Lori Jean Glass<\/a>, and her team of predominantly female coaches.\n <\/p>\n\n She began her career working in a licensed treatment facility and then started running women\u2019s retreats under her coaching company, called Pivot. Now, she offers male-only camps too. And they feel especially important now \u2014 because men, we keep hearing, are in crisis.\n <\/p>\n
\n I\u2019ve read a stream of coverage about the \u201cmanosphere,\u201d a loosely defined ecosystem of defiant young men who have coalesced around a confrontational and often misogynistic worldview, and the connected problems of male isolation and loneliness that erupted during the pandemic and never subsided.\n <\/p>\n
\n What I hadn\u2019t heard much about was a solution. Was anyone helping men open up to each other? To pull confused men away from toxic influences? How do you reach them? Should you even try? And was this \u2013 an expensive five-day escape in northern California \u2013 really the answer?\n <\/p>\n
\n So I traveled to Sonoma, alongside CNN Senior National Correspondent David Culver, to find out.\n <\/p>\n
\n But there was a catch. Glass agreed to let us observe her camp, but only if we participated ourselves. If we wanted to know what happened inside these closed retreats, we\u2019d need to go through the process alongside the other men. And we did. We cried, we bonded, and we confessed secrets and traumas we\u2019d kept buried for years.\n <\/p>\n
\n The experience taught me plenty about the silent men\u2019s mental health crisis, and the people working to provide an antidote to the manosphere. But it also became the most immersive and personal work assignment I\u2019d ever had. It challenged my own understanding of my psyche, of masculinity and my role as a journalist. I learned \u2013 and revealed \u2013 more about myself than I ever expected.\n <\/p>\n
\n As a journalist, I\u2019d always been taught not to make myself the story. I\u2019ve always followed that premise. I\u2019ve stayed out of the way.\n <\/p>\n
\n But some stories can\u2019t be told like that. Occasionally, to get to the heart of something, you need to experience it for yourself.\n <\/p>\n
\n I was skeptical about this project. Glass is a life coach, and most of her team are not trained psychotherapists. California is the spiritual home of New Age health practices. I wondered whether the environment could, in fact, be harmful. What if men were being told to rip open wounds that couldn\u2019t be patched together by the end of the week?\n <\/p>\n
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU<\/p>\n
We want to hear about positive male communities that you\u2019ve observed or experienced. What made them different? Use the comments section at the bottom of this story to share your perspectives. Our reporters \u2013 Rob Picheta and David Culver \u2013 will be responding to your questions and thoughts.<\/p>\n
\n David and I arrived after a two-hour drive from San Francisco and met Glass. She seemed a little nervous about our presence, as if she might be getting cold feet about our participation at the last moment. But it was too late to change course: The other men were about to arrive.\n <\/p>\n
\n Glass asks participants not to use their phones at the camp, so I left mine in the car \u2013 which, for most journalists, feels a bit like losing a limb. We introduced ourselves to the other participants. And then the small talk ended. Not wanting to waste a moment of this expensive experiment, these men started sharing almost immediately.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Rob](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/essay01-dsc01802.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Matt told us he was grieving the loss of his father, a former NFL player and college football coach. Jason recently lost his wife to breast cancer and was coming to terms with her death but also the death of his own identity as a caregiver. Geoff was concerned about his children departing for college, leaving him and his wife as empty nesters. And all three wanted to relate better to their identity as men; to understand what that role even means, and how they can define it for themselves.\n <\/p>\n
\n We brought our own baggage, too. Both David and I were raised as Catholics, and in our teenage years, we both resisted our sexualities, hiding ourselves from an environment where we felt unwelcomed. Being gay shaped my concept of masculinity as a teenager; manliness became a trait others naturally possess, but one I had to learn. I began code-switching, and even today, my voice might drop an octave when I\u2019m chanting at a soccer game or when I introduce myself to a group of guys at a party.\n <\/p>\n
\n It seemed I wasn\u2019t alone. On day two of the camp, Glass put forward some ideas about masculinity. One prompted a lengthy discussion: \u201cMost men today are confused about what it means to be a man.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cYou have labels like \u2018toxic masculinity\u2019 that people throw around,\u201d Geoff said. \u201cWhat does that even mean?\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Glass truly believes her project can work for anyone, but participants need to take the first step and open up.\n <\/p>\n
\n That took me a while. For two days, I held back; I shared a few perfunctory details about my life, but I resisted the invitation to go deeper. So David gave me some advice: talk to Glass, one-on-one. He\u2019d just come out of a session with her that had changed his entire opinion of the project. She was \u201clike a mind reader,\u201d he told me.\n <\/p>\n
\n I experienced a similar feeling myself in that makeshift therapy room, my chair pointed directly at hers, as she saw through my facade. There\u2019s no doubting her unique ability to connect with people; she pulled my troubles out of me quicker than anyone I\u2019d ever met. Our photojournalist \u2013 who, to maximize confusion, is also called David \u2013 was filming our interaction, and I began the session aware of his presence. By the end, I\u2019d forgotten about it entirely.\n <\/p>\n
\n A few hours later, I was standing in front of the group, on a proverbial baseball diamond that represented the four stages of my life \u2013 child, teen, challenged adult and healthy adult, in Glass\u2019s parlance. The eyes of the room fixed on me as I voiced the anxieties and fears that stem from each part of my past. I discussed my childhood, my struggles fitting in at school and a recent heartbreak that shook my self-esteem.\n <\/p>\n
\n There was nowhere I wanted to be less than that baseball diamond. But I\u2019d watched the other men do the same routine: Matt sorted through his complicated feelings about his father; Jason reckoned at last with his grief; and Geoff realized he\u2019d been avoiding some painful conversations with his wife. They\u2019d been open and reflective with David and me, never once complaining about a CNN crew witnessing them at their most vulnerable. I felt like I owed it to them to do the same.\n <\/p>\n
\n So around the diamond I went. My child said: \u201cWhere are you? Why does it have to be like this?,\u201d as I untangled the complicated experience of having two loving but vastly different homes. My teen said: \u201cI want to belong,\u201d as he voiced the insecurities of adolescence and the need to fit in. As a challenged adult, I said: \u201cI\u2019m running out of time,\u201d and discussed the self-imposed pressure of hitting my professional and personal goals.\n <\/p>\n
\n And as a \u201chealthy adult,\u201d on home plate, I reflected on all those worries in a better, more confident way. \u201cI\u2019m doing fine. I\u2019m right where I need to be. I matter.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The exercise was painful. I felt self-conscious and shy, and I had to fight back tears more than once. But it was so helpful that the next day, I asked to do it again. I\u2019d reflected overnight about what I\u2019d shared and realized I had more to say: I wanted to purge myself of every lingering anxiety while I had a friendly, captive audience.\n <\/p>\n
\n This time, I talked about my past relationships and my time at school. Visions came to me as I went: I saw my father\u2019s old home and my teenage bedroom, places where my worries and behaviors took hold. By the end, I felt like I\u2019d emptied the tank: I\u2019d said everything I felt I needed to say. And before I could catch my breath, I was engulfed in hugs by the other men.\n <\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/essay02-dsc01063.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n At times, walking the tightrope between being a journalist and a participant was complicated. David and I were working. These men weren\u2019t our friends: they were subjects in a story we were covering.\n <\/p>\n
\n And yet we developed meaningful relationships with each one. Our openness helped them open up to us. And I discovered that, despite a three-decade age range and wildly different backstories, we had plenty in common.\n <\/p>\n
\n All five of us came through the door wanting control. Matt and Jason wanted control over their grief; Geoff wanted control of his family dynamic; David and I wanted to control the story. We all wanted control of our emotions, our relationships, our lives. But in this moment and in this space, all of us lost control. And that, it turns out, was the point.\n <\/p>\n
\n I know more about these men than several of the male friends I\u2019ve had for years. David and I had never worked together; by day three, we felt like our relationship stretched back decades. There\u2019s a library\u2019s worth of studies that tell us men aren\u2019t making friends and have lost the ability to connect. In this house, they did.\n <\/p>\n
\n As the week-long retreat wound towards a conclusion, David and I spoke at length with Glass.\n <\/p>\n
\n Our experience had been positive \u2013 enlightening, even \u2013 but I was still grappling with a few questions. We\u2019d gotten extremely deep, and fast. But should we? But what if a wound opened here can never be healed?\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe don\u2019t tell people that we are going to completely heal them,\u201d Glass told us. \u201cThat\u2019s not on our website.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Glass spent years learning psychological theories and her own approach is rooted in transactional analysis, a school of thought that emphasizes the importance of childhood, adolescence and adulthood in shaping how we relate to ourselves.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Glass](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/dsc01252-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n But I probed Glass on whether this camp, which costs more than $5,000 to attend, can really make a difference outside of these walls.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt can, for some,\u201d she said. She doesn\u2019t want the camp to be a retreat for only rich men. Her company recently became a nonprofit; she hopes to win grants that allow her to offer scholarships to more men.\n <\/p>\n
\n The next evening, as I waited for my flight home in an airport restaurant, I felt emotionally lighter. But I also felt the mundanities of life returning to my mind, and I wondered whether the past week could truly change my perspective going forward. I slipped very quickly into my old patterns; looking for problems to solve, tasks to complete, things to keep me busy.\n <\/p>\n
\n The manosphere, like most societal buzzwords, can mean whatever you want it to mean. Some use to it describe the most boisterous group of antagonistic influencers. Louis Theroux probes these men in his recent Netflix documentary \u201cInside the Manosphere<\/a>,\u201d in which a parade of influencers boast about their net worth, their \u201cone-way monogamy\u201d arrangements and their domination over their female partners. I watched it on my flight home: If there was a polar opposite to the place I\u2019d just experienced, it was this.\n <\/p>\n\n But the irony is that the manosphere is really no sphere at all. Most of the men who fall under the influence of its leaders do so precisely because they\u2019re lacking community. \u201cMen are missing men,\u201d one of the coaches, Deb, told me. They have no network, and they crave in-person connection. The \u201csphere\u201d is actually a vacuum.\n <\/p>\n
\n I can relate. I live in a huge city, work a demanding and fulfilling job, and I\u2019m fortunate to have a big group of male friends. And yet months can pass before I see them. Dinners are scheduled for six weeks from now. We vent to each other over WhatsApp about our terrible NFL teams, but we rarely make time for proper conversations.\n <\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s precisely this disconnection that Glass\u2019s camp seeks to change. She\u2019s trying to get men talking to each other, bonding, and sharing \u2013 whether they like it or not. It doesn\u2019t sound like a revolutionary idea. But for those five days, it felt like one.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary A CNN journalist attended a five-day men’s retreat in California to understand its efforts to address male…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,29038],"class_list":["post-371449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-enterprise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}