The Kingdom Within: Initiations from Six Months of Fatherhood

How my daughter transformed my relationship to masculinity, beauty, and purpose.

I love being a father.

“We must be two of the most joyous parents out there.” That’s what I said to Kiki as we strolled around Coot Lake the other afternoon, pushing Ember in her stroller. And we just laughed, because it felt true. We delight in our little girl. We love spending time with her—watching her discover the world and watching ourselves discover who we're becoming in the process.

The predominant narrative I’d heard from other fathers about early parenthood doesn’t match what I’m living.

Many new parents speak of becoming isolated.
Of sex vanishing.
Of their relationship taking a backseat.
Of losing touch with themselves.
Of early parenting being more depleting than nourishing.

And I understand why people say that—because for many, it’s true. Parenting can stretch every part of the system. It can be overwhelming, disorienting, lonely.

But that’s not what's happened here. In fact, I’ve experienced exactly the opposite.

Fatherhood didn’t limit life. It expanded it, in every way.

I've never felt so happy in my life. I feel more present. More here. More alive. More in touch with my own essence.

My wife and I feel closer than we’ve ever felt. More securely attached. More of a sense of team. We’re even having emotional and sexual breakthroughs that have stymied us for years.

Fatherhood has felt like a sacred initiation into a club I didn’t even know I was missing—a club whose door I had walked past for years, only to find, on the other side, that this was what my soul had been aching for. It’s been the single, most beautiful journey of my lifetime—and I’m only six months in.

I share this because I didn’t know this kind of breathtaking beauty was possible in fatherhood. We were determined to live a different story of parenthood, and it feels essential to add my story to the collective narrative.

Six months into fatherhood, what I keep coming back to is this:
This has been the most expansive spiritual journey I've ever been on.

We’ve been privileged to be able to so wholeheartedly focus on parenthood in this chapter. And from the very beginning, we began building something different. Nearly every morning since a week after Ember was born, our little family has sat in tea ceremony together in the sunroom of our home—one hour of silent tea, followed by sharing. When traveling, we’ll even bring a tea set with us.

Steam rises from our cups in the morning light, a little spa for our eyes. The sunroom fills with the earthy scent of pu-erh, the ceramic warm against our palms. Outside, leaves rustle, and birds chirp. Inside, Ember watches it all, her eyes taking in this ritual that’s becoming the cornerstone of her world.

Morning tea ceremonies in our sun room.

Morning tea ceremonies started as my escape—a way to ground myself amidst the overwhelming demands of new parenthood. But over time, it’s evolved into something far more profound.

It’s our sacred family time. We look forward to it every day. We invite friends into it. It’s become the heartbeat of our family: a place to integrate, to reflect, to share our hearts, to deepen into intimacy. A place to feel. To let ourselves be impacted by life.

Most mornings, you’ll find me in tears, and Kiki too. Some of my deepest awakenings happen in tea—moments where I see the divine perfection of everything, where my heart breaks open to the beauty in front of me, or where I feel the sacredness of my life force—how even the most intimate energies in me are made of beauty.

These ceremonies mirror how deeply we are cherishing this chapter of life. Tea has become the space where anything and everything that arises—desires, fears, triggers, impulses—is held as sacred. That thread of sacredness then weaves through the rest of our lives. They hold our home and family at the center of our kingdom. They anchor us in reverence, in presence. And they ground the knowing that we can move at the pace at which our feelings can be felt.

It’s in the sacredness of the everyday that we see the divinity in ourselves and each other. Many times, my king sees her goddess—or vice versa—and with nothing but a gaze, the other melts into tears.

We’ve dropped into a level of sacred ceremony in our everyday life that rivals any plant medicine ceremony. And from that place, everything feels different. I experience life differently. And people experience me differently.

The transformation hasn’t been one singular moment, but a series of initiations—each one revealing another layer of what it means to be not just a father, but fully human.

Here’s what happened, beginning with a fundamental shift in how I understand what it means to be a man, a father, and a masculine presence in the world.

Discovering the Meaning of the True Masculine

The masculine is often thought of as “holding space.” And for much of my life, that translated into a belief that I needed to hold myself together.

In the first weeks after Ember was born, every moment when I felt stretched—when she wouldn’t stop crying, when Kiki and I were navigating new challenges—my body would tighten. My jaw would clench. My shoulders would rise. My breath would go shallow. I was trying to hold it together. To manage the intensity with control. To brace against the overwhelm.

With a newborn, there’s a constant sense of needing to be “on”—attuned, responsive, ready. Each moment demands presence, and that presence taxes the body. Day after day, the weight of perpetual attentiveness builds, until the nervous system reaches a tipping point.

