00:00:00.44
Gareth Pickering
one. I am here with Jed Darmond. Welcome to the Father, Sons, Brothers podcast. Thanks for showing up today.
00:00:07.44
Jed Diamond
Yeah, it's good to be with you.
00:00:09.40
Gareth Pickering
Thank you. I am i was sitting at breakfast with a friend of mine this morning and we were he's been in Peru for about three or four years now and he's been studying with a couple of teachers, plant teachers like he's been working with tobacco and with ayahuasca and I said to him,
00:00:23.74
Gareth Pickering
When are you planning to share your own magic, like to start facilitating your own work? And he's like, oh, you know, I don't know. There's always somebody further ahead down the path than me. And I said, yeah, that's that feels about right.
00:00:34.86
Gareth Pickering
And so as I start my journey into men's work and supporting men and yeah, just sharing the technology of men's work that supported me so much. In some ways, where I'm from South Africa, this is still sort of a new field. And so I feel like I'm kind of a pioneer in the work that I'm doing. And then I meet you soon. You've been in this game for 50 years and this definitely feels like you're very much further down this path than me. So thank you so much for for showing up. Maybe You can introduce yourself to this audience through one of these lenses.
00:01:02.51
Gareth Pickering
I know you have a couple who spoke just before we pressed record around the intergenerational components, but the father, son's, brother's theme of this podcast.
00:01:06.09
Jed Diamond
Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:10.67
Gareth Pickering
Maybe share one of your your roles that you've played either as a father or a son and brother.
00:01:15.15
Jed Diamond
yeah Well, um the way I kind of aye got into the field was the day my first son was born, which was November 21st, 1969.
00:01:34.34
Jed Diamond
And as I held him in my arms for the first time, I made a promise to him that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me. And to do everything I could to create a world where men were fully healed and fully involved with their families throughout their lives. And then two and a half years later, my wife, when we were in college, we had said, given the state of the world and, you know, overcrowding that we, you know, when you're young and in love, you make promises and some of them you actually keep. And one of ours was we said we would have a child and then we would adopt a child. And so after our first son was born, we started the adoption process and
00:02:25.81
Jed Diamond
adopted an African-American baby named Angela, who was born on March 22nd, 1972. That was the beginning of our you know our our family. and As I said, we now have a fairly large family of six grown children, 17 grandchildren, and and four great grandchildren and the work that I've been doing with men is really in a very simple way to fulfill the promise I made and to my first son when I held him that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and to help other families and fathers and sons and grandsons and granddaughters and the whole multi generations to be as fully healthy as we can be.
00:03:20.88
Gareth Pickering
So beautiful. What was the relationship like that you had with your dad that you felt that it it needed to shift? How would you describe that that experience of being a son to your father?
00:03:29.42
Jed Diamond
Yeah, well, yeah that started for me when I was five years old. And my midlife father, he was in his early 40s at the time, and he'd become increasingly stressed and depressed because he couldn't support his family doing the work that he loved to do.
00:03:53.89
Gareth Pickering
Mm.
00:03:54.26
Jed Diamond
And he was kind of what we would call in modern time a a progressive or even a radical and felt the systems needed to change. And um he he got ah blacklisted in in ah in the United States during the time when if you were left-wing you were accused of being a communist and then there was an era that some may be aware of in the United States where progressives were blacklisted and then couldn't work in the the movie industry and he was yeah a writer and a playwright.
00:04:34.61
Jed Diamond
And so when I was five years old, he took an overdose of sleeping pills in his feeling of hopelessness. And luckily he didn't die. um But he was hospitalized in a mental hospital, which actually made the problem worse.
00:04:51.94
Jed Diamond
And I grew up, but I visited him with my uncle every day for a year.
00:04:51.88
Gareth Pickering
Wow.
00:04:59.58
Jed Diamond
of twinth time I was five and six years old until he didn't recognize me any anymore.
00:05:03.05
Gareth Pickering
wow
00:05:05.21
Jed Diamond
He didn't know who I was. and I grew up you know feeling like somehow I needed to help my father and and also afraid that whatever happened to him would happen to me. And so in some ways, i've i i I had new business cards written that ah said, you know, Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW.
00:05:34.89
Jed Diamond
um helping men and the families that love them since 1969, which is when my son was born. And I realized actually I've been doing this work
00:05:43.32
Gareth Pickering
Mm-hmm.
00:05:46.88
Jed Diamond
since 1949 when I was five years old and I actually started trying to help my father and my mother. So I've actually, you know, started very early in this work, but that's kind of a little a thumbnail, a little story about the multi-generations of my father and my son. I actually wrote a book I call my distant dad healing the family father wound where I talk about our our healing, mutual healing journey.
00:06:19.34
Gareth Pickering
Wow, there's so much there that we can we can branch into. what ah What comes up for me, which is a theme of why we've called our podcast and our men's work brand, Father, Sons, Brothers, for me has really been this recognition that it's some way the more nuclear modern family has disconnected us from intergenerational wisdom that exists you know between father and son and you know grandkids and their grandparents, spent specifically specifically nine men, you know grandkids and their grandfathers,
00:06:47.67
Gareth Pickering
How do you see that as ah as a challenge and how do we how do we potentially overcome that? That seems to be a topic in your work that intergenerational sort of wisdom that's passed through the the ancestral land.
00:06:56.29
Jed Diamond
Yeah.
00:06:57.44
Gareth Pickering
I'd love to hear some of your thinking around that.
00:07:00.24
Jed Diamond
Well, part of it is again, ah another part of my story, which was um I grew up without a father in the home and thought thought mistakenly, as so many of us do, that, well, i i had I grew up really fast. I had to take care of myself young. My mother had to work. I didn't have any biological brothers or sisters, so I was an only child. And, you know, kind of figured out I had to take care of myself a lot.
00:07:33.29
Jed Diamond
And grew up and, you know, as you do you fall in love and you have relationship and I fell in love got married had the two children I described, but What I've now come to see is often the wounds from our childhood impact our adult relationships.
00:07:54.52
Jed Diamond
So that marriage ended and I remarried a second time and that marriage ended. And if you go to my website, you you you see my my little intro video on Men Alive that says, Confessions of a Twice Divorced Marriage Counselor.
00:08:04.54
Gareth Pickering
but This is my next question.
00:08:14.51
Jed Diamond
ah Luckily, ah you know, I kind of did my own, you know, getting help getting therapy and ah figuring out like what what I was missing even as a therapist that was
00:08:14.33
Gareth Pickering
yeah
00:08:28.17
Jed Diamond
getting in the way of being successful and ah met Carlin. We've been now together for 45 years. And one of the things she will tell you, which ties into your question is the reason we've had a successful 45 year marriage is because I've been in a men's group that's been meeting for 46 years.
00:08:53.49
Jed Diamond
And this men's group that started 46 years ago were and became my brothers that I never had.
00:08:53.68
Gareth Pickering
Wow.
