The Hearth is an interactive map of healed masculinity. The idea is simple: the fire in a lot of men is the same fire whether it shows up as a wildfire or a hearth. Held well, it warms instead of burning.
The map. Eight transformations sit around a central fire: Suppression into Feeling, Isolation into Connection, Shame into Self-respect, Aggression into Protective strength, Control into Steadiness, Proving into Purpose, Armour into Embodiment, and Fear of tenderness into Wholeness. Open any of them and a small animation plays the wound turning into its healed form (or drag the slider yourself), next to a short placard with the research behind it, one practice and one affirmation.
Meditation. About seven minutes of guided breathing at roughly six breaths a minute, with one gentle suggestion per breath: settling in, a body scan, the eight affirmations, a future-self visualization and a slow return. There’s an optional generated drone and fire crackle underneath.
Tend the Fire. A little arcade game where 256 words fall as embers. Catch the ones that feed a healthy fire (feeling, rest, tenderness) and let the smothering ones fall. Every wound word has a healed opposite, the fire changes color as you level up, from red all the way to blue and purple, and there’s wind, rain, golden hearthstones and a slow-motion “Breathe” power along the way. When the fire goes out you get a radar chart of which of the eight themes you tended best, and a shared top-10 board that every device sees.
The research comes from 14 sources, from the APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men to studies on emotion suppression, affect labeling, social connection, self-compassion and slow breathing. It’s a reflective tool, not therapy.
I built it with Claude Code as one self-contained page with no build step. It pauses when you switch tabs and works with touch on phones.
