ritualized life, that is, one that draws constantly from the realm of the spiritual to handle even the smallest detail.” we value the power of ritual as a tool to connect deeper with each other, our ancestors, and the earth. ritual is something we integrate into everything that we do, and helps us to be more present with our lives and the abundance of life around us. we are aware of the ways in which a lack of connection to spirit can result in the appropriation of indigenous culture and ceremony, and we are committed to rekindling our own spiritual fires. our founding leadership team carries Jewish lineage and ritual, and we bring the teachings and technologies of our ancestors with us into our work. we encourage members and facilitators to connect with their lineage of ritual and ceremony and celebrate all spiritual identities in our community.
earth connection
“you are not carrying the world on your shoulders. it is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.” these words from dr. vandana shiva remind us that we are inherently part of a greater whole, and we must approach our relationship to the earth with humility, gratitude, and respect. nature offers us many lessons on how to relate to power, resource, interdependence and change. in the busyness of our lives, and in the legacy of patriarchy and earth domination, it is easy to miss these teachings. connecting with nature is a key to our work together. we desire to shift the relationship of extraction and consumption towards abundance and thriving, and to once again be attuned to the rhythms and wisdom of the earth.