00:09:01.87
Jed Diamond
And so this men's group now, four of the seven of us that started out together 46 years ago have died. So they're in the next world or whatever the that that place that we go.
00:09:16.34
Jed Diamond
And I believe that there is some place our energy lives. And there's still three of us, that three brothers in that way that I still meet with and we have our own children and grandchildren and so on.
00:09:20.16
Gareth Pickering
yeah
00:09:30.32
Jed Diamond
So that's another multi-generational part of the journey that we are both learning from each other, passing on to each other.
00:09:42.16
Jed Diamond
And part of, I think, the men's work that all of us are doing that are on this path.
00:09:48.51
Gareth Pickering
Wow, that's so beautiful. So how How ah fresh was the idea of being in a men's group when you started this 46 years ago? There's not a lot of men's work happening. There's no internet at that time. Is it just a natural coming together or was it a sort of an awakening around this men's work technology? How did that come into your world? What made you decide to get into a men's group?
00:10:09.73
Jed Diamond
Well, ah back then where the the energy for groups was happening was with women. um And my first wife and I, she was very involved in the feminist, the emerging feminist ah movement in the 1960s and 70s. And we attended a large gathering of mostly women, but it was open to men. They invited, you know, a man can come to this. It was a kind of a healing retreat, probably three or 400 people.
00:10:48.87
Jed Diamond
And my wife had been in a women's group, and I was saying, God, you know we're where's where's for me? you know I need something, and I had no idea where.
00:10:59.08
Jed Diamond
And so I thought, well, maybe I'll meet some guys, because it's open to guys. There are guys going to be there. And so there are like these four or 500, probably 12 guys maybe were there, and the rest were women.
00:11:13.16
Gareth Pickering
In total. Wow.
00:11:14.86
Jed Diamond
And, and so as part of the, they had an experiential kind of thing that they did at the beginning where we were supposed to meet in a little group and talk about why you're here. And so, you know, there were a few other guys that were there, you know, we were The guys were told you don't hang out with women meet with, you know, talk to some other guys. So there were you know a few guys I talked to and I said, oh, you know why I was excited to hear, you know, what their emotional experience. Were you scared? Like me, my God, all these women, what do we.
00:11:50.25
Jed Diamond
And what these guys wanted to do is talk about sports and how cute that one was and which was fine. I mean, I love that kind of, you know, men talk, but it wasn't what I was looking for.
00:11:59.98
Gareth Pickering
Uh-huh.
00:12:01.97
Jed Diamond
And I felt disappointed. And so I shared that later with some of the women that I had you know met and ah they were encouraging to me.
00:12:14.26
Jed Diamond
They said, don't give up you know because you know the guy the few guys you talked to may have been uncomfortable and they didn't open up.
00:12:14.12
Gareth Pickering
Wow.
00:12:23.87
Jed Diamond
You need to go start your own men's group. And so I i did that.
00:12:26.81
Gareth Pickering
wow
00:12:28.91
Jed Diamond
i When I got back home, I you know reached out to a friend, a buddy, and said, and I feel like I'd like to start a men's group. And so we did. We started a group of guys that started meeting to talk more personally about our lives and what was going on.
00:12:44.37
Jed Diamond
And that that group lasted for about three or four years until I moved out of the area. And then the group that I'm now with that's 46 years old,
00:12:55.86
Jed Diamond
But I really attribute women to having been there for me and encouraged me at a time when i one didn't feel a lot of support, didn't even know where to look, and some very kind. And I got to say, they weren't all kind at that meeting. There were a fair number of feminist women then and still now that are not very supportive of men and often feel men are the cause of their problems. But there are also a lot of very supportive women then and now that really encourage and support men to meet with other guys. And that was kind of how how it got started for me.
00:13:42.44
Gareth Pickering
So good. I also just want to reflect here, really beautiful to interview you. You're so good at bringing the points and then ending. says Sometimes you interview people that can just carry on. And I just want to share that. Yeah, I can see you've done a lot of these interviews. So thank you.
00:13:58.46
Gareth Pickering
so brother I just want to ask you a question. is there Somebody who's listening to this who perhaps hasn't been in a men's group before, what what could they expect? like What's the medicine that you've received? like We've seen the the outcome of it, but a lot of people think you know perhaps going to a men's group is like you know men just sitting around crying or you know some sort of What I've noticed is perhaps men that haven't been exposed to this, and definitely my story as well from the world I came from, it was like, oh, if you're in a men's group, then you have like Alcoholics Anonymous, you've got some, some challenges, or there's like some stigma attached to it that there's something wrong if you're in it. So what have you learned as a function of being in these groups? I heard you said it supported your marriage, but what could somebody expect if they're listening to this and they've never been to a men's group before? What's some of the medicine that you've received?
00:14:39.67
Jed Diamond
Well, one of my longtime kind of allies, brothers in the in the men's work. and and who's been doing this work a long time, is a guy named Robert Bly, who written a number of books and had done podcasts and a very interesting guy, and he and I attended together a number of men's gatherings. And one of the things he said of many, many, a very wise man and poet and and writer and ah
00:15:12.46
Jed Diamond
ah One of the things he said that males, he was talking about young men, but males of any age, he said need to be in the presence of other men in order to hear the sound that male cells sing.
00:15:27.57
Jed Diamond
And I thought that was such a wonderful, you know, I just gave me chills when I first heard it, the sound that male cells sing. And what it spoke to me then and still does is that just being in the presence of a group of guys who are there to be real, to open their hearts, open their minds, to be vulnerable,
00:15:52.29
Jed Diamond
It also tunes us into something that many of us are hunger for that we never had enough of, whether it was this connections with our fathers or connections with brothers.
00:16:08.72
Jed Diamond
or connections with friends. So the first element I've experienced in men's group is just feeling that excitement of being with other men and feeling this almost vibration of energies.
00:16:29.66
Jed Diamond
And then the simple but profound then is when you're with men who are willing to be real, willing to be vulnerable, willing to be open. And that's a process. I mean, it doesn't happen, you know, when we, my men's group, 46 years ago, first started.
00:16:51.15
Jed Diamond
We talked about the things that were troubling us at the time, our relationships. And I'm having trouble with my relationship.
00:16:56.22
Gareth Pickering
but
00:16:58.39
Jed Diamond
Some were having trouble with drugs. Some were having trouble with just loneliness. I just don't have any friends. Some were having stresses at work. So initially, we we talked about problems.
00:17:11.58
Jed Diamond
But as time went on, we talked about other things, including who we were, what we were, dealing with and the interactions with each other.
00:17:24.14
Gareth Pickering
So having worked with, I think you said 40,000 men at this stage across your career, can you share some of the themes that you see coming up that perhaps are you know maybe consistent in the collective or collective in our wounding?
00:17:36.70
Gareth Pickering
Like what are some particular themes that you noticed through your work having worked with so many so many men? Like that's a really big data size. When you give themes here, I think it would probably be relevant across generations and across culture and geography.
00:17:45.04
Jed Diamond
Yeah.
