From Main Line Today
By Michael Bradley
Gerald Evans remembers the long, steel corridor, the eyes watching his every move. He remembers the self consciousness about his walk, about speech, about his look. He was there to help others, but he was also there to help himself, and it wasn’t going to be easy.
Evans had taken 20 men – 20 white men – to Graterford Prison to talk with inmates, the vast majority of them black or Hispanic, about violence, rage and anger. As founder of the Men’s Resource Center, he had helped dozens of men delve into their feelings for answers to problems that had prevented them from developing successful relationships with others. It was cutting edge work, born out of Evans’ own problems with his father and first marriage. And it was successful with the white guys. But Evans knew something was missing. For someone who had marched for civil rights in the 1960s, Evans had crafted a pretty vanilla existence for himself.
“I discovered in the early 1990s that I had no people of color in my life, no African-Americans, no Puerto Ricans,” he says. “It was all middle-class white people. I wanted to create a diverse experience for myself. My world had become pretty white.”
So he went to Graterford to talk and grow. And he brought the others with him to broaden their worlds. Many of them had never met an African-American before, much less a prisoner. The men got together, black and white, free and con, to talk about their feelings. Imagine trying to relate your suburban existence to a violent world filled with fury and tumult. That’s what Evans did. And it worked.
“The men realized they shared common experiences and feelings,” Evans says. “The prisoners saw successful men who were accessing many of the same feelings they had repressed.”
That’s what it’s all about for Evans. He is in the national vanguard of a movement that aims to teach men how to access their inner selves. Long thought to be the province of women and frowned upon by tough guys who would rather swallow aggression and rage than admit to one iota of helplessness, the process focuses on enhancing men’s lives by letting them become more open with themselves and others. That may sound like pretty soft stuff in the abstract, but it is quite powerful in its application. Evans has helped men through practically every type of traumatic situation. And he’s learned one thing: Once men start talking about their problems, they can’t stop.
“The hard part is getting people through the door,” Evans says. “I’m met with all kinds of resistance. But once they are in, they’re eager to talk.”
Based in Wayne, the MRC offers programs in several areas, all to help men work past obstacles between them and happiness. Everything Evans does is designed to break down barriers and foster a means to move forward with a better sense of self-realization. It may sound like a lot of jargon and psychological bilge, but it works.
The MRC’s 10-step Intimacy Training Workshop, for instance, goes beyond counseling sessions and group hugs. In addition to frank discussions about commitment, family histories and sex, there is a “high ropes” component – men are placed in ropes, chains and zip wires, then asked to climb and traverse some imposing obstacles. Those who will work with others tend to succeed. The lone wolves often dangle in failure.
“What people discover is that sometimes they won’t ask for help,” Evans says. “They bull their way through things, and that’s how they get emotional scars. We use (the high-ropes experience) as a metaphor for self-discovery.”
Before Evans could help anyone else, he had to find some answers of his own. He first realized this in the late 1960s, when, after graduating from Nebraska Wesleyan with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and political science, he moved back East and began working with delinquent boys. “That was a pivotal year for me,” Evans says. “I had to go back and deal with my own adolescence by dealing with others’ adolescences.”
Evans’ father, David, had migrated to me United States from Wales to escape life in the mines and ensure that none of his children would spend a minute below ground. The family settled first in Fort Morgan, Colorado, where Evans was born in 1940, before moving to Nebraska. In Nebraska, David became an American Baptist minister. He was a formidable man who championed the cause of a Japanese-American at the height of anti-Japan sentiment.
But father and son didn’t get along very well, especially after David suffered from an illness that robbed him of his speech and the use of his left side. Though David fought tenaciously and eventually returned to his ministry, Evans struggled through the 10-year process. It hurt him to see his mother support and raise a family while nursing his father. “There were a lot of ups and downs with him,” Evans says. “Sometimes I wanted him out of the way, and I’m sure there were times he wanted me out of the way.”
When Evans was 21 his father died, leaving him with a variety of unresolved issues and emotions. That didn’t stop Evans from pursuing his desire to help others. He earned a masters in divinity from Colgate Rochester Divinity School and another masters in social work at SUNY-Buffalo while working with troubled youths, alcoholics and other at-risk constituencies. By the mid-1970s he had begun to chart a solid professional course. Then his personal life fell apart.
“The women’s movement was on fire, and my wife was questioning a lot of things,” Evans says. That curiosity eventually extended to their marriage. While she was suggesting that Evans had some growing to do, he was seeking refuge in male communities – and finding there weren’t many capable of supporting him. As he want through a separation and divorce, he felt isolated, so he worked to develop a network that could help sustain him while also helping others. In 1979 he founded the MRC.
Though establishing MRC was a large personal milestone for Evans, he encountered significant resistance from society – male society. Remember, this was a time when men weren’t supposed to be helping each other. They could do it all on their own, damn it, and didn’t need any touchy-feely groups to turn them into women.
“The culture was so homophobic at the time that most of the men who came into contact with us thought we were homosexuals,” Evans says. So it was left to the women to champion Evans’ cause. Wherever Evans spoke, female newspaper and television reporters covered it. They wanted to know what men talked about together. “They discovered that men, when open, talked about the same things women do,” Evans says. “Men, meanwhile, were critical. Unless someone was in pain and needed us, they didn’t want anything to do with it.”
As Evans promoted the center, he worked through his own problems. By reporting on his feelings and experiences, he was able to work through his trouble with his father and ex-wife. He found he had been hiding behind many of the same masks as other men. Once he took them off, he could confront life and others openly and happily.
At first the MRC dealt almost exclusively with teaching men to access their feelings. But during the 1990s Evans decided to create a more structured framework. That’s when he developed the Intimacy Training Workshop. Participants go through an alpha-to-omega process of discovery, purging and new beginnings. Given the growth in the men’s movement and the availability of professionals capable of helping men work through issues, much of what Evans is doing is no longer all that new, but the plan as a whole is thorough and effective. And because it involves a strong physical component (ropes), it becomes more accessible for those who aren’t as prone to open up through discussion. The goal, according to Evans, is to be “in your feelings.” That may sound less than masculine, but Evans disagrees.
“To be in your feelings is a very masculine process,” he says. “You have to deal with everything you’ve had to put up with over all these years.”
The MRC also helps men with issues such as substance abuse, unemployment and even addiction to love. Evans has augmented the MRC through an alliance with Kate Conklin, who sponsors her own programs and is helping with the Intimacy Training Workshop, which is now for men and women. No matter what program the MRC sponsors or who runs it, the ultimate goal remains the same.
“We want people to develop a relationship with their higher selves,” Evans says. “We want them to be open and have a relationship with the universe.”
It’s a lofty aim, but quite worthwhile.