The Friends Who Disappear, and the Pack That Doesn't
The Science of the Pack: Why Men Need Community to Survive
The first time Jay Abramovitch walked into a room full of men from the group, the first thing he noticed was the hugging. Grown men, a lot of them ex-military, ex-first-responders, the kind of guys who built whole careers out of not flinching, throwing their arms around each other and saying “I love you” out loud. For a beat he thought: what is going on here. He came from worlds where men did not talk about their problems, where you’d be the odd one out for admitting you were scared. Within a couple of hours, the nerves were gone. He was home.
The Reality of a Quiet Diagnosis
He had not felt at home in a while. Diagnosed at 36, healthy his whole life, physically demanding jobs in the military and the fire service, no family history, no warning. A little blood, some abdominal pain he could have blamed on stress. Then a colonoscopy in the middle of the pandemic, and a year and a half of surgeries and chemo he went through essentially alone; his wife Zoomed in from a parking lot because she wasn’t allowed inside. He had spent his entire life being the person who fixes things. Now he was the thing that couldn’t be fixed by anyone, least of all him.