00:17:48.27
Gareth Pickering
So I'd love to hear some of those.
00:17:50.11
Jed Diamond
Yeah. um Well, I think one of the things, you again, i just if if you knew me and you're you know you're starting to know me, part of the way in which I work through my own issues and find then maybe other people would be interested in some of what I learned is I write articles and books.
00:18:12.01
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:18:12.28
Jed Diamond
So i've written I write an article every week that I post on Men Alive, and I've written 17 books. um And one of the books that I think is is kind of speaks to that question of what seems to be somewhat universal or common among men these days, then and now, is I wrote a book called My Distant Dad Healing the Family Father Wound.
00:18:19.58
Gareth Pickering
Amazing.
00:18:39.72
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:18:40.39
Jed Diamond
And I think so many of us have a wound. Some spoke of it as a hole in the soul, in the shape of our father, because most of us I've found have father issues. You know, in my case, i I described kind of my, you know, fairly severe father absence.
00:19:05.54
Jed Diamond
But others have fathers that were just not there emotionally because they grew up being taught, you gotta be tough, you gotta be strong, you can't let your feelings out. So I think we all have...
00:19:19.11
Jed Diamond
feelings where we needed more fathering or we had brothers that were less than supportive, may have been abusive, may have been in conflict, may have been bullying. We have friends that we didn't get enough support. So being able to heal the father wound that so many of us have. And I might add, and I didn't know this until I actually completed my book and i I was looking for the last chapter and I realized that there is a father wound I never knew I had, which was the wound that the women in my life had because they have lost fathers.
00:20:05.01
Jed Diamond
My mother had lost her father when she was young and that impacted all of her relationships. My first wife had her father died when she was young. Many of the women in our lives, those of us that are, you know, have women in our lives also have father wounds. So healing the father wound, I think, is one of the universal, almost universal,
00:20:31.66
Jed Diamond
processes that I think needs to happen and often can happen in men's groups.
00:20:37.93
Gareth Pickering
How do we do it? What's the way to be able to heal it? What's the...
00:20:42.18
Jed Diamond
One is recognizing that it's there.
00:20:42.66
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:20:45.32
Jed Diamond
So often it took a while in our group for us to start talking about our fathers.
00:20:46.02
Gareth Pickering
Awareness.
00:20:50.90
Jed Diamond
We were more wanting to talk about our wives or our lovers or our friends or our relationships.
00:20:57.00
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:20:57.52
Jed Diamond
or our work, but gradually, you know, we got talking about our mothers, our fathers, and finding that we often had father things to talk about.
00:21:07.66
Jed Diamond
Some of us still had fathers alive, which I did, and I was able to, through the group, help me actually engage my father in some new ways.
00:21:16.96
Gareth Pickering
Mm hmm.
00:21:17.32
Jed Diamond
So it it really, you know, the the magic sauce or the magic is a willingness to be in community. And my wife and I are in a number of communities of men and women in a men's group.
00:21:32.06
Jed Diamond
She's in a number of women's groups, ah but communities where we can get real with each other, we can have a safe space where we can feel that we can trust to open ourselves up more deeply and a place where we can all heal together.
00:21:44.74
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:21:51.88
Gareth Pickering
You've also said somewhere, I think it was in one of your articles, a away the way that men and women tend to act out their pain. I'd love you to speak through those differences and how you how you see that as a way to be able to be perhaps a red flag that there's some healing to do.
00:22:06.29
Jed Diamond
Yeah, well, what I found in in my life and in the life of a lot of men is ah we act out our pain, you know, my, my depression, which I have suffered a lot in my life, it it came out in the form of irritability and anger and frustration and acting out in in various ways through drugs or alcohol or aggression or or violence in some ways, all of which I've, you know, have have unfortunately had experience in my own life. and And I actually developed a scale of how men often deal with their pain and suffering ah of we acted out in many ways. Women as a group, and these are generalizations, not all men and not all women, but
00:22:54.95
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:22:55.23
Jed Diamond
Men often act out our pain. and Women often act in. They they turn it inside. they you know they They blame themselves or suffer themselves.
00:23:07.72
Jed Diamond
And a comedian, a woman named Elaine Boosler, kind of summed it up, I thought, in a humorous way. She said, when women get depressed, they eat or go shopping.
00:23:21.02
Jed Diamond
men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking. So men act out in some ways, women act in is one of the kind of summary of a lot of life experience that I've had in my work with people.
00:23:27.50
Gareth Pickering
yeah
00:23:37.61
Gareth Pickering
Thank you for your honesty around the the depression and some of the the areas that you've danced with with this pain in your own life. I appreciate that. You said you had a scale. Does that mean it like some way of measuring it? Is that a modality that you have? What what did you mean by a scale?
00:23:50.72
Jed Diamond
Yeah, I actually ah developed. I'm happy to share it with anybody that emails me. I have ah ah a depression scale that looks at the the the characteristics of male type depression and female type depression. And, you know, it's it's a way that I found particularly for men because I think a lot of in the work that I do as a clinician, I see a lot of men ah who are angry, depressed, but they're not treated for their pain. They're either told there they're just grouchy old men and you go away or ah they push people away. And so I've developed a scale that helps, I think, clinicians and also the average person
00:24:42.31
Jed Diamond
who may be married to somebody or in relationship with somebody who may have these symptoms and needs help but doesn't know it. So yeah, I have a number of scales that I share with people in my work and happy to share it with people who either email me or go to my website. You can get some of those as well there.
00:25:04.50
Gareth Pickering
beautiful I'll definitely put those in the in the show notes to to support and and share people. What ah what do you see as as themes for depression for men? I mean, the the father would wound seems to be one of those collective challenges, but what do you see in your work as themes with men around depression? What what are they depressed about what and what's the way through for them? I mean, with men's groups we've spoken about, but what else what are some of the themes that are causing this almost a pandemic of depression in men?
00:25:29.71
Jed Diamond
Yeah, well, I think part of it, you know, is, you know, I, I've been both alive a long time, as I told you, I'm 81 years old. And what I'm seeing in the world, and had some Life experience that have helped me understand some of these things is that um the world is not in good shape. The human relationship to the environment ah is is not in balance. And I think
00:26:02.72
Jed Diamond
This goes back maybe 6,000 years, a long time, where humans kind of got this notion when we started building big cities that somehow humans could dominate and control the environment. And we needed to, we were in charge. We were the top dog. We were the And I think that mentality that way of being is we call civilization, but it's really a I call it the dominator culture my colleague Rianne Eisler, who wrote the chalice and the blade talks about
00:26:39.61
Gareth Pickering
Ah.
00:26:39.89
Jed Diamond
the dominator culture versus partnership cultures and for you know two million or three million years humanity lived in partnership with nature and were what we call hunter-gatherers and then there was a time about six thousand years ago where that shifted so i think the disconnection from the earth, then cause disconnection from ourselves and disconnection from others. And that I think is the root of both the depression that we act out violently
00:27:16.80
Jed Diamond
and that we act in violently on ourselves. And so the healing that has to happen is healing our connection to ourselves. So there's inner work that we do through therapy or through groups. um There's relational work, you know, healing our relationship with with each other, with our intimate partnerships.
00:27:43.55
Jed Diamond
healing relationships with our friends, our family, our brothers, our sisters, and then healing our relationship with the environment that we live in and finding a a balance with nature rather than exploiting. I'm in California right now. It's pouring rain. they They're calling it the atmospheric rivers that are just pouring through, and I think this this idea that we're we're somehow here to control nature, I think we're getting a wake-up call all over that is saying, hey, you people, meaning humanity, are a species that hadn't been here a long time compared to most other species. And if you don't get your act together and get back to connection,
00:28:33.83
Jed Diamond
with yourselves, each other in the world, you're not going to be here very long. So all of that is I think the the the work that we have to do.
00:28:43.70
Gareth Pickering
It's like nature is just self-regulating. If something doesn't live in harmony for long enough, it doesn't last for long enough. And if humanity doesn't sort this out, the world will be here.
00:28:54.14
Gareth Pickering
The one thing I'm clear about is if we as humanity die on this planet, the world will be fine, probably better within a few years of us being gone. And so I'm not worried about that.
00:29:01.21
Jed Diamond
Yeah.
00:29:02.34
Gareth Pickering
I'm more yeah feeling the the collective grief of what you're speaking about, our disconnection um with with the world that we live in. And the the domination culture is so strong.
00:29:12.56
Gareth Pickering
and I've experienced that. you know I've experienced that that way of living and way of being in earlier years of my life of just thinking you know that the most important thing in the world was money, for example, and just putting so much focus on that. and yeah Almost unconscious of the cost of what that continual need for growth at all costs was. you know um Jamie Will, I don't know if you followed his work as this like analogy of you know we've got unlimited growth targets in our businesses on a planet that's got finite resources. It just can't continue to expand internally. and and I'd like to ask you how you unpacked those three elements you spoke about in our work and then healing our relationships with our relational ah elements in our lives and then the world. Do you see those as like concentric circles or do they do they support in that way or does it is it just how you spoke about it?
00:30:05.09
Jed Diamond
Well, different. I mean, it's all all connected. But to try to visualize it or to to talk about it, to share it, sometimes I see it as concentric circles of of healing that has to happen. um And ah sometimes interrelated circles that you know have at their core a connection.
00:30:31.86
Jed Diamond
um And I think, it at least in the work that I do, um I adapt it to the people that I work with. you know for that there' Different people have a need for a different model, some people.
00:30:50.32
Jed Diamond
have more visual senses and need a more visual model, other or more feeling, other or more sensing.
00:30:55.54
Gareth Pickering
Hmm.
00:30:57.72
Jed Diamond
So um there are different ways to express that, but I think the another way to, you know, that I find useful is that we have this work that we have to do on ourselves, our relationships and our intimate relationships, our relationship with our family, our relationship with our work in the world. And you might think of each one of those as a strand. and i My wife is part Native American and there's a Native American basket maker who makes these beautiful you know baskets that have different strands and beautifully woven together.
00:31:44.08
Jed Diamond
And what she described, I loved it. she She says, if you think of the basket as your life, that there are many strands that you need to weave together to heal or to build a life, but you can only do one at a time. yea And what that allows for, and I think it's helped me in conceptualizing, is that There are times you need to focus on yourself, on your inner work, and that's the strand that needs to come next.
00:32:19.59
Jed Diamond
But you know, there are other strands.
00:32:19.63
Gareth Pickering
Right.
00:32:21.51
Jed Diamond
They're not like they're not there. So when you finish that, then there's a time for, oh, now it's time to address relationship with my wife. Oh, and now it's time for, you know, getting my connection to nature and feeling grounded.
00:32:31.29
Gareth Pickering
and Beautiful.
00:32:37.48
Jed Diamond
Oh, now it's time for, you know, my my brother work. So. What it allows for is to hold the reality that we have many strands to our lives.
00:32:51.07
Jed Diamond
but that we can only do one of them at a time and each will have its time. And we don't have to worry. Oh my God, if I put in too much time with my work, then ah my my relationship's gonna suffer.
00:33:05.99
Jed Diamond
And the problem is that we often, as you said, get hooked on one strand. We think, oh, work is the way that I'm gonna solve all my problems or I'm gonna make a good life.
00:33:17.33
Jed Diamond
No, we that's one strand and there's these others.
00:33:17.53
Gareth Pickering
yeah
00:33:20.25
Jed Diamond
so that That was a helpful metaphor or vision that that helped me hold these various strands in my own life.
00:33:21.34
Gareth Pickering
and
00:33:29.24
Gareth Pickering
How do you know which strand is next? Is that the one that's making the most noise or how do you know which one you're working on?
00:33:34.89
Jed Diamond
Well, I think that's part of ah the gift of life. If we ask that question of our inner truth, our deeper knowing, the God within,
00:33:50.29
Jed Diamond
um and we listen deeply, sometimes it just, oh, now I know this is needed. Sometimes it's it happens, like when you have young children, ah they let you know that they're next and you know the the the baby screams and you, okay, I need to attend to the baby now.
00:34:12.87
Gareth Pickering
right That's it.
00:34:16.78
Jed Diamond
ah
00:34:16.87
Gareth Pickering
Mm hmm.
00:34:17.97
Jed Diamond
And sometimes that call is more quiet. And often we neglect sometimes that inner calling in us. We're so busy taking care of others, our families or the world's problems or whatever. We don't listen to that call that's saying, hey, you're needing some time for yourself. You're needing to be quiet. You're needing to be in nature. You're needing to sleep.
00:34:46.85
Jed Diamond
So I think part of the the the work that we all have is not only to do the work, but to find the balance of the various elements so that they work nicely together.
00:35:03.17
Gareth Pickering
Beautiful. You have a lot of things happening in your world. You've written all of these books. You write an article every week. You're on multiple podcasts. You've helped 40,000 men. You're a busy human being. how do you What is your personal practice to listen? You said that's an important component of it. What is your practice to to cultivate a space to listen?
00:35:22.59
Jed Diamond
Well, one thing, I walk every day and from my home. And part of my walk, there's nature, fortunately. Well, there's nature everywhere, even in in big cities. you know If you listen and you watch, there's birds, there's animals, there's nature is all around us. But I also have some nature that is a little more natural ah that's not human-made. So I do that every day and that's part of how I connect not only to the natural world but to my little home environment. It's kind of like I walk the boundaries of my my world and I say hello to the people that are out there. I say hello to the animals. I say hello to the trees and the birds and the you know, the the the elements, the rain, whatever is is there. I do that every day. um I meditate every day. um i I take naps ah not every day, but i I listen to my body when i it's time to just close my eyes. I do that.
00:36:32.95
Jed Diamond
um Right now, i'm I'm taking care of my wife a lot. She's 86 and she's had some medical issues and had a stroke a few years ago. So at this stage of my life, i I'm in a lot of care caregiver mode.
