Episode #21: Rooting Boys Into Men's Work with Jerry Riverstone and Trevor Spring
<p>I recorded this conversation back in September with every intention of releasing it in the fall.</p><p>Divine timing had other plans 🫠</p><p>This past season required all of me. All of my focus, all of my presence and energy to move through something that felt so tender and so encompassing of my nervous system. A deep healing journey with intimacy, with the masculine, with my own origin story.</p><p>Looking back, of course this conversation sat in my drafts. I guess I needed to live it first. At the time of this recording, my father and I hadn’t spoken in nearly a year. A man who once swore that therapy was <em>ridiculous</em>, started working with a therapist. That one act created a portal for us. It’s been a tender season.</p><p>So when I sat down with Jerry Riverstone and Trevor Spring in September to talk about their journeys in men’s work and what they’re building with <a target="_blank" href="https://rootedfutures.org/">Rooted Futures</a>, I had no idea how close to home it would land.</p><p>Listening back now, their stories mirror what I’ve been living with my dad. Still working on it.I’ve definitely been on a healthy masculine kick, and feeling grateful for all the inpristion from Jerry and Trevor, and my recent episode with <a target="_blank" href="https://raisingwholeness.substack.com/p/episode-20-fatherhood-as-spiritual">Noah Goldstein on fatherhood.</a></p><p>I’ve shared before and I’m gonna share again, how Raising Wholeness in the next generation goes far beyond <a target="_blank" href="https://www.raisingwholeness.org/motherhood-circles">the work I do in motherhood.</a> There is a collective wound around how we raise children that we are all responsible for. And the work I do with mothers is just one slice of a greater pie. It’s our education systems, teachers, grandparents. Our fathers, our adolescent boys moving through some of the most disorienting years of their lives with almost no real rites of passage, no elder men modeling what it looks like to feel something and not combust.</p><p>Jerry and Trevor have really created something beautiful that is cultivating wholeness in adolescent men. <a target="_blank" href="https://rootedfutures.org/">Rooted Futures</a> is a nonprofit mentoring program for boys and young men between nine and nineteen. They’ve built a program, a community with quality of presence, real relational containers, and a curriculum rooted in wholeness.</p><p>I’m so thankful for Jerry and Trevor, for their own inner journey’s and even more grateful to share with you the work they are stewarding. I hope enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed making it. <em>And please help me in sharing their work with the world.</em></p><p>If you’re raising a son, or a man wondering about men’s work - this is a great episode to learn more.</p><p>And if you’re looking for a program for your sons - check out <a target="_blank" href="https://rootedfutures.org/">Rooted Futures.</a><em>Sending love,</em></p><p><em>Jenn</em></p><p><strong>About This Episode</strong></p><p>Jerry Riverstone and Trevor Spring are the co-founders of <a target="_blank" href="https://rootedfutures.org/">Rooted Futures</a>, a nonprofit mentoring program for boys and young men ages 9–19. In this conversation we go deep on men’s work, what it actually is, why it matters, and why it’s so hard to walk through the door the first time. We talk about the conditioning that shrinks men into fractions of themselves, what happens when men finally let themselves be seen and heard by other men, and what that creates downstream, in relationships, in parenting, in the next generation.</p><p>This is the conversation I didn’t know I needed. I hope it lands the same way for you.</p><p><strong>Key Insights</strong></p><p><strong>The door is hard to walk through, and that’s normal.</strong> Both Jerry and Trevor backed away from men’s work before they were ready. Jerry literally sat in a parking lot, saw men hugging through a window, and asked to go see a movie instead. Years later he walked in. Most men who end up doing this work have a version of that story. Readiness comes when the pain of staying the same outweighs the discomfort of trying something new.</p><p><strong>Men don’t need to be fixed. They need to be witnessed.</strong> The power of a men’s circle isn’t just in the curriculum or the advice. It’s in the experience of being heard without being fixed, held without being shamed, mirrored back to yourself by other men. That simple human technology, sitting in circle and being truly seen, is something most men have never had. And it changes everything.