Twenty-Nine Palms, California is a desert oasis off the main road. Palm trees and greenery thrive in the hot, unrelenting sun at Campbell House. This is also where about 30 men gathered for a weekend retreat.
The men come from different races, socioeconomic backgrounds and age groups. They joined the men’s group “Everyman” to do something most people have never done before: to stay open and vulnerable to themselves and to each other. .
This retreat is intense, emotional, peer-to-peer work assisted by an Everyman facilitator. They are there to help these men on their emotional journey. It’s about letting them know it’s okay to be angry, to be ashamed, to cry.
For most of the day, the men are divided into groups of various sizes. They are asked questions of each other, such as “When did something go wrong?” and “How did you feel?”
Each person takes turns answering the question. The other men in the group then analyze how the respondent feels when they answer. The purpose is to make these people feel seen and heard.
Brooklyn resident Kyle Somersall is a soft-spoken 32-year-old man. He said he joined Everyman because it was an opportunity to improve himself and build stronger bonds with other men.
“I was pretty paralyzed by my loneliness,” he told ABC News.
Somersall said she grew up without any space to express herself.
“What I learned about what it means to be a man is to ignore your feelings and be ashamed to cry or ashamed to have feelings,” he said. .
That’s exactly why Everyman co-founder Owen Marcus said he started the group.
“There’s an emotional pandemic of men giving up and feeling lonely,” he told ABC News.
He hopes that groups of men like him will help men realize they’re not alone.
“One of the things men can do in retreats is be in a mentally safe space with other men and allow them to feel the way they want to… feel things they’ve never felt before.” he said. .
Throat-like screams and screams echoed throughout the desert oasis all weekend.
One such cry came from Scott Wright of Everett, Washington. He said it was important for him to come to this retreat because he wanted to change his own patterns.
“These patterns cost me my first marriage. I just wanted to learn,” he said.
Somersall also had an emotional breakthrough.
“Stop!” he yelled as a group of men hugged him. Eventually his sobs took over. They came from painful places.
“I was feeling a lot of emotion in my throat and in my heart. I felt emotionally neglected and I felt really alone,” he said. “I just feel devastated and unworthy of being loved.”
Somersall said the experience changed him.
“I have never fully released myself in front of others in this position,” he said. “Being embraced by a group of men and being able to see and understand it and have it resonate with them felt really, really powerful.”
As the weekend drew to a close, many of these men seemed lighter and more tipped than when we first met. As the men prepared to retreat, they embraced and expressed their love and gratitude for each other.
“I was able to achieve more than I expected. I was able to dig deeper than I could have gone it alone, and just released a ton of emotion,” Somersall said. “I feel closer to some of these people than to people I’ve known for decades.”