00:36:50.80
Jed Diamond
um
00:36:50.85
Gareth Pickering
Okay.
00:36:51.64
Jed Diamond
in addition to there's times I write every day. and That's part of my my my work to the world. I see clients so who see me both in my office as well as online from all over the world. So I have various pieces that feel, sometimes I feel overwhelmed, sometimes it feels like there's more cries that I need to attend to, and at times I feel overwhelmed. But the long time practices, my men's group, a lot of the other things I've developed over many years that kind of
00:37:30.77
Jed Diamond
Give me the the the support I need when I need it is is how I kind of deal with whatever is necessary and recognizing I can only do one thing at a time, even though.
00:37:46.92
Jed Diamond
um I also practice Aikido, which is a martial art where you learn to deal with various energies coming at you from different directions. And you learn that you actually can only deal with one at a time, but in Aikido and what they call the Rondori, you do them very quickly sometimes. And you attend to them one at a time and then one over here and then one over here. and uh all if you can and you learn over many years to stay centered and grounded while you're doing all that so i'm still a student of life as we all are and i i get off i screw it up i make mistakes and i get back up and dust myself off and try again
00:38:32.78
Gareth Pickering
since I had a visual of you doing Aikido there with those various different energies coming at you with your your basket weaving analogy. like Almost every single one of those things is a thread that needs your attention and you've got to decide exactly how to dance with it.
00:38:42.73
Jed Diamond
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:38:45.29
Gareth Pickering
so I'd love you to talk about your what you describe as your moonshot around male mortality.
00:38:54.24
Jed Diamond
Yeah, this is a, ah but it started with ah actually about 20 years ago, I read a a research by a colleague who had been interested in studying mortality and lifespan in different cultures and different cultures throughout the world. And what they found was not surprising, but was, you know, fairly shocking at the time 20 years ago was that
00:39:26.85
Jed Diamond
In every culture and country they studied, they found that as a group, men died sooner, died younger age, and died from various illnesses at rates higher than females. So in summary, i men lived shorter and died sooner than than women as a group. And what they said, which was, I think, even more a call to action for me was that they said, if you could simply help men live as long as women.
00:40:04.16
Jed Diamond
Now, there's some biological constraints that maybe we can't do it completely, but we know a lot of the difference is lifestyle, mindset, and so on. And countries like to call the Blue Zones that have learned that very long-lived people and there are places where men actually live as long as women.
00:40:13.77
Gareth Pickering
Right.
00:40:23.67
Jed Diamond
And if you could do that, they the the study said you would save 375,000 men's lives every year in the United States alone. And that if you could do that, of because it's worldwide, said you'd do more good in the world than curing cancer.
00:40:44.21
Jed Diamond
So 20 years ago, I reoriented my own work at Men Alive to ah take into account what we already knew about depression and suicides and violence and what we already knew we could do to help men.
00:40:44.42
Gareth Pickering
Wow.
00:40:59.51
Jed Diamond
And that helped, but I realized I was just one organization. And so five years ago, I invited a number of colleagues who were doing, I thought, really excellent work in the area of men's health to join me in what I called a moonshot for mankind and humanity. And the idea was to bring together our organizations to share knowledge about how we can heal, to share that with other people.
00:41:33.11
Jed Diamond
And eventually the goal was to bring together a thousand organizations that were doing really good work who could help a million men to live healthier lives.
00:41:46.17
Jed Diamond
And that would be not only good for men, but good for women and children and humanity. So we now have ah a website that's called Moonshot for Mankind, all spelled out.
00:41:52.14
Gareth Pickering
All right.
00:41:58.29
Jed Diamond
dot o r g
00:41:58.34
Gareth Pickering
and
00:42:00.55
Jed Diamond
moonshotformankind.org and we're ah just now starting ah later this year and into next year to starting to spread the word now that we're up and running in a non-profit and people can donate money and we're getting a little structure together and some staff to be able to put out information that's helpful to introduce other organizations beyond the seven core organizations that I started with and eventually hopefully ah i I have no doubt there's a thousand at least ah really good organizations all over the world that have as part of their goal to focus their attention on healing man and the unique part of humanity that is mankind and that would be
00:42:52.67
Jed Diamond
something that would benefit humanity as well so that's in a nutshell the the moonshot for mankind.
00:43:00.10
Gareth Pickering
So beautiful. Wow. I didn't find that in it preparing for this, but it feels like something that I really would love to be supportive of. What's the requirement for bringing a thousand organizations together? What is the prerequisite for being part of this this movement to support this moonshot? I love it, by the way.
00:43:16.56
Jed Diamond
Yeah, well, thank you. So ah it started out just kind of word of mouth where people would contact me and or the other founding members said, great, join. And so we've told you know our our friends and colleagues. And so there really isn't a formal requirement. There is, if you go to the website, it it shares there's a little video that shares our mission and our vision.
00:43:44.34
Jed Diamond
and If it resonates with you as an organization, you can join. It's free. ah There's a pledge that individuals can take that ah basically says, if I'm a man, I ah will do everything I can to help and improve my own health. So I'm as healthy and body-minded spirit as I can. If you're a woman, some of the founding members are women. So it's ah They have some women that are working on with improving men's lives. And obviously, all of us men have women in our lives, so ah individual women can take the pledge and say, yeah, in my work with men, I will do everything I can to support the health and well-being of men as well as myself.
00:44:33.67
Jed Diamond
So it's a fairly ah easy organization to join if it resonates with you and hopefully it will eventually spread the word and we'll be able to get a thousand and more organizations that go Yeah, let's get to know each other. Let's hear what each other's doing. Let's you know share best practices, kind of like what we're doing here. Well, here's what I've learned. See if it works for you and share what we know with each other.
00:45:06.24
Gareth Pickering
this touches on such a core theme which has been part of my healing journey which is sort of the immature masculine of recognizing that the world is always in competition with each other as opposed to being in collaboration and as over the last few years I've noticed you know when I started doing men's work there was a shift in my world which was like when I was in my advertising life you know 15 years ago if I met someone called Jed Diamond who was also doing advertising we were fighting against one another for the same client and there was this continual competition and I've managed to heal that part of myself and recognize that what you're doing this sort of collaboration is so much more powerful because fact we don't need to go and learn this stuff on our own and work in isolation and figure it out we're much stronger when we come together and share the mission and
00:45:49.53
Gareth Pickering
this' It's anchored more in this space that there's more than enough for all of us. And in fact, the collaboration is not only easier, but it's more fun. The results are probably exponential. And yeah, I'm just so grateful to hear that you're doing that.
00:46:01.50
Jed Diamond
Yeah well I don't you know like many of us when I grew up but you know they had heroes of the screen who ah one of them was the lone ranger when I grew up and it was you know the cowboy west the lone rider that would go out and you know and do get the bad guys and
00:46:14.05
Gareth Pickering
Yes.
