“Where did I get broken?”
This is the hardest week, and everyone knows it going in. The morning starts with a group hike — long enough that the small talk runs out. Somewhere around mile two, walking side by side instead of face to face, real things start getting said.
Your mentor doesn’t push. He just walks beside you and asks, “What did your dad get wrong?” Not angry. Not therapeutic. Just honest. And for the first time you say it out loud — the thing you’ve carried since you were twelve, or nine, or six. The thing that shaped every relationship you’ve had since.
That evening you write a letter to your father. You don’t have to send it. Most guys don’t. But the act of putting it on paper — the rage, the grief, the longing — it’s like setting down a bag you forgot you were carrying. Your shoulders literally drop.
“Where did I get broken?”
You can’t heal what you won’t name. Every man in the room has a wound — a father who left, a father who stayed but was never really there, words that landed like fists, silence that felt like abandonment. This isn’t about blame. It’s about telling the truth so the wound can finally close.
“I wrote that letter and I couldn’t stop shaking. Then I read it to my triad. One of them was crying. I realized I’d been holding that for twenty years.”