My father was the key figure of my life. Kind-hearted, brilliant, frighteningly talented, family-oriented, loving, charismatic — everyone who met him was swept up by him. He was my whole world, and just looking at him filled me with pride and love. But as I grew up and kept watching, I started seeing the cracks too.
 

Suddenly I saw that he was alone.
 

Suddenly, I realized we were actually "poor." Suddenly, I understood that things were hard for him — that he had no one to lean on, that everything was falling apart. He was pulling off aerial stunts and tricks under the tightrope just to keep his head above water. That despite his efforts to seem loving and happy on the outside... inside, he was being eaten alive.
 

The hard childhood memories. The trauma from the army. The difficult relationship with his parents. The impossible relationship with his wife. Debts that spiraled out of control. The hard physical labor that broke his back. The drive to succeed against the disappointment of every failed venture. The smoking habit that shadowed every moment of his life and blackened his lungs. The cancer that quickly caught up on him.

The more I grew, the more it hurt me to understand that my father believed it was his job to give us everything and carry it all alone.
 

Sadly, this story has no happy ending. My father died at 53 of lung cancer.

Years after he passed, one very specific pain kept haunting me: "Why didn't he ask for help?"
 

It took me years to understand the answer. It turns out men live with the sense that they have to carry everything alone. That even when the heart cracks, everything falls apart, and the house collapses, deep down they still believe that asking for help is the same as being "weak."
 

Many years later I met Guy — my husband-to-be (who's wonderful, head to toe). He introduced me to men's circles. My cynical radar was sure this was some hippie "sacred chanting circle" thing — but I was wrong.

Instead, I found completely ordinary men, simply willing to sit together and learn to talk about what weighs on their souls.
 

As "the female representative of Bo LaShevet," I want to pass on a message to the men reading this:

We need you.
 

Contrary to popular belief, we women — how selfish of us — genuinely need you to be well so that we can be well. You're everywhere, for God's sake. You're our fathers. Our partners. You're physically stronger than us, and we often need you there on our side, to protect us, comfort us, support us, stand by us.

From the women's side of the coin: a girl with a lighter-hearted father will be happier. A young woman with an involved, attentive father will learn to choose partners who won't hurt her and who treat her with respect. A woman whose husband is willing to talk about what he's going through will be calmer, and will feel she has someone to rely on.
 

We went through so much in recent years. It's easier for women to simply talk about what we're going through, but men are built differently (thank God). Bo LaShevet was born from Guy's and my wish to create that place for you — a place where you can feel you're not alone, where you can listen to each other, share what's on your heart, and ask for help.

I dedicate my part in this project to the memory of my beloved father, Nimrod Beery, whom I miss every day, and whom I wish had this kind of opportunity to live a better and lighter life.