</p><p><strong>Most men are running inherited conditioning they’ve never examined.</strong> The nice guy who can’t say no. The man who carries a charge everywhere and doesn’t know it. The one who learned that needing help is weakness, that asking is shameful, that you just push through. This isn’t character. It’s inherited code. And it can be rewritten, just only once you know it’s running.</p><p><strong>What men do with their inner work ripples outward.</strong> Better partnerships. Less defensiveness. The capacity to receive feedback without crumbling. The ability to call a friend and say <em>I need a few minutes,</em> and mean it. Men’s work doesn’t fix relationships. It builds the tools to actually inhabit them.</p><p><strong>Boys need what most of them aren’t getting.</strong> The disorientation of adolescence, the testosterone, the identity search, the hunger for belonging, gets coopted when there are no real elders, no rites of passage, no models of what a whole man looks like. Rooted Futures is building that container, online, accessibly, for boys across the country and internationally.</p><p><strong>The “what if” question drives this work.</strong> What if I’d had this 10 years ago? 20? What wreckage might I have avoided? That question lives in almost every man who finds men’s work. And it’s what drives Jerry, Trevor, and their team to show up for the next generation, so those boys don’t have to spend their 30s and 40s untangling what could have been seen and tended much earlier.</p><p><strong>Where else to listen:</strong><strong>apple podcast:</strong></p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BeiTvd2jbSfnwDbr8tNS7?si=49392211175446f9">Spotify</a></p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-21-rooting-boys-into-mens-work-with-jerry/id1602913821?i=1000754436046">Apple Podcast</a></p><p><strong>About Jerry & Trevor</strong></p><p><strong>Jerry Riverstone</strong> has spent his life asking: <em>how can we evolve to live in harmony with each other and within the web of life?</em> That question took him through ecology, activism, and indigenous community work in Latin America before turning inward, into men’s work, rites of passage, and the healing of men’s hearts. He has facilitated hundreds of group sessions and is a core builder of the Rooted Futures curriculum.</p><p><strong>Trevor Spring</strong> has been a holistic movement coach for over 20 years, but something shifted when he began mentoring boys. Since 2016 he has built mentoring programs across Hawaii and the U.S., working with teenage boys virtually and in-person, training mentors, and supporting families. Rooted Futures is the long-term structure he’s been building toward, a community to support the next generation of boys into vital, caring, whole manhood.</p><p><strong>Connect with Rooted Futures</strong></p><p>Website: <a target="_blank" href="https://rootedfutures.org/">rootedfutures.org</a>Instagram: <a target="_blank" href="https://instagram.com/rootedfuturesmentoring">@rootedfuturesmentoring</a>Enrollment: <a target="_blank" href="https://rootedfutures.org/programming">rootedfutures.org/programming</a></p><p>Parents can book a one-on-one call before enrolling their son. Sliding scale available. Scholarship spots exist for families who need them.</p><p>If you know a young man between 9 and 19 who needs this - send this their way.</p><p><strong>Connect with Jenn</strong></p><p>Host of the <a target="_blank" href="https://raisingwholeness.substack.com/s/podcast">Raising Wholeness Podcast,</a> where we explore the collective wound and the collective opportunity we all share in raising the next generation into wholeness. It starts with modeling it in ourselves. It lives in how we restructure our systems, our circles, our homes. This work touches all of us.Website: <a target="_blank" href="https://raisingwholeness.org/">raisingwholeness.org</a>Instagram:<a target="_blank" href="https://instagram.com/raisingwholeness"> @raisingwholeness</a>2026 Seasonal Motherhood Circles: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.raisingwholeness.org/motherhood-circles">raisingwholeness.org/motherhood-circles</a>Start here: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.raisingwholeness.org/start-here">raisingwholeness.org/start-here</a>If you're doing work in this space, reach out. I'd love to have you on the show.</p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://raisingwholeness.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">raisingwholeness.substack.com</a>
