Core Values

Our Mission

MenHealing provides healing resources for men and male-identified individuals, age 18 and older, who have experienced sexual victimization during childhood and/or as an adult. Our range of services include educational resources as well as in-person and virtual healing events for skills-building, connection, and community. 

Core Values Tree

Core Values Definitions & Action Statements

MenHealing is grounded in principles of inclusion and equality, intentionality, consensus decision making, and collaboration (internally and externally).

Self-Care

Through caring and healing for ourselves and the entire MenHealing community we create a solid core from which we can offer our care and healing to others. We achieve this by recognizing and using mind and body practices of Safety, Self-awareness, Strength, Vulnerability, Resiliency and the Equitable Honoring of Self and Others.

This means:

  • We use trauma sensitive approaches to create healthy environments where we can explore our personal and relational needs.
  • We promote opportunities to realize, explore and appreciate each of our needs.
  • We encourage the building and use of a relaxed, caring, open power to achieve our personal goals, hopes and dreams.
  • We foster a nurturing environment where we can express our self-care needs, boundaries and requests of others.
  • We actively offer and promote body and mind practices that make it possible to regulate and maintain our mental and physical needs.
  • We believe it is important to not only accept ourselves and others, but honor ourselves and others.

Relationship

The heart of our work at MenHealing emerges from careful attention to healthy relational dynamics, within the culture of our organization as well as in all interactions with others.

This means

  • We acknowledge and embrace the inherent goodness and value of others and ourselves.
  • We assume good intent in the spirit of positive regard.
  • We believe that kindness and respect are the foundation of our organizational culture and our work with survivors.
  • We believe that authentic relationship allows for deeper support and healthier conflict in our teamwork.
  • We address challenges in our relationships with direct and compassionate engagement.
  • We work to deepen our awareness of how our identities impact our relationships.

Transparency

Men healing is dedicated to creating an environment of transparency, which is an ongoing process of openness between all involved, including participants, team members, board members, and the public that creates trusts and facilitates the empowerment, authenticity, and growth of the organization.

This means:

  • We have clearly articulated policies that we agree upon and adhere to.
  • We communicate about what we’re doing and why.
  • We engage in open communication about organizational dynamics.
  • We take personal and organizational responsibility to address conflict, microaggressions, and implicit biases.
  • We clearly articulate “rules of engagement” for participants in small and large groups at MH events.
  • We strive to be explicit about qualifications and expectations of team members.

Integrity

We at MenHealing aspire toward integrity by doing what we say we will do and practicing what we preach. We seek to be consensual by acknowledging in advance that participation does not take place without mutual recognition of what is to take place.

This means:

  • We strive to be consistent in our stated goals, intentions, and actions.
  • We strive to be courageously honest.
  • We act ethically toward those we work with in the MenHealing community and to the world at large.
  • We are responsible and accountablefor our actions.
  • We value criticism of our actions and see challenges as sources of growth.
  • We believe that diversitycontributes to more effective care andallows us to learn from our blind spots and biases.

Intentionality

MenHealing is committed to the individual and collective practice of intentionality. Mindfuland Somatic action,presence and reflection on the goals and pathways we seek to travel are the roots of self-care, relationship, transparency, and integrity. Intentionality leads to purposeful words and action.

This means:

  • We set goals with meaningful reflection and careful consideration of intended and unintended impact.
  • We make ongoing adjustments to enhance congruence between values and actions.
  • We recognize that intersectionality of diverse perspectives contributes to collective strength and sustainability.
  • We strive to honor our organizational mission and all our relationships.
  • We seek to be responsible in non-defensively hearing or addressing any harms that occur when impact and intention do not match.
  • We exercise humility and courage to change words or actions that are not congruent with our focus on self-care, relationship, transparency, and integrity.