The Evolution of Heart-Strong

This is a long one, but I think it is important. At least it is for me. I would be so grateful if you would take the time to read it. And to make it more accessible, I created an audio version.

About seven and a half months ago, I officially launched the Heart-Strong Adventure. It wasn’t some grand launch. It was just a post on Substack. “Why I’m Spending a Year Exploring Love and Fear.” That was it. One post. One question. One year to follow it.

Now here I am, 223 days later, and the adventure is changing.

People might say all good adventures need to come to an end. I disagree. I think life is an adventure. And the great ones don’t end. They evolve into something greater.

This is the story of where the Heart-Strong Adventure is going next. But to tell it, I have to step back to where it was actually born.

The Birth of the Heart-Strong Adventure

My wife, Becca, and I spent March 2025 in Costa Rica. My intent was to surf, eat whole foods, stop drinking for the month, and spend as much time in nature as possible. Thaw out from the Maine winter. We were working too, but the trip was about getting healthy and getting outside. I ended up doing all that. And writing a 100-page paper.

At the time, I was exploring this concept of intentional adventures for men. I was getting interested in men’s work. I thought it would be cool to put my wilderness skills and Maine guide license to use by taking intact friend groups on yearly adventures to do something hard, both physically and mentally, and then reconcile it around the fire at night. A concept I called The Fires We Tend. What are the fires I need to tend over the next year? For myself. For my loved ones. For my community. It was the idea of creating a yearly ritual for men to be in community and check in with each other.

As I kept developing that idea, talking to other men and doing research, I realized the state of men in the world was pretty dire. Men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women. Younger men are five times more likely than their same-age female counterparts. And then I started thinking about the destruction happening in the world. Racism. Misogyny. The environmental crisis. It hit me. Men aren’t necessarily the problem. But men are behind a lot of these human-created problems. And it’s not men per se. It’s the fear-based models of masculinity driving a lot of our behavior.

All of a sudden, I found myself writing a 100-page paper. I called it “If We Want to Heal the World, We Need to Heal Men.” It wasn’t really about healing, despite the title. It was about freeing. How can we free men from fear-based models of masculinity to step into more love-based ways of being?

I was deeply inspired by the paper. And terrified to share it. There are ideas in there that people, especially men, might have a hard time accepting. But I sent it out anyway. To friends. To people working in the men’s space. And the feedback was resoundingly positive. Many asked if they could share it with their networks. Another told me it was my Jerry Maguire moment, referring to the scene where Jerry writes the manifesto. Someone else said, “You didn’t write a paper. You wrote a book. And it is powerful.”

Putting the Paper into Action

When I got home in early April, I started putting it into action. I developed a framework called the Engine of Masculine Transformation. I created a concept for a currency rooted in acts of love. I designed a festival celebrating masculinity at its finest, men coming from a place of love and strength together.

As I worked through all of this, I realized that using the language of love could be challenging for people. Especially men. And on April 14th, exactly a year ago today, I started using the phrase Heart-Strong.

The idea was simple. You’re leading with love. Leading with heart. But doing it in a way that doesn’t feminize. That was the original concept. Heart-Strong masculinity. And the question underneath it was, how can we create systems that make this the aspirational model? Not the models that were starting to emerge and driving where we were going as a society. The models being perpetuated by the manosphere and people like Andrew Tate.

So I went into serious builder mode. I was operating under this idea that belief is the first act. That we can create systems rooted in love, and it all starts with belief.

When the naysayers showed up, I had an answer ready. If you had told our ancestors 10,000 years ago that they could fly, they would have called you crazy. They didn’t have wings. But humans believed they could fly, and we found a way to do it. These things are possible. We just have to believe. Because there are people on the other side who believe they can control us with fear. And belief is the first act.

I launched a campaign called 1,000 Believers. The idea was to get people to sign on to a simple statement of belief. Not a manifesto. Essentially the idea that the world works better when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. I had checkpoints mapped out. What happens at 250. At 500. At 750. At 1,000.

When I started my outreach at the end of July, I got some early momentum. But something wasn’t sitting right with me. I felt like I was in selling mode. And I didn’t want to sell. I wanted to co-create.

The Adventure Begins

So I pumped the brakes.

I spent a lot of time journaling. A lot of time reflecting. A lot of time walking in the woods, having conversations with myself. The direction I was going was not where I wanted to be going.

I’m an adventure guy. And I was feeling a pull to explore. To go on a more divergent journey. What I needed was an adventure. And on September 3rd, I officially launched the Heart-Strong Adventure. One year to explore where love and fear shows up in the world, especially in the lives of men, and how freeing men from fear can heal individuals, communities, and systems.

Many of you have been with me since day one. A lot of you have joined along the way.

