Men Raised as Men Jam 2025
February 3 to 8, 2025 in Groveland, FL
We are thrilled to announce our second Jam for Men Raised as Men! This Jam will offer opportunities to catalyze positive change through healing, homecoming, and expression of healthy masculinity as part of a resilient whole.
This Jam will be a place to connect with people who share the experience of living in a male body and being raised/socialized as men. Being treated as male in our formative years shapes us deeply. For example, being invited into, excluded from, or pushed into male spaces in our tween and teen years creates experiences of power, friendship, community and love, and also experiences of shaming, hazing, hate and confusion. These experiences can become fundamental to our core identity. Some of our deepest loves and deepest wounds come from other men raised as men.
Masculinity is a beautiful and potent part of life and creation. At the same time, some of the great harms in the world are expressions of wounded, imbalanced, and untended male identity. Navigating this emotional and experiential landscape can range from traumatic to liberating, from hilarious to sad, with a healthy dose of brilliant and stupid. Exploring these dynamics takes vulnerability and courage. The Men Raised as Men Jam is a place to delve into these dynamics with others who have shared roots in how they were raised and common choices about how to be men in the world as adults.
The Men Raised as Men Jam is part of a series of Jams on Men and Masculinity, where we’ll explore the full spectrum of masculinity – straight, queer, cis and trans to name some identities within the larger context. In the series, we intend to have Jams that include all people who identify as Men. We will also have Affinity Jams to create opportunities for Cisgender and Transgender men to explore the unique aspects of their life experiences in separate gatherings. We believe this combination of Jams can bring men together to learn from each other, deepen our healing, and experience the full range of what it can mean to be a man. This is an invitation for men raised as men to help us begin this journey.
Working individually and together, we will explore, share, and celebrate our gifts. We will weave a container in which we can unearth our wounded, estranged, and repressed parts, where we can tend to their needs, rediscover their wisdom, and welcome them home. We are guided by the intention that the health of our relationships and the nature of our contribution to the world flow from the health of our inner worlds and our relationship with ourselves. In this way, our work to make positive change hinges on the inner work to become more healthy, more whole, and more integrated.
Please feel free to contact us at menraisedasmenjam@yesworld.org with any questions.
In this Men Raised as Men Jam we will address three interconnected levels of restorative transformation:
REJUVENATE–At the internal level, we aspire to give ourselves space to reflect on our personal stories, learn and unlearn, take off our masks, seek our next growing edges, recharge, remember, and renew. We want to nurture our own spiritual and emotional health, to show up more wholly and fully for ourselves, for our relationships, and for our work in the world.
BUILD SOLIDARITY–At the interpersonal level, we will make time for authentic conversations to emerge, to discover common ground, and to celebrate differences. By taking an honest, loving and transformative look at our outer conflicts and struggles, witnessing and being witnessed, we seek to build deep and lasting friendships that will sustain us over the long-term.
FOSTER REALIZATION AND RECOVER BELONGING–At the systemic level, we aim to uncover what has been hidden and recover what has been lost. We will explore uncharted spaces to find new pathways and create new connections, to gain a clearer vantage on ourselves and the whole of which we are a part. We want to critically examine the tools and lenses, the narratives and dispositions we apply in our relationships and our work in order to revive and renew our imaginations, reconnect with our role in the creation and tending of life, and discover the ways in which our individual realizations feed the realization of the whole.
Who is this Men Raised as Men Jam for?
The heart of what this group wants to explore is life lived in a male body, being raised and socialized as a man, and choosing to identify as a man. This Jam is for men who identify with any sexual orientation. Many men, including straight men, identify as having a strong feminine energy as part of their identity. This jam is for you, too.
So, to be specific for people familiar with the language, this jam includes people who identify as Gender fluid and GNC who were assigned male at birth, socialized male, and are male identified. Put simply – this jam is a gathering of Men raised as Men.
Why are we having this Affinity Jam?
The organizers of this Jam felt a strong need to have this Jam early in the process of the Men and Masculinity Jam series. The essence is the power of affinity circles in diversity work. Affinity circles create spaces for people to face their unique wounds and celebrate their complexity in ways that are very hard to do in mixed spaces.
For this Jam, a key issue is how Men Raised as Men are brought up to have power in the dominant culture. That complicated experience carries gifts, wounds and habits that men raised as men need to explore deeply with other men who have the same life experience.
The idea is that the exploration will bring important gifts and necessary insights to the full Men and Masculinity Jam.
Dates, Logistics and Costs
This Jam will take place at Pine Lake Retreat Center over six days and five nights from February 3 to 8, 2025. Pine Lake is in central Florida 60 minutes from Orlando airport. Participants will arrive by 5:00 PM local time on the 3rd, with our first meal at 7:00 PM. Our last meal together will be the morning of the 8th, after which we’ll head our different ways.
Cost of Attending
The tuition for the Men Raised as Men Jam is offered on a sliding scale of $500 – $1,500. We are working hard to make this event accessible to all people, regardless of ability to pay. If you have less access to money, feel free to pay at the low end of the scale, and if you have more access to money or resources and/or you have the financial backing of an organization or institution, we invite you into class solidarity, and to consider paying more so that someone else can pay less. If you pay more than the at-cost amount for tuition, that extra amount is tax-deductible. If we have a higher than expected request for financial aid, or fewer than expected full tuition participants, we will provide a waiting list and offer additional aid as funds become available.
