Fierce & Tender: Healing The Deep Masculine

A Book ReviewFierce & Tender: Healing the Deep MasculineBy Dene Maria SebastianiDene Maria Sebastiani’s story has left me—not wordless: I am, and always have been a man of words—but deeply moved, and in some mysterious way healed by their relentless exploration of the dark side of human nature and their celebration of the power of deep consciousness to heal the wounds that scar that every human heart. I’m not sure whether his image on the cover shows a primal scream or a sudden burst of ecstasy. The ambiguity is appropriate.If this were a “book review” I’d be accused of making it about myself. I will. I must. Because this narrative grabbed me by the balls and dragged me back (again!) to confront the rage, the fear, the grief that I myself had learned so well, since boyhood, to keep under control. I learned it at home; it was politeness. I learned it at boarding school; it was discipline, enforced by the cane as well as the ridicule or fists of other boys. I have long believed that it is the need to control and dominate learned by boarding school boys, ripped from their mothers and fathers at too early an age, the led to the British Empire, where white-skinned men (like me) used control to impose their power, their religion, their material greed, on dark- and brown-skinned “savages”. They tried, but they never fully succeeded in stamping out the wisdom, the medicine, the tribal love connection of the ancients among the peoples they subdued, a truth that is testament to their strength and persistence. Tragically, though, the white man’s practice persists in our America today in the shadow heritage of slavery and genocide.This book reminds me of the urgent need—and hope—for a great global healing, and that the healing begins, always, with each one of us in ourselves. Dene’s never-ending journey into consciousness leads us from infancy to old age. His childhood wound was inflicted in the midst of family passion and violence. He learned to fend for himself in the brawling streets of Brooklyn, finding refuge in drugs and sex and rock’n’roll. The life he describes leads us through the chaos of a young man’s rebellious misadventures to marriage, fatherhood, alienation—but never quite divorce. Along the way, he learns to question everything, most of all himself, in his struggle to make sense of a life that veers too often into darkness, sometimes despair.In search of healing, he is willing to try anything that comes his way, from therapy, to psychedelics, to self-medication in all its many forms—until he discovers what he calls “menswork” in a growing organization of men devoted to the healing of those wounds that so often misdirect the ancient warrior energy of men’s internal architecture into harmful action; and instead to redirect that energy into missions of service to their fellow human beings and the planet we all share. On another personal note, it was in the context I met the author for the first time. My own journey brought me to that same place some thirty years ago and discovered that “fierce tenderness” that led me into the depths of the shadow I had for so long hidden, repressed, denied…For Dene, the journey does not stop there. Staffing many men’s weekends and always finding new ways to deepen his own consciousness, he delves into the mysteries of the shamanic tradition of indigenous Americans and the natural-healing, psychoactive medicines of ancient Mexico and Latin America. He invites us to join him on countless vision quests into the deep and confounding nature of reality and the boundaries of human consciousness. It is not a journey for the faint of heart, and it brings him finally—and us, his readers—into the profound realm of the feminine, the place of mother and of Mother Earth. It is here that he finds his own deepest healing, the generosity of soul and the love that has so long eluded him.Each reader will find a piece of him- or herself in Dene’s story, because eventually its subject is not Dene himself and his particular journey, but the journey we are all given to take between birth and death. In the light of human history, each of our journeys is a brief one, a moment in time, and we do well to make the most of it, to not let it drift by, instead to find our strength and purpose, what we are given to do with what we have been given. It is this journey that Dene models for us at a depth that most of us never reach, but many aspire to. It shows us how to heal our wounds and in this way to become better, fuller, more loving and compassionate human beings. Dene earned his status as what the cover of his book calls an “urban medicine man” the hard way; I’m grateful that he makes that wisdom available to the rest of us.

