GREAT MEN

Here they have room for their own practices, in their own secluded circle, away from the eyes of the men. But they don't stay separate the whole weekend. At key moments, the boys and the men come together for peak experiences — shared fire, shared challenge, shared story.

This is a rare and profound opportunity to support the healthy maturation of our boys as they prepare for manhood and, one day, fatherhood of their own. It's also a chance for something rarely offered anywhere else: deep healing and honouring between father figures and young men, held within the strength of a wider brotherhood that has walked this road before them.

Most men need a place. A nature-based place. A community. A circle — somewhere to speak about the trials and the tribulations of life, about what it actually means to be a man. To be held. To be nurtured. To be nourished by the medicine of brotherhood.

That was once upheld by religion. By sporting clubs. By community groups. Now we find men at home. In a cubicle. In a donger on a mine site. Isolated. Lonely. So disconnected they go looking for connection through a screen. And it is causing men great pain.

Too many men are suffering alone. Too many are taking their own lives — leaving families behind, leaving children without their fathers. This is a tragedy. And it is systemic. It comes from having no roots. No culture, or so little of it left. From growing up immersed in an environment that was never built for a man to flourish in — where he is not held by community, not loved by community, not loved by other men for exactly who he is.

We were meant to lift each other up. To help each other out. To remind one another how powerful each of us really is. This loneliness. This isolation. It's time we came back to what truly matters.

Back to the customs and traditions that have stood the test of time. Standing around the fire. Storytelling. Being witnessed in our emotion and our pain. Listening to one another. Moving our bodies. Being in nature. These things are older than our ancestors — they have been here since the beginning of time. We haven't lost them. We've just forgotten.

We've sat in circles. We've held workshops and retreats. We've been part of men's movements all over the world, and we know the stories of so many men who have done the same. And we still have a long way to go.

Western men have missed out on so much. Rites of passage. Initiation. Healthy masculine leaders and elders to walk beside us through the journey of a lifetime — becoming a man, being a father, becoming a grandfather. We are only figuring this out now.

There are great speakers, teachers and leaders on this planet sharing powerful philosophies about what it means to be a man. But in its essence, this is simple. It has always been simple. Come back to the elements. Come back to nature. Come back to each other.

So we created Great Men because we believe in the power of men coming together. We know the medicine that lives in men gathering on Country. For healing. For remembering. For the steady knowledge that you are not alone — that you were never meant to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders by yourself.

Our vision for Great Men is that it is never about one man. It is certainly not about any one of us. It is about the strength of one being the strength of another, and the strength of all of us. It's about softness and strength, held in the same body.

And how do we do that? We do it together. Each man contributing to this moving, living, breathing community that is Great Men. No man above another. No man below another. Encircled. In harmony. In synergy. Working toward the same thing — more wholeness, more harmony, more support, more unity, more community.

Because men standing shoulder to shoulder is what will change our families, our communities, and the world.