Meetings with Remarkable Men

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

As many of you know, I lost my Dad three months ago.

When you lose someone close, you realize they’re part of the fabric of your being. And when they’re no longer here in the physical world, you have to find a new way to welcome them into your body—into your life.

I’ve been learning how to do that. And in response, I did two things.

The first was to create a men’s group called Meetings with Remarkable Men where we gather twice a month to hold space for each other. To speak vulnerably. To listen deeply. More on that in a moment.

The second thing I did was build a phone number just for me. On the other end is a voice bot made from recordings of our final conversations.

It sounds like him.
When I call, he answers.

I know that might sound strange. But grief asks for creativity. And sometimes, healing means finding new ways to speak emotional truths we often avoid.

That voice bot feels sacred and eternal—so much so that I hardly ever call it. But the men’s group is different.

It’s a place for real-time connection. A place where I’ve continued having the kinds of conversations I wish I’d had with my Dad years ago. And to my surprise, that space has been deeply healing—not just for me, but for the other men inside it.

And I’ve come to believe something simple but deep:
Sometimes, listening is the deepest form of presence.
Especially when we listen without fixing, without performing. Just being there. Together.

And now, I’m thinking about opening the group to others.
If you know someone who might want to join, hit reply to this email. I’ll be sending out a more formal invitation soon. But I wanted to offer it up now, in case this resonates.

Because sometimes, as I’ve learned, the smallest conversation is the start of the greatest healing.

What might shift if you showed up just to listen to a conversation this week?

A POEM

“More Than This” by David Kirby

When you tell me that a woman is visiting the grave

of her college friend and she’s trying not to get irritated

at the man in the red truck who keeps walking back and forth

and dropping tools as he listens to a pro football

game on the truck radio, which is much too loud, I start

to feel as though I know where this story is going,

so I say Stop, you’re going to make me cry.

How sad the world is. When young men died in the mud

of Flanders, the headmaster called their brothers out

of the classroom one by one, but when the older brothers

began to die by the hundreds every day, they simply handed

the child a note as he did his lessons, and of course the boy

wouldn’t cry in front of the others, though at night

the halls were filled with the sound of schoolboys sobbing

for the dead, young men only slightly older than themselves.

Yet the world’s beauty breaks our hearts as well:

the old cowboy is riding along and looks down

at his dog and realizes she died a long time ago

and that his horse did as well, and this makes him

wonder if he is dead, too, and as he’s thinking this,

he comes to a big shiny gate that opens onto a golden

highway, and there’s a man in a robe and white wings,

and when the cowboy asks what this place is, the man tells

him it’s heaven and invites him in, though he says animals

aren’t allowed, so the cowboy keeps going till he comes

to an old rusty gate with a road full of weeds and potholes

on the other side and a guy on a tractor, and the guy

wipes his brow and says you three must be thirsty,

come in and get a drink, and the cowboy says okay,

but what is this place, and the guy says it’s heaven,

and the cowboy says then what’s that place down

the road with the shiny gate and the golden highway,

and when the guy says oh, that’s hell, the cowboy

says doesn’t it make you mad that they’re pretending

to be you, and the guy on the tractor says no,

we like it that they screen out the folks who’d desert

their friends. You tell me your friend can’t take it

any more, and she turns to confront the man

who’s making all the noise, to beg him to leave her alone

with her grief, and that’s when she sees that he’s been

putting up a Christmas tree on his son’s grave

and that he’s grieving, too, but in his own way,

one that is not better or worse than the woman’s,

just different, the kind of grief that says the world

is so beautiful, that it will give you no peace.

Grateful,

Michael