Hi. I'm Conor McMillen.

Like everyone, my story is long, complex, and nuanced. If you join me in circle or on a backpacking trip, you will hear much more of it, but this is the brief version.

I am a husband, father, IFS-trained coach, and certified Wilderness First Responder. My background includes struggles with depression, anxiety, and addiction. In 2012 I began changing my relationship with drugs and alcohol through Internal Family Systems and a number of less conventional means. Two years later I trained formally at IFS-Institute, founded by Dr. Richard Schwartz, and I have been doing this work professionally ever since.

My son was born in 2019. Being his father is the most fulfilling experience of my life, and the deepest reason I wanted to become the best man I could be — for him, and for myself. Within months my relationship with his mother was strained, and moving into my own space became the most painful decision of my life. Both the love of fathering him and the pain of leaving his home pushed me into men's work.

There I began to see why my romantic relationships had so often left me strained: an overattachment to the feminine I had been carrying for years. For the first time, I had a circle of men I trusted to be vulnerable with. That changed how I enter relationship now. My wife and I meet each other as peers, king and queen, and we are building a harmonic house together.

Heart and Sword grew out of that experience. We do men's work in Austin through groups and backpacking retreats. Backpacking is hard, and men need hard things — but nature is also loving. It grounds us and returns us to ourselves, to something greater. The word "God" turned me off for a long time; what changed was the experience of it — the mystery, the sacred space, the unknown.

What we do together is simple. We feel what is here, and what we could not feel before. I call forward the four archetypes — King, Warrior, Magician, Lover — to help men understand both their gifts and their shadows. The aim is mature masculinity: vulnerable and strong, sovereign and interconnected.

My wife is Ishaiah. My son is Ilya. We live in Austin.

Thank you for being here.