This Father’s Day Weekend, you’re invited to enjoy a new perspective on fatherhood and experience a profound father-son connection.

“Johnny made the retreat a safe space for everyone. In one exercise, my son and I held one another for a very long time. In that embrace I remembered him as a little boy and teaching him on the ski slopes. In that moment, still seeing the child within him, I could love him completely.”

- Mac Kendall, 62 - June 2023 Father-Son Retreat Attendee

Retreat breakdown:

If you’re a father with an adult son, you likely didn’t grow up with an example of male healthy emotional expression. The culture you were raised in was not conducive to men “feeling,” and you probably suppressed your emotions to act “like a man.” Fully, authentically expressing love and affection, especially to your son, may not be easy for you. This retreat is designed to unlearn the habit of stifling yourself and equip you with the emotional skills you need to show those closest to you, starting with your son, just how much you love them.

If you’re an adult son wanting more closeness with your father, feeling nostalgic for the relationship you may have shared in boyhood, this retreat will rekindle that. It will teach you how to express your needs, expectations, and boundaries with your father so that you can see eye-to-eye.

Get ready to learn from one another and work towards the father-son relationship you’ve always wanted. You will come away from this retreat feeling energized and more whole, with a new skillset to rely on when it comes to mediating conflict and feeling understood by one another.

During the retreat you will:

Challenge yourself physically and emotionally - practice fierce vulnerability
Engage in movement, breathwork, and guided meditation
Have the hard conversations and learn to receive feedback from one another
Address key memories in your father-son relationship and complete guided journaling exercises

After the retreat you will:

Possess practical, actionable next steps to strengthen your father-son relationship
Hold a clearer vision for the type of father / son you want to be
Release feelings of guilt and shame, transforming them into love, compassion, and understanding
Have unique, powerful memories to cherish for a lifetime and communicate to friends and family

Our 2024 Retreat Location nestled in the Cleveland Metroparks

Images from our 2023 father-son retreat on a a beautiful orchard in Rustburg, VA.

Lewis and Mac Kendall on the Hey Brother Co. 2023 Father-Son Retreat. Holding hands while reading one another’s responses to a guided journaling exercise on what an ideal father-son relationship would look like.

PRICING:

Recommended pricing is $1600 - one registration counts for one father and son pair (2 people), but you may email johnny@heybrotherco.com if you’d like to bring more than one son. For those in a secure financial position or with access to generational wealth, if you have capacity to pay more for this retreat, you are encouraged to use the tip feature at checkout. Your contribution will support scholarships for other men who are not in the same financial position, such as men in grad school, with student debt, men without generational wealth, etc.

$349 deposit required for registration, with the rest due 30 days before the retreat.

Scholarships are available for BIPOC men and those with financial need. Please email johnny@heybrotherco.com directly with your scholarship inquiry or pricing adjustment.

You will never be turned away from Hey Brother Co. for financial access reasons. There are discounts available if pricing presents an accessibility issue for you.

LOCATION: Cleveland, OH

So, why a father-son retreat?

Our world needs fathers more than we care to admit - and we are in denial about what fatherhood looks like.

As bell hooks wrote in The Will to Change: “In our culture we say very little about the longing for father love.”

Even those men who had fathers present in their households growing up resonate with an adulthood emotional distance; they find it difficult to describe what “love” means between father and son without naming acts of service.

To be clear, fathers are not on trial. The vast majority of fathers experienced the same, or even more severe emotional deprivation and societal conditioning. For generations, fathers have been coerced to practice visions of masculinity and fatherhood that are detrimental to all, including themselves. But they’re doing the best from what they were (or weren’t) taught.

Something needs to change. We can all benefit from a world where men are closer, more loving, more expressive, and more confident in the absolute truth that their lives, experiences, and feelings matter. For this world to exist, we must be the change we wish to see and set the example for a new version of masculinity, a new model of fatherhood. We must practice.