A long time ago I joined a men’s organization called The ManKind Project (MKP) when I went through a weekend long retreat. I previously chronicled this experience in an earlier blog posting but felt another entry was noteworthy given a situation that occurred the other night in my MKP I-Group.
First off, I want to explain what an I-Group is, but that involves going back to the beginning of my journey with MKP. If I were to sum up why anyone comes to MKP, I would say it is to find healing from any number of serious tragedies and traumas that repeatedly block men from living their life fully. One of the greatest things I learned to love about this organization is how it showed me the fallacy of the belief that grown men shouldn’t cry. Frequently, one of the biggest problems in a man’s life is the acceptance that crying makes one weak. But what many men don’t realize is that not crying can often prevent one from fully healing from any of life’s calamities. For me, it was my father’s suicide that brought me to MKP. I had remained blocked for three years with little to no tears after my father’s passing. The processes that MKP utilized during the retreat helped me to fully release and heal from that trial in my life.
Most men who go through MKP’s initial retreat, nicknamed The New Warrior Training, find the healing they seek when they stick it out to the end of the weekend. But a man’s involvement with MKP doesn’t have to end there and for some, like myself, it didn’t. The next level of commitment is to an I-Group. Using many of the principles learned during the retreat, I-Groups continue to help men do their work to get through the many ups and downs that life can bring. To put it more simply, one single I-Group meeting is like taking eight sessions of talk therapy that one might have with a counselor and actually doing something about what’s being talked about.
I spent too many years in therapy doing nothing more than talking, talking, and more talking and never really making it anywhere but more frustrated. The I-Groups I’ve belonged to helped me over the years to move beyond the many blockages I had within me such as from being molested, from my mother’s alcoholism and control issues, to the bad relationships I kept landing in, and so much more. While therapy didn’t cut it to work through many of those issues, being in I-Groups did.
At the end of last year, after having taken a break from participation in MKP for several years, I rejoined an I-Group that met on the first and third Thursday each month. One of the main things an I-Group is supposed to do is build a safe and strong container that allows each man to work through their issues. Unfortunately, after eight months, I learned this group was unable to do create that. Creating a safe container involves many things. It involves each man actually showing up to have a group. It involves being honest and in integrity to each other in that group. And it involves being there for each other when a man asks for help.
More often than not, this I-Group was never able to reach a quorum to hold a meeting and on the occasions when there was, some men took the time to verbally attack other men instead of working on the reasons within themselves for their anger. This organization taught me a very valuable principle that all anger is only a mirror to look back at oneself and find the broken pieces within to heal. I-Groups are meant to help with this, but with this group lacking in honesty and integrity, amongst other things, it rarely happened. And for the times that I really needed the support of the men in this I-group to get me through some dark times, none was usually found.
Being a member of that group, or any group for that matter, is no different than being in a relationship. It takes work from all people within it to keep it growing, and when at least one or more are not working on themselves, it begins to fall apart. For the longest time in my life, I stayed in those types of relationships hoping they would get better, but they rarely did. The only thing that did change was my state of misery, which only soared higher the longer I was in them. But through a closer connection with God today, I have learned to love myself a lot more. Because of that, I don’t subject myself anymore to remaining in bad relationships hence the reason why I ended my connection to this I-Group the other night.
Sometimes I wonder why so many of us continue to stay in those toxic connections, groups, or relationships way beyond their expiration date. It only brings about greater misery, anger, and frustration when we do it. Today, I don’t have to do this anymore and thankfully, I’m not. So while I may have closed the door to one dysfunctional relationship when I left that I-group, I opened myself up to the many others that may be out there. Hopefully I will be led to one that is strong and healthy, especially because that’s what I am trying to become.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson