Shaka Senghor: A Complex Hero

Hello and welcome to Man Enough. I'm Justin Baldoni.

I'm Liz Plank.

I'm Jamie Heath.

And listen, I'm not even gonna pretend like we haven't recorded this episode because we have.

We did.

Took a lot. Again, so many notes.

I love how you take notes.

You do for myself. It's just you make me feel because even and then I reflect on it and I write it down because we have such a such incredible guests who have such incredible wisdom.

We recorded this episode and it is, it is powerful. And we have all been deeply affected by this incredible man that we have today, Shaka Senghor. And was in prison for murder, solitary confinement for years, father to two best selling authorities, activist, speaker, mentor, incredible human being. And we've all been just deeply affected by it. And I just can't wait for people to hear this episode.

And can I add something to that too? I want to be clear because we've had a few different guests on that have had experience in prison. In no way are we condoning behavior that leads to being in prison or being incarcerated. Right. This is not the point of that. The point is that there are human beings that suffer and experience prison as a result of oftentimes their own doing. But it's not their doing alone that we as a humanity and community are all part and connected to each other. So what got them there in the first place to make such choices. And that's what we're trying to explore and understand and talk about. We just want to talk about it with real people and see their humanity irrespective of those choices.

Amen with that. Here we go. We'll be right back. This is man enough.

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Hello and welcome back to Man Enough. So every once in a while we have somebody come in the studio that changes the vibration, the energy and just grounds it in a really special and unique way. And today is one of those days. My man, Shaka Sengur. Thank you for being here.

Thank y' all so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I've been looking forward to the conversations.

We have been looking forward to it. And I know, you know, we talked about you before you got in and we met you, and I can just feel everybody. I'm looking at everybody. I just feel the energy of everybody. And looking at my brother Jamie here, who's feeling a lot of different ways right now, and I just. Thank you. You just walk with, like, truth. It's like it just comes off of you, and I just appreciate that because that's why we're here. We're always here to get to the truth. So thank you.

Thank you so much for that. I'm definitely adding that to my website. I Walk with truth goes into my bio now. So.

Speaking of bios, we got a long one.

Liz Plank, you do the man.

Shaka Senghor, you're an author. You're an entrepreneur. You're the head of diversity, equality, and inclusion at Trip Actions. You're the president of Chaka Senghor, Inc. And founder of Redeemed Sports. Sol S O L E. Love that. Your memoir, Righting My Life, Death and Redemption in an American Prison, was on the New York Times bestseller list, the Washington Post bestseller list. You are a leading voice in criminal justice reform, and your story speaks to the human impact of mass incarceration today. Your priority is shifting societal narratives through storytelling, through developing workshops through that are highly entertaining, but also have deep social impact, which is the intersection we really try to have here. We cannot wait to talk about all of those things with you today. Thank you for being here.

No, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about being here because I believe being present in a moment is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. So I'm excited to be here. Ready to meet.

We have so much to get into today, but let's start. Let's start with the first question we always ask our guests, which is, when was the last time that you didn't feel enough?

I would say the last time I didn't feel enough was July this past year. My younger brother was murdered. And I remember flying home and just one as one of the leaders of my family and just stepping up and thinking about how to take the burden off my parents who were burying a child. And it was really difficult. And it has been difficult to navigate grieving because I also was convicted of murdering a man. And so where I didn't feel enough at is in the ability to create space for me to actually grieve without the guilt of a decision I made when I was 19 years old and how that impacted a family. So There were moments when I was home and you know, navigating my family's grief and just trying to support them. But those feelings of guilt just continued to return. And so what I did is focused on the task at hand, like helping move everything along and being an anchor for the family. And then when I returned home to la, I dove right back into fatherhood with my nine year old. Cause I didn't take him on the road. And I dove back into work and I began to assess, like how, how does one grieve when there's so much guilt attached to act that, you know, played out when I was 19 years old. So there's definitely something that I'm still navigating, you know, and I think I've learned out of survival how to be there for myself, to get me through the moment of the thing I haven't quite got to the space in life that I aspire toward, which is to allow others to support me in that way.

Oh my God.

I'm so sorry for your loss, brother.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Life's always two things at once.

Yeah.

And so when you were 19, you murdered somebody. And when your brother was murdered, was it almost like all the work you had done to heal and repair what you had done just came back up? Is that, is that kind of what you're describing?

Yes. You know, it's one of those things where a lot of my work, in addition to criminal justice has centered around anti gun violence and, you know, being a mentor to other young men and women who are growing up in, you know, very challenging circumstances and navigating, you know, high levels of gun trauma, you know, within our family. You know, there's been eight of us that have been shot. There have been at least four of us who have went to prison for shooting someone else after we were shot. And so there's this very vicious cycle that I don't think most people in American society can even begin to grasp. And so what was different about it was that my brother wasn't from the streets, he wasn't in street culture, and, and, you know, he's the baby boy. And it's like that that wound gets reopened. Thinking about the experiences of the family that, you know, I've contributed to their devastation, you know, and sitting around a table and watching my mother, you know, bury my stepmom's, you know, prepare to bury her baby boy and, you know, being able to sit in that and understand that that's what I contributed to another family, you know, is there are things that, you can do that are harmful to other people, that you can repay them. You know, if you steal somebody's laptop or phone, you can reimburse them for that, for that loss. But when you contribute to taking someone's love, one from them, like, you can never, you know, repay that, you know, you can never bring that person back, you know. Prior to murdering, shooting and murdering Dave, I was shot about 17 months, 16 or so months prior. I was 17 years old. And when I went to the hospital, I was patched up. They extracted two of the bullets, they left one bullet in, and I was back in my neighborhood in like a couple of days. And so as a 17 year old kid, I returned to my neighborhood with this volatile cocktail of emotions. You know, I was angry, I was afraid, I was uncertain about my life, you know, the value of my life. And, you know, I was paranoid. And so I began to carry a gun every day. And growing up in prison, that story plays itself out over and over and over. That narrative is pretty much consistent.

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And we really haven't talked about gun violence on this podcast. And the link between masculinity and gun violence is so, so, so crucial to talk about and you've started to talk about in your answer. And I'm wondering if you can, you know, go into that more specifically and particularly, you know, when we don't protect black men in this country and actually we endanger them every day with these structural problems that we have in our society. They have to protect themselves. And that's sort of what you're describing, became a gun for you.

Absolutely. And I just want to make a note. I wasn't a black man. I was a black boy.

Yeah.

And that's something that we don't create space for black boys to be kids. And so I was a kid trying to navigate the complexities of a high level trauma. And I remember writing in my memoir, when I was no longer allowed to cry tears, I cried bullets. And that is true for so many young men who are forced to repress their emotional frailties. Like, I couldn't go and stand amongst my friend and be like, I'm actually scared to stand on the corner again because I got shot, because I would have been ridiculed or I would have been told I was soft or whatever the things were. And I don't think that my parents at the time had the emotional sophistication to even understand that level of trauma, because I was the third of their children who had been shot at that point. And it was shocking. And at one point was a point of contention with my dad and I, because my dad was worked in mental health. And I think, like many people who are navigating, working for a living, sometime when they come home, they want to take their hat off. And, you know, the other things that I learned about my dad, who's been just a great bearer of gifts when it comes to his truth and his frailties and his missteps, is that later on he was able to acknowledge those areas of life where he was so consumed of trying to raise multiple children that he missed a mark on some things. And I'm sure I didn't make it easy. That complexity of a father navigating his son sitting in the hospital, and then eventually navigating his son being in prison. And so that reality exists in our community at an extremely high level. Right.

That he. He was traumatized as well. And it's that transgenerational trauma, traumatized people taking care of people who are also traumatized.

Can you. Can you give us a glimpse of your. When you were a boy, as long as you can remember. Just give us, like, a quick synopsis of your life, what that trauma looked like or what your joy looked like, or whatever your version was up until you, let's say, till now.

