Erick DuPree is an anthropologist, author, and essayist.

His work examines how men are shaped by story — by literature, religion, ritual, and the cultural scripts they inherit about power, restraint, desire, and worth.

So much of what we are handed about courage, strength, and virtue arrives already formed, already rigid. It tells us what we should be before we have learned how to listen.

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A man practicing meditation outdoors on a rocky ledge near a river in a foggy forested valley, with an overlay of a large compass graphic and the text "Mindfulness for Men" and "A 7-day field guide to stillness, strength, and self-trust."
E-book cover titled 'Devotions for the Brave: Meditations for Tender Strength in Uncertain Times' by Erick Dupree, featuring a photo of a person's hand resting on their knee, with visible tattoos, on a dark background.

Devotions for the Brave is a quiet, luminous book of short spiritual meditations for people who are trying to stay tender in a hard world.

Organized as a five-part journey through the compass point, North (Stillness), East (Beginning), South (Fire), West (Letting Go), and Center (Return), each section offers brief hymns, prayers, and reflections designed to meet you exactly where you are. These are not teachings to master or rules to follow, but gentle companions for the moments when you are standing still, taking a risk, grieving, wanting, or simply breathing through another ordinary day.

Each piece can be read in a minute or lingered over like a small candle. Together they form a slow, honest devotional practice for courage, self-trust, and the ongoing work of being alive.

Devotions for the Brave is for:

People who are tired of being told to be stronger when what they really need is to be truer.

It’s for readers who feel deeply, who overthink, who carry quiet grief or unspoken longing, and who are still showing up anyway. It’s for anyone in a season of beginning again, holding steady, burning with desire or anger, or learning how to let go of something that once felt like home.

This book is for those who don’t necessarily call themselves “spiritual,” but who still ache for meaning, grounding, and a way to make sense of their inner life. It’s for the ones navigating change, healing, identity, love, loss, or simply the strange work of being human.

If you’ve ever felt tender and brave at the same time, this book was written for you.

A man with a beard and tattoos on his arm sitting and holding his chest, eyes closed.

Dr. Erick DuPree is an anthropologist (PhD, Queen’s University), author, and yoga and meditation teacher. He is the editor of the anthology Men & the Goddess and a longtime facilitator of spaces devoted to reflection, embodiment, and inner work.

His writings and teaching explore the reclamation of self, evolving ideas of masculinity, and what it means to live in conscious relationship with others. Devotions for the Brave is his first work of meditations on tender strength in uncertain times.

Through scholarship, spiritual practice, and community-centered work, Erick helps people find language for their inner lives and courage for their outer ones.