Where the Adventure Went

Over the past seven and a half months, I’ve explored a lot of territory. I’ve written about the neuroscience of love and the neuroscience of fear. I’ve wrestled with what testosterone actually does and caught myself cherry-picking the science that confirmed what I already believed. I’ve studied the history of money and traced how capitalism went from serving communities to running the show. I’ve written about the movies that shaped how I understood manhood. I’ve sat with the tension of love-centered spaces that turn tribal. I’ve explored what it means to be present with horses, what men won’t say out loud, and why the easy path usually leads nowhere worth going.

I’ve published over 50 pieces on Substack. I’ve had more than 10 campfire conversations, six of which have been released. I’ve talked with people about decency, about what right relationship with money looks like, about queering rigid norms, and about what it means to tell the truth even when the truth is uncomfortable.

Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve changed a lot. I’ve evolved.

The Heart-Strong Road Trip

Earlier this year, Becca and I started preparing for our 2026 trip to Costa Rica. But this year we were doing it differently. We extended the stay to seven weeks. And before Costa Rica, we did what I was calling a Heart-Strong Road Trip, three weeks driving from Maine down to Orlando. The intent was to turn the drive itself into part of the exploration. It was during that road trip that I had the amazing privilege of sitting down with John Biewen for a campfire conversation in Hillsborough, North Carolina. I was observing. I was writing.

The Return to Costa Rica

And then we went to Costa Rica. Going in, one of the intentions I set was to get more clarity on where I might be heading coming out of this adventure. I was about six months in. Halfway. And I could feel myself getting pulled in certain directions. My intent for Costa Rica was to figure out where the strongest pulls were.

And as Costa Rica rarely does, it did not disappoint.

I found myself deeply engaged in a few different tracks. Or I should say trails. This is an adventure after all.

So now, as I return home and mark one year since I first used the term Heart-Strong, I want to talk about what’s changing. What I might be doing over the next six months to a year. And how I’m going to start putting some of these learnings, these relationships, and these deep connections I’ve established over the past 223 days into impact.

The New Trails

But before I get into the new trails I’m following, I think it’s important to talk about what’s not pulling me. Sometimes understanding what you’re moving away from is just as important as understanding what’s drawing you forward.

The first is specifically focusing on men’s work. I recently wrote about this in my summary of the Men podcast season from Scene on Radio. I’ve come to a larger understanding that all of us need to be able to step into living our full selves. Not just men. There are some great people doing important work specifically in the men’s space. That’s just not where I’m being pulled.

The second is becoming a professional Substack writer. There are a lot of people who make a good living writing on Substack with paid subscribers. Making money on my Substack writing was never my intent. It was more about sharing my trail notes from my adventure.

I do intend to keep writing on Substack. I just don’t know exactly what form it’s going to take. I may write a little less. The subjects are likely going to shift as I lean into the new trails.

The thread connecting the three trails is wholeness. Helping people step out of the boxes that keep them from living as full human beings, whether those boxes are prison walls, childhood conditioning, or systems that center capital over everything that actually matters.

The trails are:

· Prison Art as a Pathway for Holistic Healing

· Children’s Book

· A Concept I am calling Community-ism

Prison Art

This grew out of a friendship I never saw coming. It is about what happens when a white guy from Maine who went to Bowdoin College and a Black man from Brooklyn who went to prison decide to create something together. It is starting with this art show. More details soon. And hopefully it grows into new friendships. Transformational healing. And a world where more of us see each other for the beauty of our imperfections and humanity.

Children’s Book

I should actually say books. I am in the process of writing two, and my wife Becca is working on a related one as well. When I started this adventure, I knew a book might come out of it. I just didn’t know it would be a children’s book. And it’s become so much more than a book. It’s closer to a creative art designed for healing. A way of inviting people, starting with kids, to step into their whole selves through storytelling. I’ll have a lot more to share on this in the coming months.

Community-ism

This is about exploring the question, what if we organized society around community the way capitalism organizes around capital?

Not community as an outcome. Not community as a nice thing to have once the economy is sorted. Community as the organizing principle itself. The center. The thing everything else is in service of.

And to be clear, this is not communism. It’s not about flattening people or erasing individual lives. It’s actually the opposite. The idea is that individual flourishing and community flourishing are the same movement. You can’t really have one without the other.

Welcome to the Next Phase

So welcome to the next phase of the Heart-Strong Adventure. It isn’t ending. It’s evolving.

If you’ve been here from the beginning, thank you. If you’re just finding this, welcome to the fire.

And if you feel pulled to any of these trails, please reach out. As Kharma Amos said at the close of our Campfire Conversation, “I predict good trouble ahead.” And good trouble is always better when created with community.