The Hero's Heart

"Too many mothers feel alone in how to help their sons resist the heavy pressures toxic patriarchy exerts. Melia Keeton-Digby has created a warm, supportive, connected path for moms to take along with our boys. She invites us to step up with courage and use her well-tested, detailed plans for small mother-son circles that meet for a year or more. This book is an awesome gift to feminist moms and boys everywhere. It's a lifeline of hope that can keep boys from losing themselves in the patriarchy of the larger culture. It's the other half of the equation to making our culture fair and supportive to both genders."
—Nancy Gruver, founder of the award-winning magazine by and for girls, New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams

"Melia Keeton-Digby, author of The Heroine's Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle and founder of The Mother-Daughter Nest, now uses her discerning expertise and intuitive spirituality to examine the crucial relationship between mothers and sons and how that relationship can provide a strong foundation for boys as they grow into men. Let this practical guide be your road map to helping boys navigate the challenges of toxic masculinity through a series of monthly group activities, inspirational quotes, and thoughtful advice on creating and running a ‘sacred circle’ for boys. As Keeton-Digby writes, ‘Raising our sons is among the most important social imprints we will leave on the world, for they will become the partners, husbands, fathers, friends, lovers, creators, and leaders of tomorrow.’ Indeed! Timely, relevant, and empowering, this book will make mothers and sons think; it will make them feel; and it will lay the groundwork for connecting heads to hearts in a world where compassion has historically been relegated to the female domain. Parenthood is busy, but this is a project well worth undertaking because the stakes are so high and the rewards so great."
—Lori Day, educational psychologist and author of Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip, and So Much More

"In The Hero's Heart, Melia Keeton-Digby inspires mothers to create intentional communities, powerful character-shaping opportunities, and much needed rites-of-passage opportunities with their sons. It provides a structure in which moms can enjoy and guide the emotional experience of raising early adolescent boys in our complex world."
—Michael Gurian, author of The Wonder of Boys and Saving Our Sons, and co-founder of the Gurian Institute

"I've always thought that the standard narrative – whether the Freudian notion that boys must renounce mother and identify with father on their way to a secure manhood, or the more mythopoetic notion that only men can initiate boys to manhood – gave short shrift to the power of mothers in shaping boys lives. Mothers can anchor their sons and validate human qualities that may be wrongly thought of as feminine: compassion, caring, resilience, love. As the ones who bear children, they can teach their own children the awesome power and the gorgeous vulnerability of bringing a new life into the world. If they are to flourish as the men they want to be – as friends, fathers, lovers and partners, husbands and colleagues – boys need to know connection and community as much as autonomy. Melia Keeton-Digby's book provides a road map for mothers and sons to remain connected, which enables boys to grow into men who are grounded and ethical."
—Michael Kimmel, author of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men and Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, executive director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities