The Isolation That Nearly Killed Him
Trevor Maxwell was 41 years old, living what he thought was a normal middle-class life with two daughters, when he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in March 2018.
“It was like a life asteroid,” he says. “You have one life before cancer and then all of a sudden I went from middle of my life raising a family to fighting for my life as a stage four colon cancer patient.”
But the physical battle wasn’t what nearly broke him.
It was the isolation.
Trevor began to withdraw from friends and family. He struggled with depression and anxiety. His mental and emotional burden, far exceeding the physical toll, drove him into a dark place where he felt utterly alone.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but that was actually the genesis for Man Up to Cancer,” he reflects.
He reached out for help, connecting with others through Colontown, the colon cancer community, and the Dempsey Center in his home state of Maine. But in every support space he entered, he noticed something striking:
The vast majority of people seeking help were women. The ratio was almost always three to one; women far outnumbering men.
Men, it seemed, weren’t showing up to ask for help. They were isolating instead.
Trevor realized he’d uncovered a critical problem, and as someone who’d been there, in that place of isolation and desperation, he knew something had to change.
The Birth of a Movement
In late 2019 and early 2020, Trevor launched what he called “a movement” called Man Up to Cancer.
It wasn’t a slick brand with a marketing budget. It was a call to action.
The simple message: Men don’t have to go through cancer alone.
The evidence was clear: isolation during cancer leads to worse mental health, substance abuse, broken relationships, and even worse medical outcomes. The old model, rugged individualism, handling it alone, not burdening others, wasn’t serving men anymore.
“It’s not rocket science really,” Trevor says. “If you can clearly tell men in the cancer space, ‘If you isolate during cancer, you’re going to have worse mental health, substance abuse, broken relationships, worse medical outcome,’ that’s a pretty practical appeal to them to say, you know what? Let’s rethink this.”
What started as Trevor’s personal call to action gained momentum when Joe Bullock, someone he’d met in cancer spaces, became the first major ally. Joe didn’t just listen, he became an advocate alongside Trevor.
“When I started putting it out there, this Man Up to Cancer idea, Joe was the first follower to come on board and say, this is what I want to change too,” Trevor recalls.
One voice became two. Two became many. The grassroots momentum built quietly but steadily through Facebook groups, a podcast, social media, and word of mouth, men telling other men about this community where they could actually talk about what they were going through.
How Advocacy Became Organization
What makes Trevor’s story remarkable is how deliberately he balanced the organic growth of a movement with the structure needed to scale it.
In the early days, it was pure grassroots. Men were showing up, opening up, sharing vulnerably, and offering to help each other. The community was building itself.
But when membership grew beyond a thousand people, Trevor and a core group of six men, the “OG six” as he calls them: Trevor, Joe Bullock, Don Helson, Danny Riggs, Jay Abramovich, and Mike Riehle, made a strategic decision: create structure to serve what the community actually needed.
“At the beginning it was just I saw the problem personally and I jumped into that personally,” Trevor explains. “But what you need to actually affect change in the world is people getting on board. Nothing ever changes in the world from one individual.”
They asked their members: What do you need from us? What would help?
The answer was consistent: Get together in person.
Virtual meetings helped men avoid isolation, but there was something irreplaceable about sitting with other men who understood the cancer journey in a way nobody else could. The bond forged in a room full of men all walking the same hard road couldn’t be replicated on a Zoom call.
So they created the Gathering of Wolves, an annual retreat for men impacted by cancer. It wasn’t a corporate event with keynote speakers and breakout sessions. It was men gathering to be with each other, to support each other, to remember they weren’t alone.
From that single program, Man Up to Cancer evolved into three core offerings:
Retreats: Annual and regional in-person gatherings
Chemo Care Backpack Program: Sending care packages to men going through treatment
Local Chapters: Connecting men at the community level across North America
Each program grew organically from the feedback and needs of the membership. Each program was structured to serve the core mission: helping men avoid isolation during their cancer journey.
What Is An Advocate, Really?
When Trevor was diagnosed, he didn’t set out to become an advocate. He was Googling “What is a patient advocate?” and stumbling through the learning curve like everyone else.
But over time, he came to see advocacy clearly:
“An advocate is someone who sees a problem or there’s some change that needs to be made to better human life, to improve, to alleviate suffering, to improve quality of life for people. It’s about serving others.”
For Man Up to Cancer, Trevor defines an advocate as “a man in our community who is willing to raise his voice or be a role model in service of that change, in changing the world so that men feel more comfortable, so that men feel okay and make it normal for a man to ask for help when they’re going through cancer.”
The advocates in Man Up to Cancer are role models.
They’re the ones brave enough to be vulnerable. They’re the men who’ve been through the darkness and come out the other side, willing to show newer patients that recovery is possible. They’re the ones standing at retreats, sharing their stories, and by their very presence saying: “I’ve been here too. You’re not alone.”
“Another word that I use interchangeably in our community for advocate is role model,” Trevor explains. “Advocates to me are role models for others who are looking to improve their lives and that can show them the way to a better life while you’re going through cancer.”
These weren’t appointed leaders. They were organic, men who showed up, opened up, and others saw in them a path forward.
Measuring Impact by Quality, Not Quantity
When Trevor talks about how Man Up to Cancer measures success, he challenges a fundamental assumption most organizations make.
“The goal for me as a founder is not about a number,” he says. “It’s not about, oh, we need to get 10,000 members or 20,000 members. If your goal in helping people is just to hit a number without it having meaning behind it, then I just don’t know what the point is.”
