Man Up to Cancer 2025 Gathering of Wolves: The Brotherhood I Never Expected to Find

Thirty years after a neurologist told me I might not make it to graduation, I found myself in the woods of Pennsylvania with 130 men who also lived through cancer.

The Man Up To Cancer Gathering of Wolves is not a self-help retreat or a corporate offsite with trust falls. It is scarred men in flannel, IV ports, wheelchairs, scars, prosthetics, and stories too heavy to tell at the dinner table.

I walked in thinking I was there to listen, and say a few words.

When I introduced myself as a thirty-year survivor, jaws dropped. I forget how rare that is. Most of these men are in active treatment or a handful of years out. For them, my survival was not trivia. It was possibility.

I have spent decades building communities. I created Stupid Cancer, staged eighteen conferences, produced a movement, and reached millions. I thought I had seen every configuration of patient community possible.

I had not.

I had never sat in a circle with scores of men stripped of bravado, stripped of politics, stripped of performance. It was raw. It was spiritual. It hit me harder than I expected.

Trevor Maxwell built this thing from scratch. Thousands of men now gather online under his banner, and once a year they show up in the flesh, men who have been told they are dying and refuse to do it alone.

Watching Trevor pull this off feels like a generational handoff. He may have taken cues from Stupid Cancer, but Man Up To Cancer is its own beast.

I spoke. I listened. I laughed. I cried. I made friends I will never forget and some I may never see again. That is the reality of cancer.

You bury people.

You learn to live with that. You do not get used to it.

You just stop being surprised.

Walk It Off, the documentary I helped create about men with cancer, showed me the need for this kind of space. Gathering of Wolves made me live it. Just the ugly and the beautiful in the same breath.

I left committed.

I will serve as an ambassador, a loudmouth, a funnel, whatever role gets more men in this room. Because most men still think vulnerability is weakness. They armor up for their families, bury their fear, and suffer alone.

This community rips that open.

It tells men they can cry, break down, and still be men.

So here is my ask. If you are a man with cancer, or you know one, tell them about Man Up To Cancer. Do not wait until it is too late.

And here is my reflection.

We can fill a camp in Pennsylvania with men who found each other. We can build movements from scratch. Why then do patients in this country have no organized political lobby? Why do we show up for each other in the woods but not in Washington?

That question should haunt us more than any diagnosis.