Love, Loss, Reinvention & Returning home to self with Aewon Wolf

So much of what we think we know about men is loudness. Achievement. Output. The scoreboard. The masculine that endures. The masculine that holds it together.

But in my conversation with Aewon, the artist the world knows as Aewon Wolf, rapper, songwriter, performer, poet of Durban pavements and spiritual seeker we discover something very different. Something quieter. Something softer. Something deeply human.

Aewon is a man of evolution. A man who has lived many lives inside one body. A man who is actively unlearning and redefining what power looks like and who gets to claim that power.

Aewon didn’t just arrive as an artist. He built himself through community, curiosity and quiet, the sitting still for long enough to explore the parts that weren’t serving him any longer and turning them into growth and wisdom.

When we unpack the topic of spirituality it doesn’t lead us into the intellectual, the conceptual, the mystical-for-performance. It leads us home to the heart, the body,  the relationship with self, and the quiet practice of being willing to meet yourself truthfully.

And love sits central inside this. Love as a compass. Love as a direction. Love as a way of sharing breath with others. Not the Hallmark version. Not the romanticised version. But the soul version. The version that calls you into deeper belonging. Unconditional love.

Of course, to speak of love, one must also speak of loss.

We speak about the passing of Arnold’s father, who’s stroke almost 10 years ago was a pivotal moment that didn’t just rearrange his world but forced him to ask himself who he was … when all the external identity drops away. 

To having him pass this year he doesn’t grieve his passing but celebrates his life as being one of his greatest teachers. The pain became a recalibrator and a mirror that asked him: What actually matters? What do you carry forward and what do you lay down?

For Aewon, the answer was simplicity. Stripping it right back to the bone. Minimalism. Living with less and feeling more.

Asking: What is enough? And realising that the less he carried the more space there was for truth. For breath. For softness. For love. For presence. For meaningful contribution.

He talks about how we lionise men for their armoured growth, stoic strength, force and hustle, but what about the men who choose softness? Who chooses tenderness? Who chooses interiority? Vulnerability has always been our most advanced technology. The lie is that it is a weakness. The truth is that it is mastery. Being willing to be seen, soft hearted is scary. It is here that reinvention becomes sacred work.

We speak about the identity of who he was, who he is now, and how the artist and the man began to integrate. No more splitting. No more costumes. No more burning parts of himself down and choosing a version that performs better for the world. Instead, returning to source. Returning to the beginning. Returning to self-authored truth.

Aewon is not a man trying to be one thing. He is a man willing to become. And through becoming he shows us what is possible when a man gives himself permission to evolve.

This conversation feels like a gentle invitation. A reminder that men’s stories hold depth and nuance when they are given safe rooms to land inside of. Rooms like The House of Motherly where courage, softness, pain, reflection, truth, and humour are equally welcome at the table.

If there is one thread that runs through this entire conversation it is this:

Love is the answer and the more we strip away what the world told us we had to be … the more we return to who we actually are.

And perhaps that is the ultimate act of bravery: not to build a bigger armour but to lay it down.

Listen to the podcast here.

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SUNDAY TRIBUNE