The Hero’s Journey
The Hero’s Journey has been part of the human experience for thousands of years.
Join Us!
in Tulum, Mexico
January 31 - February 7, 2026
Why do you need this retreat?
Because it offers a crucial shift in context and perspective for your life.
It’s not just a retreat. It’s the turning point in your life.
The Journey Gives Two Gifts
Context
Context is the conditions of your life: your age, physical traits, sexuality, education, career, finances, friends, family, strengths and flaws. It also includes the entirety of your life history with your successes, failures, joys and traumas.
Perspective
Perspective is how you view yourself within your life conditions—past and present. Do you view yourself as leading in your life, navigating along a path with sense and purpose? Or are you more like a leaf in the wind, a wanderer, a cog in someone else’s wheel?
Most of us in the gay community struggle a great deal to make sense of our lives, to understand where we belong, and to overcome the flaws in ourselves that tend to sabotage our relationships and happiness.
The Hero’s Journey
In recorded human history, the hero’s journey is the most ancient existing source of context and perspective for living life. In it is collected the wisdom of many diverse civilizations from around the world dating back millennia. This wisdom is now offered to you through the retreat.
Retreat Overview: Path of the Hero’s Journey
The retreat follows the path of the hero’s journey with plenty of time for relaxation and enjoyment of the beautiful tropical location. It begins before you even leave home and concludes on your return. Very generally speaking, it follows this outline.
The Call to Adventure
Every adventure begins with call to action. It may come from something or someone outside of you, from circumstance, or from a deep inner urge. The call to this adventure is happening right now, as you read this website and consider whether or not you will join the journey.
The Ordinary World
This refers to the mundane life in which you now exist before leaving on your journey. Before coming on the retreat, you’ll capture a snapshot of your ordinary world by completing an overview of your life context and your perspective of that context.
The Belly of the Whale
The point at which the adventure really begins is sometimes called “entering the belly of the whale.” This refers to the Biblical story of Jonah who was swallowed by a giant fish as he tried to flee from God. From that point on, the conditions, rules, and expectations all change. Arriving at the retreat location will bring you into a world of new possibilities.
The Road of Trials
This constitutes the longest segment of the journey. It is a time for gathering a new community of allies, acquiring or sharpening tools for the challenges ahead, gaining clarity about the difficulties specific to your personal journey, and being repeatedly tested regarding your courage and commitment. It is also a time for casting aside the burdens that slow or stop you on your journey. This is a period of enormous perspective change and increased strength.
The Ordeal
Confronting the challenge that holds greatest power over you constitutes your ordeal. This may sound ominous, but although it is meant to be difficult, it is also meant to be accomplished! The only way to fail is to not try. Each man’s ordeal is unique to him and cannot be compared with that of any other man.
Celebration
With the ordeal complete, it’s time to let loose and celebrate with your community of allies. It’s also time to take stock of the gifts the journey has brought you and to honor and be honored for your accomplishments.
Death and Resurrection
The final stage of the journey is to put to rest the old self and the past that no longer is, then to be symbolically reborn as a new man.
The Return
Packing up. Boarding the bus and the plane. Flying back to your city. And finally, arriving back to where you started—same home, different man. Two weeks later you’ll reunite virtually with your community to check in on your return and how life is going now. A month after that will be a second community check-in call.
Answer the Call!
Premier Retreat
Tulum, Mexico
January 31 - February 7, 2026
History of the Hero’s Journey
The concept of a hero’s journey dates back thousands of years in ancient mythology.
This timeless structure originally appeared in ancient myths, folktales, and religious stories, but it is still ever-present in modern books, plays, movies, and television shows. It was brought to light by Joseph Campbell (1904–1987), an American mythologist and author who studied myths and stories from cultures around the world. He discovered that many of them follow a similar pattern, which he called the Hero’s Journey. In his landmark 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell described this journey as a cycle: the hero leaves home, faces trials and dangers, overcomes them, and returns transformed—often bringing newfound wisdom or a gift to share. Filmmaker George Lucas famously studied Campbell’s book as he was creating his epic Star Wars saga.
But for Campbell, the Hero’s Journey wasn’t just about storytelling—it was also a powerful metaphor for personal healing and growth.
“When the story is in your mind,” he said in The Power of Myth, “then you see its relevance to something happening in your own life. It gives you perspective on what's happening to you…. These bits of information from ancient times … have to do with deep inner problems … and if you don't know what the guide-signs are along the way, you have to work it out yourself.”
The Hero’s Journey Retreat draws on this wisdom to help guide and empower us as gay men on our own personal journeys.