Dene Maria Sebastiana has lived an extraordinary life. In this book, we accompany him from New York in the early 1950s—where he learned violence at home and on the streets—through his often grueling and frequently inspiring journey to find his true home within himself.Like many people of his generation, Sebastiana transited the late 1960s and early 1970s seeking new forms of family and community. This quest took him through radical politics, recreational drugs, spiritual cults, and organic farms—yet none of these paths liberated him from his traumatic past or enabled him to step outside what he calls the “manbox” of dick-swinging competitiveness and denial of his tender side.Eventually, some true guides and teachers showed up in Sebastiana’s life, few more influential than the founders of what would become the ManKind Project. Sebastiana became an international leader of this organization and of the larger men’s movement through which he and others have awakened to what he calls, “the sacred masculine that lives within our hearts and souls,” and rediscovered “our long-lost feeling side.”Sebastiana enlivens his book with drama and suspense that kept me up late several nights, eager to find out the answers to mysteries like: How would he manage his wife’s mental illness? Would he finally keep healthy boundaries with his addict son? How would he reconcile with his younger brother, against whom he perpetrated violence when they were boys? And what would become of his gutsy choice to start a workshop series for women called “Leaving my father’s house”?The imperative to grow through pain and conflict has shaped Sebastiana’s later years as he copes with financial stress, rivalry and division in his beloved men’s movement, the pandemic, and the physical decline of his aging body.Yet Fierce and Tender is a profoundly hopeful book. It is both a personal autobiography and a cultural one. The story of this one man—brilliant and courageous, wounded and mended—reflects the larger healing journey that our male-dominated culture is going through. To guide us along, Sebastiana drops many luminous pearls of insight:“Underneath my anger is always the terrifying pain below.”“Older men hold onto power too long, and younger men crave power too soon.”“Over time, and through relentless practice, I learn to stay silent when I am in the throes of big emotions. … I do not bury the pain; I wrestle with it [and] feel it from a more conscious place.”“The decision, in every moment, in every day … is between love or fear. And choosing love is always the harder choice.”And these two pearls may be the ones that us baby boomers need most of all as we, like Sebastiana, approach the end of our lives:“These days I realize how precious my own energy is, and the importance of being disciplined and discriminating in how I spend that energy.”“I get to choose how the rest of my life will go. If I choose fear and lack, that is what I will create. If I choose trust and the abundance inherent in the work that I do and the worth that I am, then that is what I will create.”

I learned about the author through my adult son who has done work with him, thus I looked him up online to learn more about who he is. When I saw that he had a book, I decided to to order it. What an amazing, mature, grounded, highly conscious and ethical man! He has been a major positive influencer in the area of expanding and healing the masculine, which gives me great hope for humanity’s evolution. Thank you Dene, for being who you are and doing the hard inner and outer work that you do. You are a great gift to humanity.

Dene has gifted us again, this time with his life's story. The was a late-night can't-put-it-down biography that left me enchanted with Dene, his family, and his journey. His story both parallel's mine and wildly diverges from it, but I found myself rooting for him, crying for him, and hopeful for our collective future. For anyone who is intrigued by the notion of "Men's Work", this book is for you.

In reading Denes book I find myself in reflection and sensing old emotions. I feel new responses to old, seemingly healed, emotions and experiences. I reflect on how good it is to truly know much of the old is healed. I recognize that I hadn’t considered that my father had abandoned us for his future security and career. I realize I was 64 before I confronted my father with the facts I wasn’t raised with/by a male parent. It’s an amazing read that really assisted me in gaining clarity which I believe we all need.

as a childhood friend of dene’s, his book is very emotional. i thought i knew so much about him and his family, but boy, were my eyes opened and wet, at the same time.i’d like to emphasize, that in my opinion, this book is not only for men. at times my heart was broken. his writing is so beautiful and loving, and i highly recommend this amazing book.

Im a psychotherapist, relationship therapist and men’s coach based in the UK. I have also been involved with the ManKind project since my own initiation in 2014 so i write with both some deeper understanding the theme of this book and some bias towards a desire to get more men to walk a path to being more honest, taking accountability for their own projections and willingness to be vulnerable.Dene writes in a fluid and beautiful style, one I found myself wanting to devour more. This is not a abc self help guide of how to heal, more a raw and searingly honest account of his own and his familial trauma and how he transcended the challenges to become more self-aware. And yet he gives the answers in his writings of what every man needs to do to hold himself more accountable. Namely grieving the losses of both his own lived experiences and those archetypal fragments held in deep cellular memory if his own ancestors and perhaps also the rage that most if not all men hold in the collective unconscious to their own wounding from their mothers and the feminine.I also agree with what Dene writes about the challenges and shifts in modern relationships and how these can be the crucible for profound and lasting change if we are up for that task.

In this book, the author presents his own story in a vulnerable and profound way. It is a reading that fills the soul with hope and light.