Money should never be a reason to not apply: We will find a way to make it work for you and us. We also invite monthly payment plans and possibly work trades. The sooner you apply, the sooner we can mutually create a plan that works and the better your chances are of receiving a partial scholarship if you need one.
Please feel free to contact us at menraisedasmenjam@yesworld.org with any questions.
Who is Organizing this JAM?
Organizer
Vocalist, facilitator, educator, and vocal percussionist Tracy LJ Robertson enjoys working in a variety of musical settings. On a scholarship at Berklee College of Music, he performed in ensembles of global influence, from Balkan to contemporary Indian, to Latin, to western classical and jazz. He’s since worked with a range of artists including Bobby McFerrin, Valarie Simpson, Justin Timberlake, Sabrina Carpenter, Andy Grammer, Michael Bublé and Billie Eilish. Meanwhile the acappella community has offered opportunity to tour and educate with groups like Pitch Slapped, Overboard, Vocalosity, m-pact, The Magnets, and The House Jacks. Tracy has also had a passion for music education, offering private coaching, working as an associate professor of voice at LACM, and traveling as a clinician at jazz and a cappella festivals around the world. Over the past several years, Tracy has been especially grateful to work and facilitate for organizations like the Urban Voices Project, the Gaia Music Collective, Vocal Bloom, and in more and more spaces where music is more explicitly empowering individuals from all walks of life to realize their creative potential and capacity to build stronger communities. Tracy enjoys realizing his own passion for life through music and ever deepening appreciation of mother nature.
Jake Fahey (he/him) is an interspiritual chaplain and community organizer living on Abenaki land (now known as South Portland, ME). He has been jamming since 2020. (Healing & Wellness Justice Jam, Men Raised As Men Jam, Northeast Jam). Jake is an uncle, husband, and budding father continuing to seek community, justice, and healing. He spends his time with his family, building local relational power, and seeding systems of liberation. Jake works with Community Change Inc, the Groundwater Institute, and the Spiritual Care Services of Maine.
Austin Willacy is a veteran member of The House Jacks, an acapella group with whom he has produced 10 full-length albums and completed multiple world tours. For the past 25 years, Austin has directed ‘Til Dawn, Youth in Arts’ teen a cappella group that empowers youth to find their voices in many ways. Austin is also an award-winning singer/songwriter with 4 CDs and 2 EPs to his name. His music has been featured on NBC’s “The Sing-Off”, and on three feature film soundtracks, including Thrive, a documentary with over 100 million views. He’s appeared in Rolling Stone and has performed with icons such as Bonnie Raitt and Ray Charles as well as newer artists like Rachael Yamagata and Amos Lee. As an organizer and facilitant for YES!, Austin is a part of the North America Jam, the Arts for Social Change Jam, the Anadolu Sanat Jam, the India Arts for Social Change Jam, the Black Diaspora Jam, the Men Raised as Men Jam, and the nascent All Men’s Jam.
Frank (Byrd) Phoenix is a retired Environmental Engineer. He now works with the Fenwick Foundation where he supports people and organizations working for a just and more beautiful world.
One of Byrd’s favorite things is to sit in circle following the practice of Way of Council. Way of Council practice is 10,000 old and sets a container for authentic speaking and listening. When done well a space of deep communication, love and healing can emerge. Another Byrd favorite is making prayer circles. Making prayer circles for Byrd is a way of honoring and connecting with Mother Earth and the Ancestors. His circles are a place to meet, connect and pray.
Nour Elkhattaby Strauch is a community organizer and facilitator from Casablanca, Morocco, currently living in Western Massachusetts. Nour has been organizing and facilitating YES! Jams since 2012, including the Middle East Leadership Jam, the North America Leadership Jam, the Men Raised as Men Jam and others. He is currently serving as Executive Director of YES!, and hopes to continue growing the impact of this organization that works with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change to co-create thriving, just and balanced ways of life for all.
Nour has also worked with many other notable non-profits in Morocco, the U.S., and beyond including Neighborhoods Association Idmaj, LifePath, Seeds of Peace, CorpsAfrica, Casablanca-Chicago Sister Cities, among others. He is a former member of the National Administrative Council of Amnesty International Morocco.
Elia Serras is an EcoSomatic facilitator and guide for individuals, groups and organizations. His work is to empower embodied belonging through Truth, Healing, and Wholeness. Contact with wilderness saved his life as a younger man and inspired him to live and learn in communities ranging from traditional villages to contemporary Ecovillages in 11 different countries. Elia is a co-founding teacher of the Great Earth School, in which adult students engage in an initiatory education through connecting with nature, and empowering the vision and gifts they have for the world. He has been working with men and masculinity throughout the US since 2016 and has been a Jammer since 2018. He currently lives in a cabin in the woods on the Olympic peninsula, and can often be found singing, dancing or breaking bread wherever the village fire is burning bright. See more at EcoSomaBe
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