Instead, Trevor focuses on a single question: Is being part of Man Up to Cancer improving your quality of life?
Everything else is secondary to that.
Man Up to Cancer measures impact through:
Surveys at the Gathering of Wolves asking detailed questions about impact and whether members would recommend the program to a friend
Feedback forms that allow members to share their experiences anonymously or by name
Testimonials that capture the stories of transformation
A new digital platform (migrating from Facebook) that will allow them to gather more comprehensive data from their members
“The more information we have from our members about their experience, the better we can help them with this cause of not isolating,” Trevor says.
This approach, quality over quantity, depth over growth for growth’s sake, is refreshingly countercultural. Most nonprofits obsess over member numbers. Trevor obsesses over member experience.
“I would like to reach another thousand guys even, but we want to reach them deeply. We want them to have a meaningful experience. We want to improve their lives,” he explains. “It’s about the quality of the programs more than the number itself.”
The Unmet Need That Keeps Growing
Trevor is acutely aware that Man Up to Cancer is reaching only a tiny fraction of the men who could benefit.
There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of men out there right now in the same place Trevor was in 2018 and 2019: isolated, struggling with mental health, feeling lost and not knowing where to turn.
“There is a vast unmet need for men going out there who are isolated and can benefit from community and our programs,” Trevor acknowledges.
This awareness drives the vision for the next decade.
The 10-Year Vision
If resources were unlimited, what would Trevor build?
“I would like for Man Up to Cancer to be a robust, thriving international nonprofit that has chapters available so that all around the world, really, I mean primarily North America to start, but 10 years from now,” he says.
Imagine you’re a man in Indianapolis who just got diagnosed with cancer. You’re freaking out. Your mental health is deteriorating. You’re spiraling like Trevor did.
In Trevor’s vision, you would hear about Man Up to Cancer. You would know it exists. You would be able to access their services, whether that’s a local chapter, a retreat, an online community, or something that hasn’t even been created yet but emerged from what men asked for.
And you would know something critical: You’re not alone walking this road.
“There’s a group of thousands of men who are out there walking this road with them, carrying this burden with them and is going to be there for them and with them throughout their cancer journey,” Trevor says.
Whether that journey leads to a cure, long-term survival, or end-of-life care, the community is there.
“That’s the dream,” Trevor concludes. “Man Up to Cancer grows organically into that really safe space for men for the social and emotional support in the cancer journey.”
Why Men Don’t Show Up (And What Changes When They Do)
At the heart of everything Trevor built is a fundamental truth: men process trauma differently than women.
This isn’t sexism or stereotype. This is neurobiology and culture colliding. Men are socialized to be strong, independent, self-reliant. Asking for help feels like failure. Showing vulnerability feels like weakness.
But when cancer strikes, the old rules don’t apply. The disease doesn’t care about stoicism. It doesn’t respect a man’s preference to handle things alone.
What Man Up to Cancer does is create permission, and community, for a different way.
When Trevor shows up at a retreat and shares his story, when Joe Bullock and the other core members are vulnerable, when newer members see that “tough guys” can also accept help and show vulnerability, something shifts.
“It’s a bond that’s hard to describe, which because you feel it,” Trevor says of the in-person experiences. “When you’re sitting with other men who are going through cancer, who are walking this hard road with you, there’s something very, very special there.”
The Accidental Founder Who Changed the Game
Trevor didn’t wake up in 2019 thinking, “I’m going to start a nonprofit.” He was a cancer patient struggling with isolation, reaching out for help, and noticing a pattern.
He’s what you might call an “accidental advocate,” someone who saw a problem, couldn’t unsee it, and felt compelled to do something about it.
“I definitely am an accidental advocate because I started seeing a problem,” he acknowledges. “I started really getting into it and encouraging guys to not isolate, but I didn’t realize that that actually could be seen as advocacy.”
But accidentally or not, what he built has likely saved lives. And it continues to do so every single day, every time a man considering isolation instead reaches out to a Man Up to Cancer community, every time a retreat attendee goes home and continues his treatment with less despair, every time a newly diagnosed man hears from another survivor that he’s going to be okay.
The organization has grown organically from a movement into a structured nonprofit with 40 local chapters and three established programs. But it hasn’t lost what made it special: it’s still fundamentally about men serving men, leaders serving by example, and a culture that says vulnerability isn’t weakness—it’s survival.
Connect With Man Up to Cancer
If you’re a man impacted by cancer, whether you’re newly diagnosed, in treatment, a survivor, or even a caregiver, Man Up to Cancer is free.
All programs are free. Membership is free. Because they know men going through cancer are already financially devastated, and they’re committed to removing barriers.
You can learn more and join at: ManUptoCancer.org
You can also find them on Facebook, Instagram, and through their growing network of local chapters across North America.
What Trevor Wants You to Know
“Outside my family, doing this work is the passion and privilege of my life,” Trevor says.
If you’re a man going through cancer, you don’t have to do it alone. There’s a wolf pack waiting for you, thousands of men who understand exactly what you’re facing and are ready to walk this road with you.
And if you’re someone who cares about a man fighting cancer, point him toward Man Up to Cancer. The best gift you can give him isn’t advice or platitudes. It’s permission to ask for help, and a community that understands.
If you’re interested in learning more about turning your own health journey into purpose and impact, subscribe to this Substack. Subscribers will be alerted first about the upcoming release of my book, From Patient to Advocate: Turning Pain Into Impact, coming this March for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.