00:46:23.03
Jed Diamond
or the idea of the lone wolf that would be the—except in nature, there's no such thing as a lone wolf in nature. you know In nature, wolves work together, and and they're they're part of a pack, and they're part of a tribe, and
00:46:37.20
Gareth Pickering
Yeah. Uh huh.
00:46:41.38
Jed Diamond
you know the the the nature of males that we've been taught some of us over some time to be competitive and as you described, you got somebody that's working in your field, you want to learn what you can from them so you can do better than them or you can beat them out for whatever the goal is, the the the better job, the more money, the the cuter girl, you know the relationship, ah whatever whatever the the prize is.
00:47:07.81
Gareth Pickering
Right.
00:47:11.06
Jed Diamond
And instead we learned, you know, and part of the moonshot is, hey, we can't do it really good alone. If we ever believed that it ain't going to work, we could. There's plenty for everybody. We'll do much better if we share our our our learnings, to share our what we know. And that's what I've been doing in my life for the last, ah you know, 50 some odd years is share what I know on my website and the work that I do. And then I i gain a lot from what other people share with me. And and fortunately, if we do that, i I make a great living. Other people can make a great living. We can all do good by doing well and helping each other.
00:48:00.08
Gareth Pickering
So good. You know, it's like the analogy of being alone on my journey and then sort of, I'm going to do men's work. But then if you go into a container and then decide that your business is now again in isolation, you're disconnecting again. And if you go into competition, you go back into what you spoke about earlier, which is that sort of dominance or power over my environment, you know, like trying to control nature. So yeah, that feels amazing. I would love to ask you a question around switching seats. If you were sitting in my chair, I'm 45 this year,
00:48:28.60
Gareth Pickering
What advice do you give your 45 year old self that's on this journey with the the experience that you have of of looking back?
00:48:37.23
Jed Diamond
Well, i have occasion you know I have children that are that age and older. um So i when they ask, yeah know the truth is ah you've had this experience. or If they're your kids, they tend not to ask you, although they they do a fair amount. But ah you know to to my 45-year-old self, who I remember quite well,
00:49:01.84
Jed Diamond
um what What I would say is kind of what we've been saying is recognize that the way to have everything you want is through connection, through collaboration.
00:49:22.08
Jed Diamond
through recognizing and is that it's in the nature of life to connect. It's in the nature of men to be connecting. were ah we We do compete. you know Competition is part of the natural world.
00:49:39.33
Jed Diamond
but so is cooperation. And at core, we cooperate in order to live.
00:49:41.97
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:49:47.57
Jed Diamond
We can connect deeply. um Somebody said the the the the the smallest number that exists is two, that one doesn't exist.
00:50:05.38
Jed Diamond
I think that the sensibility of there is no sense of an individual really separate from others. And if we could teach that one thing to my 45-year-old self or my 21-year-old self or at any earlier age, it would be
00:50:15.39
Gareth Pickering
Correct.
00:50:26.30
Jed Diamond
recognize that desire that you have for connection and collaboration. And the second thing I think that I would say to that 45 year old self is the reason we don't always feel it is because somewhere in our lives we grew up where we didn't feel connected.
00:50:50.20
Gareth Pickering
Mm hmm.
00:50:50.47
Jed Diamond
some because in my case I had an absent father, which many of us have, some because in some sense we grew up as most of us did in some variation of a dominator culture where we were disconnected. So the fact that we feel somehow at at competition and we need to fight others is not a part of who we are. It's a part of the woundedness and the trauma that is part of our early life. So second kind of thing I would say is be willing to look back at the trauma, the stories that we told because of the losses that we had that we denied but never dealt with.
00:51:41.88
Gareth Pickering
So good, let's let's take that a little further. How do you do that? If someone's listening to this, they're like, how do how would they reflect? Is it like, okay, I've got an accident, that's the word. Do you have some questions or something that somebody could perhaps journal on as a way to get to this?
00:51:54.07
Gareth Pickering
Because I think you're touching on something really important.
00:51:56.73
Jed Diamond
Yeah, well, sure.
00:51:56.54
Gareth Pickering
And if there was a way for someone listening just to find it, yeah, maybe some key that could support them in this.
00:52:02.04
Jed Diamond
Well, there remember back somewhere in earlier in our interview, I said the way I've sorted a lot of this out is I write books.
00:52:13.25
Jed Diamond
And so I don't have the answers to everything, thing but i I have what I've learned.
00:52:13.49
Gareth Pickering
Mm hmm.
00:52:23.33
Jed Diamond
So for instance, in the book that I wrote, My Distant Dad Healing the Family Father Wood, when I finished the book, which was the questions I asked myself to sort out my own father wood.
00:52:38.91
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
00:52:39.59
Jed Diamond
My actually, the the the the publisher said, so what do you want to do next? They're always, well, what's your next? And I said, really, I don't want to write another, the next book. What I really would like to do is to write a a guided a manual, a workbook where people who didn't have the time to spend 50 years working through your father wound could be guided by, here's the questions I learned and needed to ask myself.
00:53:12.79
Jed Diamond
So I wrote a ah workbook that people can get. ah And again, if you email me or go to my site, there you you can find it. It's not as easy to find because the publisher was on that one, a small publisher.
00:53:30.67
Jed Diamond
but there is and I can get people that that that guided questions that you can do on your own and I have a course online where it takes you through all of those things so you can do your own you know healing journey on your own by yourself or you can come and do therapy with me and I take you through that and you know in a healing journey and people want individual guidance but you can do it on your own with some help for your own inner guides if you'd like.
00:54:04.19
Gareth Pickering
I'm so glad to ask that because that sounds like exactly the way to do it to actually just have those questions that you've already worked through. What's the what's the name of that book? you didn't say You said it was a workbook, but is it a title?
00:54:13.80
Jed Diamond
Yeah, it's called, let's see if I've got a copy I can hold up. um No, it's not within. Yeah, it's not within reach, but um if it's it basically the the workbook for healing the family father wound.
00:54:34.71
Jed Diamond
um
00:54:34.58
Gareth Pickering
ah Okay, so it's an accompanying workbook that goes with the Distant Dad book that you wrote.
00:54:36.77
Jed Diamond
Yes, and again,
00:54:38.58
Gareth Pickering
Got it.
00:54:40.15
Jed Diamond
and again if people have trouble finding it, they can email me and I can tell them both where you can get it and where on my website. There's a course that you take that you can that has basically the workbook is a course that you can take or you could just buy the workbook and
00:54:54.54
Gareth Pickering
Beautiful.
00:55:02.01
Jed Diamond
Do it yourself that way. There's a number of ways I take people through that. And I have other books that take you through different avenues of interest of healing.
00:55:13.10
Jed Diamond
So I try to make what I do available so people can do their own journeying.
00:55:14.01
Gareth Pickering
beautiful great Shannon who works with us will find that for sure and put it in the show notes so we'll make sure that that's linked up in the show notes if you're listening to this yeah thank you which has been the most challenging book to write or which has been the book that you've grown the most from doing 17 books I'm sure there's each one brings a different must be like having 17 children I guess what is what is what does each one bring like what's the what's been the one that's got the most juice I mean it's maybe a difficult question but I'd love to hear your journey
00:55:23.53
Jed Diamond
Super.
