Kintsugi Heroes
John Broadbent · 77 min
A self-described nerdy engineer who once had no words for his own feelings spent thirty years doing the inner work to become one of Australia's most quietly influential voices in men's mental health — and his story reveals exactly why so many men are silently struggling.
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John Broadbent was a logical engineer with three pens in his pocket, 15 years into a relationship that was falling apart, when his partner wanted to swim with dolphins at Monkey Mia in Western Australia. He went reluctantly. The place pulled him in so completely that within 24 hours of returning home, a stranger called to invite him to a meditation run by a teacher he'd never met. That teacher, Stuart, wore tie-dyed King Gee overalls and was nothing like the guru John expected. For the next nine years, John traveled the world with Stuart, learning to feel emotions he'd buried since childhood, to locate sadness in his body, to understand that he'd spent decades asleep.
John discovered that men his age were hitting invisible walls at 28 to 30 and again at 42, when the hero-work energy that had driven them their whole lives stopped serving them. No one talked about these passages, so men kept them secret and either made it through or didn't. He began running week-long retreats where men, held in a safe container long enough, would drop their guard and share their real stories. He learned that under anger is always sadness, and that men stay comfortable with anger because they were taught not to cry. He started working with couples, teaching them that relationships die when the friendship fades, and that the depth of grief is a mirror of the depth of love.
Thirty years later, John is a writer, a parent, a retreat leader, and someone working to help men and their partners understand what's really happening under the surface. His life has only gotten better year by year. He knows this work is good for men because he is one of them.
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