Most of the fathers I spoke to before Ember was born carried some version of the same message: “Brace yourself. The first few months will be hard.”

And they were. But only when I braced.

It turns out that things only felt hard when I was resisting what was true. The advice became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The suffering wasn’t in fatherhood itself, but in my resistance to the overwhelm.

The first time I truly let myself fall apart was about eight weeks in. After three tough days in a row, I reached my limit. I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I cried in my office. I asked for a hug. Then I screamed in the car. And afterward—surprisingly—I no longer felt any collapse. Instead, I felt peace.

The kind of peace that comes when you finally stop resisting what’s real. I realized it was the same peace I’d seen in Ember after holding her through a meltdown—how her body would soften in my arms after a full, uninhibited cry. Nothing managed. Nothing fixed. Just held, until the wave passed.

In holding her, I realized I’d never truly known how to hold my own inner child. I’d done the work. I’d tried to tend to those tender places. But I didn’t yet know how to simply be with the one inside me who was scared, or overwhelmed, or sad—without trying to change it, fix it, or rise above it.

Holding Ember has taught me how to just be there in loving presence. And that realization has changed the way I meet every part of myself.

That experience of hitting my limit was my first glimpse of the true masculine—not as the one who holds it all together, but as the one who knows how to hold himself through falling apart. Again and again. Until there’s no resistance left.

My nervous system began to learn that overwhelm is survivable. It stopped bracing against it. Now, when I feel micro-tensions—say, in the shower at the end of a long day—I know how to soften into them. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I just feel a little tremble. But each time, I feel my armor against life melt away—slowly, gently.

When the masculine lets all feelings be felt and pass through, he stops “holding space” and simply becomes “as space.” Just as with tea ceremony, I’m learning to become the space in which all that arises is held as beautiful and sacred.

And as space, I’m noticing that presence becomes much easier. The other day, I felt hurt by a few words that Kiki had said from a place of overwhelm. And even as my heart wanted to close, I could ask for a hug, voice my loving support for her, feel compassion for where she was at, feel and show my hurt, release a silent scream of anger and anguish into my arm—and have the totality of experience be okay without making anyone wrong.

As space, I can meet Ember’s cries with openhearted attunement. I can meet the anxious voice that says I should be doing more—with breath, with ground, with trust. The energy wasted on resisting reality has dropped to all-time lows.

This openness has transformed fatherhood from something I was managing into something I fully inhabit. I feel myself loosening my need for control over life. And the impact is that time itself feels different. Richer. Slower. More full. In the most beautiful way.

Initiating into Beauty as a Way of Being

Some of the most beautiful moments of fatherhood have been spent gazing into Ember’s eyes.

There’s a look she gives me—where her eyes meet mine, and she sees me, and then bursts into a smile so wide it takes over her whole body. Her arms flail. Her legs kick. Little squeals bubble up from deep in her belly. Her delight is unfiltered and complete. And I realize she’s smiling because I’m smiling. She feels my joy and reflects it back to me with every fiber of her being. It’s overwhelming in the most tender way.

It’s almost too much to take in. And I find myself asking, again and again:
How much beauty can I actually let in?

That question—so simple—has become a spiritual practice in itself. It’s become a devotional inquiry: How much can I let myself be moved by life?

That question shows up in our tea ceremonies, where I often find myself in tears—not from sadness, but from being pierced by the beauty in front of me.

It shows up when I cook. What once felt like functional nourishment has become creation and art. I feel more deeply into the texture, color, and flavors, testing with small tastes that burst across my tongue. I plate food with care, feeling a childlike delight as I scatter vibrant flecks of fresh cilantro across a finished dish. I cook not to get food on the table, but to offer beauty to the people I love, to nourish Kiki so that she can nourish Ember.

It shows up in sex. For years I had been subtly managing the experience—managing intensity, tracking Kiki’s satisfaction, anticipating her disappointment. That management clouded my own pleasure, and for a long time, I didn’t know how to turn it off.

What’s changed is that I now recognize and fully feel the intimate beauty of my own orgasm. Not just as release, but as something sacred, as a gift of life force moving through me that opens me to love. And from that place, the fog of management has completely lifted, because there’s nothing left to fix or change.

Even my relationship to writing has changed. I used to think about what would make an impact. Now I ask:

What moves me the most?
What feels the most beautiful?
What do I want to express, just because it’s too beautiful to hold inside?

It’s no longer about getting it right. It’s about getting it true. And I’m starting to trust that transmitting the things that move me is the thing that will actually move the world in the way I want. This is the legacy I hope to pass to Ember—not a life of accomplishment, but an authentic embodiment of truth, love, and beauty.

Over the past six months, I’ve felt a deeper truth about life take root in me. That the purpose of being here is not just to grow, or to contribute, or even to love. The purpose of life is to experience beauty.

Because once beauty touches me, it doesn’t just stop there—it wants to create. It wants to move. It wants to become.

Life with a newborn has a way of stripping everything non-essential. And Ember has truly invited me into the essence of things. But that stripping hasn’t felt like sacrifice. It’s felt like refinement, like the honing of a sword. There’s no room for anything but what is most true. And that clarity has changed how I relate to everything I create.

After my miracle experience with Bufo, I remember reading Julia Christina’s account of her own journey. She wrote:

The fabric of the universe is not love, it is beauty.
And the experience of beauty is love.

At the time, I understood it intellectually. But now, I feel it in my body. I feel how beauty is not a concept—it’s life force. It’s a current. It’s a truth. And I feel how sexual energy and creative energy are not just connected—they are the same thing. They are how life moves through us—as beauty, as the way love creates itself again and again.

And what I’ve come to realize is this:
Beauty is my essence—and all our essences.

And when I let myself be moved by beauty, I come home to who I really am. From that place, I find myself better equipped to receive everything that arises in the journey of fatherhood as sacred and beautiful.

Embodying the Energy of Kingdom

I used to believe I wanted to build an empire.

I wanted to leave a legacy. I wanted to make an impact and reach people across the world—something that demonstrates that I made good use of this life and made a difference.

But over the past six months, I’ve begun to realize: I’m not here to build an empire. I’m here to emanate a kingdom.

And the energy of kingdom is something entirely different. Empire reaches outward. Kingdom emanates from within. Empire seeks to grow at scale. Kingdom begins from the home. It includes Kiki and me in our sacred partnership as king and queen. It includes Ember. It includes our sacred tea space, our intimate rhythms, and our community. It’s not something that takes me away from family—it’s something that is fueled by family.

In many ways, Ember initiated this remembrance.

Before she was born, I believed that fatherhood might take time and energy away from the work that I’m meant to do in the world. I remember focusing hard on trying to finish the draft of my book on desire, convinced that once she arrived, everything would shift—and not in my favor.

And things did shift. But not in the way I feared.

What I’ve discovered is that the love and beauty I experience in our home doesn’t detract from my work—they fuel it. They open a well of inspiration, a new source of energy that I never had access to before. These past six months have revealed more truth and clarity around my sacred purpose than all the searching and efforting that came before it.

And the more I’m with family, the more I want to create. The more I create, the more I want to be with family. It’s become a sacred loop—a mutually reinforcing rhythm that feels deeply aligned. And from this place, I feel more energy to move mountains than I’ve ever felt before.

Kingdom doesn’t ask me to leave anything behind. It asks me to bring everything in. It’s embodied and grounded, and from that place, the kingdom that’s being built can be limitless.

I’ve been witnessing how that kingdom is already taking shape. Over the past six months, what once felt like community or close friendships has deepened into something else entirely—a kind of day-to-day interweaving that feels like village. There’s a grounded texture to our relationships now. Gatherings are no longer just social—they’re woven into the fabric of daily life. They feel real. People visit without needing to knock—they show up to hold Ember, to share food at our candlelit table, or to sit in silence with tea.

Kingdom is also being transmitted in my writing. The energy and inspiration that moves through my words now have an embodied and grounded texture that originates from the beauty I’m experiencing at home as a father.

Kingdom isn’t just a structure—it’s a sacred space of presence, intention, and love that we emanate each morning from our silent tea practice. I’m not trying to build something out there anymore. I’m cultivating something true here—and letting the resonance ripple from that place. I no longer have the sense that I’m racing against time to build my legacy—the legacy is already here.

And perhaps that’s the greatest shift of all.

What used to feel like effort—the push to make something happen—has softened into trust. Writing and creation pulses through me with so much more ease, as I listen to the natural flow of inspiration and energy. I feel a new devotion—not to achieve purpose, but to radiate it, a purpose that includes everything I love: Kiki, Ember, our home, the village, the beauty of everyday life.

This is the kingdom I offer to the world—rooted in love, beauty, and truth.

The joy I feel as a father doesn’t come despite the responsibility, but because of it. In becoming Ember’s father, I haven’t just welcomed her into my world—I’ve discovered the world I was meant to create all along.