00:55:38.84
Jed Diamond
Yeah.
00:55:42.29
Jed Diamond
Well, as you suggest, it would be like asking which of your children, you know, do you love the most or which which one is the juiciest, which one, you know, and the the truth is they're all different.
00:55:47.44
Gareth Pickering
Deep breath. ah
00:55:56.77
Jed Diamond
You know, I mean, that's a cliche, but it's true. And what I can tell you is that the the The books come when I've needed to sort through some things. So, you know, when I was having relationship issues, I wrote, you know, work through them.
00:56:21.74
Jed Diamond
I wrote the the the book on relationships that looked at the five stages of love that I went through. When I was dealing with a father wound, I wrote that. When I was going through male menopause in my midlife, you know in my 40s and where you are, I wrote a book called Male Menopause ah that looked at the hormonal and other changes. so you know i mean the The good news for the kind of books I write is they They speak to different stages of my life, which is not that everybody would go through the same stages, but there's some fairly universal things that we all go through. So most of my books, people tell me, oh, that was really helpful when I was going through that.
00:57:10.14
Jed Diamond
or this was really helpful.
00:57:10.12
Gareth Pickering
Mm hmm.
00:57:12.00
Jed Diamond
And yeah, I get that that was really helpful at that. and um And people also ask me, oh, here, I'm going through this. Which book would you recommend or which article or which course?
00:57:24.33
Jed Diamond
And I'm happy to to share with you whatever additional information would be helpful to help guide you. Because you know I mean, the truth is I love what I do.
00:57:36.53
Jed Diamond
It's a you know back to where we started. ah I made a commitment to my children basically to ah be a different kind of man, a different kind of father than my father was able to be. And I got the opportunity to heal my own relationship with my father before he died.
00:57:57.33
Jed Diamond
and part of my commitment to the the future generations, my own children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And you all who are watching this are not my direct children, but you know i'm I'm here for you.
00:58:11.02
Jed Diamond
you know you're my Whoever finds me, whoever listens to a podcast that I've done and feels my heart says,
00:58:11.41
Gareth Pickering
Hmm.
00:58:20.71
Jed Diamond
I care about you. I want the best for you. I want to share whatever I've learned because at a certain age and we'll all have some part of that legacy is we need and want to pass on what we have learned and we've all got something to pass on whatever age we are because you're 45 you have you've already learned some things you'll learn some things when you're 21 that you could pass on
00:58:35.49
Gareth Pickering
Yep.
00:58:45.59
Jed Diamond
And I work with some organizations that look at intergenerational healing. And so, you know, the 21-year-olds pass it on to the 10-year-olds, and the 40-year-olds pass it on the 21-year-olds, the 60s pass it on to the 40s, and I'm 80, I pass it on to everybody who's younger than me is part of my ah my my pass-a-non lineage. And then I've got some guys that are older than me that I learned from.
00:59:16.40
Gareth Pickering
So good. as a function of where I'm at in my life, and because you literally wrote the book on it, I would love you to share something that's not very often spoken about, which is male menopause. What ah what came from that for you, like both having done the research for the book, but also as a lived experience? What what is it and why aren't we talking about this?
00:59:35.34
Jed Diamond
Well, yeah, I mean, that's ah that could be another whole podcast. But ah what it ah it came to me, as many things do, from women. you know I had a number of women, including my wife at the time, who was going through menopause, change of life. And it was a pain in the ass. It was hard. She was cranky. She had all kinds of stuff. And as she kind of got through it,
01:00:02.29
Jed Diamond
ah She said, you know, I think you're going through something. And I said, what are you talking about? Men don't go through. But, you know, because I'm an author and any time I hear, well, maybe, you know, maybe I ought to check that out. So I did research and I found out that men go through their own change of life that's different, but have some similarities.
01:00:26.79
Jed Diamond
And then I wrote it the book called Male Menopause, and it became an international bestseller. You can't see over my shoulders, you see some books, but up above where you can't see are the, ah I think, 18 foreign translations of Male Menopause that have now been translated into almost every language you could think of, from Chinese to Hebrew to Spanish and Dutch. and Um, so it's very real. It's, you know, it's different from women, but there's many similarities. It happens to men between 40 and 55, although it can start as early as 35 or as late as 65. It has a hormonal component, but has related to psychological interpersonal and, uh, other relational issues. And.
01:01:20.71
Jed Diamond
We all go through it and we all can benefit from what we can learn to modulate our hormones, change the way we relate to ourselves and our our loved ones.
01:01:33.49
Jed Diamond
And there's a reason why a lot of people have been reading it. It gets rediscovered every 10 or 15 years. Some people go, I didn't know that. Tell me about it.
01:01:43.40
Gareth Pickering
Right.
01:01:43.77
Jed Diamond
So the fact that you're asking tells me you're probably going to be checking it out and letting others know, hey, there's this book that je there other people wrote that might be of interest.
01:01:57.48
Gareth Pickering
I love that every question I ask you literally written the book on it, that feels amazing. Like you just generally have been through all of these initiatory phases and ah the nature of your your being is that you write about it. So I think that's that's super magical. Thank you for for sharing that because it does give the ability for other people to to learn from these these experiences that you've been through. But what are what are some of the things that people could do in their lives if they're feeling this andropause coming into their experience? What are some of the things that support men as they go through this this initiation and in this age of their life?
01:02:28.62
Jed Diamond
Well, one of the things I say is to get your your testosterone levels checked. I've told this to my son and my, you know, most guys don't know what their testosterone levels are.
01:02:33.28
Gareth Pickering
OK.
01:02:39.64
Jed Diamond
They don't know the difference between ah total testosterone and bioavailable testosterone. So there's things you can learn.
01:02:46.60
Gareth Pickering
Mm hmm.
01:02:48.44
Jed Diamond
And then things you can do based on what you know that can help you find out.
01:02:48.73
Gareth Pickering
Yep.
01:02:53.99
Jed Diamond
I have a questionnaire that like i'm caught that's in the book as well as you know i on my website that says, here are the questions you should be asking yourself to see if you have male menopause.
01:02:59.95
Gareth Pickering
huh
01:03:09.46
Jed Diamond
And here are the things that you probably need to explore to see whether you need to do and then there's a whole lot of things you can do that have to do with your hormones, have to do with your diet, have to do with ah your exercise, have to do with your relationships that can then help you in areas where you uniquely may be having some challenges.
01:03:21.18
Gareth Pickering
Okay.
01:03:35.01
Gareth Pickering
Hmm. Brilliant. And the book is called Melmenopause, just straight like that.
01:03:39.57
Jed Diamond
Yeah, there's actually two of them. once The first one is called Male Menopause. And the second one is called Surviving Male Menopause, a Guide for Women and Men.
01:03:49.45
Gareth Pickering
Mm hmm.
01:03:49.95
Jed Diamond
After Male Menopause came out, a lot of women were going, oh, God, you know, I need to i need to understand what he's going through.
01:04:00.27
Jed Diamond
So I wrote the book for women as well as people in relationships. So yeah, there's two books, Male Metapause, Surviving Male Metapause. And then there's a third book that's called The Whole Man Program that's for men over 40 that tells you, here's what you can do if you're going through this.
01:04:20.17
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
01:04:20.47
Jed Diamond
So there's ah a lot of resource in the books and in articles and classes and other things that I do.
01:04:31.00
Gareth Pickering
Hmm Quick question on female menopause. What is your suggestion for supporting men who are showing up for their partners as they go through through the female initiation of perimenopause and that dance?
01:04:43.92
Gareth Pickering
I'm in that right now and I noticed what you said as well was like I was just nodding my head you know sort of cranky irritable and she's not doing it on purpose.
01:04:50.50
Jed Diamond
Yeah.
01:04:51.48
Gareth Pickering
I know my partner loves me and she's just going through this tough initiation with her body and her own hormones.
01:04:54.35
Jed Diamond
Yeah.
01:04:56.53
Gareth Pickering
ah And then maybe you could also link that back to your current role of showing up as
01:04:56.95
Jed Diamond
Yeah.
01:05:01.80
Gareth Pickering
caretaking a partner who is unwell. I know you spoke about that in your relationship.
01:05:05.74
Jed Diamond
no
01:05:05.64
Gareth Pickering
That's been a theme for me. How do you balance well some some support on what that looks like, but also how do you balance the role of showing up as a as a caretaker while not going into rescue or something about that those two polarities?
01:05:18.40
Jed Diamond
Yeah, well, that was, again, a lot a lot that's there. And ah ah I'm feeling almost like we need ah another session, as I said, when we talked.
01:05:29.98
Jed Diamond
I i've have a bit of a cold, so I'm reaching the end of my my my ah talking area area.
01:05:34.88
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
01:05:36.93
Jed Diamond
But so let me let me just say a couple of things, and then maybe we can wrap it up. And I'm happy to talk more at another time. but Uh, in terms of, you know, the women in our lives who are going through, um, is, uh, to, I think we all have a general idea that women, you know, at a certain age start having a drop of their hormones and for women.
01:06:03.02
Jed Diamond
which is one of the differences for men, they reach a point where they gradually over a number of years um have a loss of the ability of the eggs to ah to be viable and so they can no longer have babies. And then there's a whole lot of physical, emotional, hormonal and and feeling changes that go on over a period of many years that are can be challenging.
01:06:35.17
Jed Diamond
Most women know more about what to do and there's lots of books and articles and magazine things.
01:06:39.81
Gareth Pickering
Yes.
01:06:40.85
Jed Diamond
Mostly, there's not a lot for men to help them understand what women are going through. um So um listen to your to your woman. you know Let her guide you. ah Let her suggest some things maybe she'd like you to read to get you up to date. And just know, just as you said, um it's ah it's a i mean the way I think of it, and and it can be helpful, is most people ah Understand what it's like to go through puberty, you know, and your hormones are going and you're cranky and you're angry and you're not, you know, because you've been through something like that yourself.
01:07:22.17
Jed Diamond
And if you have children, you then know that your children go through that.
01:07:22.44
Gareth Pickering
Yeah.
01:07:27.28
Jed Diamond
Well, menopause in some way is like puberty in reverse your you know your hormones were coming online now your hormones are going offline and some of the same turmoil is going on both ways so And there's similarities to for men and women. they're ah But when you're dealing with the women, you need to be caring just like you would with your teenagers. You need to be sensitive at the other end of the scale when you're taking care of people who, in my wife's case, is needing care. ah And there's some similarities with going through menopause or any kind of
01:08:11.41
Jed Diamond
Fairly. you know You need to take care of yourself. You need to say, I'm here for you now, and now I need to get away. I need a rest, or I need to go take care of me, or God, I've been helping you. And so there's a a balance always in any relationship of taking care of yourself, taking care of the other, taking care of the different strands of your work. So it requires, in my case,
01:08:41.03
Jed Diamond
having a men's group for support, having friends, doing therapy, going for walks. you know I have my own kind of things that I've developed that work for me. And then I'm always going, well, maybe I need something new. I'm running it up against something that I haven't dealt with and I need some new skills, some new ideas. So I'm always curious to understand rather than judge, which is part of what I think is helpful with dealing with our wives, dealing with ourselves, and dealing with others. So hopefully that that helps for for now.
01:09:19.39
Gareth Pickering
Yeah, it's again, your basket analogy, just checking which strand is alive at the moment and recognizing what if it's if it's my work to do if it's, you know, center myself versus showing up on my partner will go for a walk.
01:09:29.59
Gareth Pickering
So yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much for for taking the time to to show up and all the work that you've done.
01:09:33.31
Jed Diamond
Sure.
01:09:36.77
Gareth Pickering
It feels yeah amazing to be following in your in your footsteps and thank you for being a pioneer in this field. Where can people connect with you and find out about your work?
01:09:47.06
Gareth Pickering
We'll put it in the show notes, but I'd love you just to speak a little bit about where they can connect with you.
01:09:49.77
Jed Diamond
Sure, the easy way, is kind of my window to the world is menalive.com, just spelled out M-E-N-A-L-I-V-E dot com. um I have a free newsletter that goes out to anybody that signs up if you want to be in touch with me and my articles that go out and there's a lot of, you know,
01:10:13.14
Jed Diamond
things on the site that so you can help. And i' I'm a real person. I'm a real guy. I try to answer all the emails that that come. And if I get a whole lot at one time, it takes a little longer, but I'm um i'm accessible.
01:10:29.63
Gareth Pickering
You are indeed, thank you so much. Jed, is there anything you'd like to leave with our audience before we before we sign up? Maybe just a parting shot or ah a North Star or something that you think would be beneficial for someone listening to this?
01:10:41.83
Jed Diamond
Yeah, um I just would would just recognize that there are so many strands of the men's work that now are available. And, you know, I'm saying to you that I didn't know what your work was. And clearly you've been doing some significant work for a while. So I just want to acknowledge the work that you're doing, the the younger people that are are here that came after me and that we we really have a lot to learn from each other and a lot to give to each other. So whatever part of this you're connected with who are watching this or
01:11:23.56
Jed Diamond
hearing about it, just get curious, reach out. There's so much good things happening now that weren't available when I was starting out. So I'm looking forward to more connections with you and more connections with your audience as time goes on.
01:11:42.75
Gareth Pickering
Beautiful. I definitely feel like this is not the last time we're going to be in each other's space. So yeah, thanks again for taking the time. It's been a really beautiful first conversation. And yeah, thanks again for being alive, brother. Much love.
01:11:53.85
Jed Diamond
You too, my friend.
01:11:55.62
Gareth Pickering
Cheers.