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I was a very curious kid, very smart, very precocious in a lot of ways. But I grew up in a household where physical abuse was normalized. My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. And for years, I struggled to navigate that. You know, my parents decided to separate when I was about 11 years old, and there was nothing as devastating as my parents breaking up. You know, when I was a kid, I remember weekends and holiday breaks with my dad, which was a very different experience, even from the way that he fathered when we were home with my mother compared to when he fathered, how he fathered when we lived with him during those times. And it was dramatically different. You know, my dad is super chill, super laid back, and, you know, that Also was unsettling because my mother was more structured and more rigid and more kind of the disciplinarian. And then they started getting back together, and they would break up, and, you know, and that lack of balance, you know, kind of allowed me to really slip through the cracks. I stopped performing as well in school. I stopped even caring about school. The things that used to excite me as a kid, like, I used to love to draw, and I remember just giving up on those things. And, you know, my mother's relationship and my mother and I's relationship became very contentious. And eventually I ran away when I was about 13 years old, 13, 14. And, you know, I was this naive kid. You know, I wasn't completely clueless about the streets. You know, I had, you know, grew up in the neighborhood, tons of boys, and we got into all type of mischief, but nothing really serious. And I found myself being seduced into the crack cocaine trade. And it's something that happens with young kids far too often in our communities and where they're kind of brought into this. This new family that's really deeply entrenched in their own trauma. And I found myself caught up in that culture.

And your other brothers as well?

Yes. When I got out of prison in 2010, it was the first time that all three of us were free since about 1988.

So let me ask you few questions. So what I hear is your family raised in circumstances that I assume didn't have a lot of money or on the lower end.

Well, we were working class. My dad was in the military. He was in Air Force Reserves, and he also worked for the state. So, you know, I think that the separation created space for a lot of things to happen, because it went from taking care of one household to taking care of two households. And so, you know, and there were other things that wasn't, you know, I know kind of like the narrative is around why so many people hustle is rooted in, you know, financial lack. I think for us, it was more of this emotional void, you know, coupled with the physical abuse in the household and the emotional abuse. And. And to me, that bankruptcy is far more damaging than money could ever be or the lack of money could ever be.

Well, what I'm wanting to get to is, so you got brothers who grew up in the circumstances that y' all did, whatever that may have been. All of you had some run ins with the law, experienced prison, not something that you want for your own kids. So I have a question, and it's really a rhetorical question, because I Know the answer to this. Are all you guys bad seeds? What happened? What made you go down this path? Is it cause you all fucked up? Cause you're not worthy? And cause since the time you was born, this was just your path. You was gonna be fucked up, which I don't believe. What do you think, allowed you to come to a place that, upon reflection, you know, was not necessarily the best path and the one that you wouldn't want for your children? What caused you, do you think, in your family to be there?

Yeah, that's a great question. It's a fair question. I don't think we were bad seeds at all. I think that we were kids who reacted to the trauma of the environment, specifically within our household. I don't think we talk enough about the trauma that's inflicted on young black kids, specifically. We grow up with the narrative where you hear comedians laugh and joke about trauma that exists in a household. You know, the beatings and the beatings that are a result of a parent's anger and their frustration with life and whatever other trauma they've experienced. And, you know, even in talking about my mother, you know, part of our healing, which took a long time, you know, and I think we're still on that journey, was rooted in me understanding, like, the level of trauma that. That she had experienced. And so I think most of the horrors that was inflicted upon me as a child was at the hands of adults who I'm sure had their own trauma. You know, as a dad and as a man, I can't even imagine providing a kid with drugs or a gun. Whereas when I was growing up, that was normalized behavior. And so my reflection was rooted in listening to the stories of other men I was incarcerated with. You know, most of us went to prison when we were between 16 and 19 years old. And most circumstances, you know, the conversations around our personal trauma, the narrative was the same. You know, household abuse, sexual abuse, drug abuse, high levels of gun violence, you know, physical abuse. You know, getting beat up in the neighborhood and not really having a space to unpack that prior to getting out of prison. I was working in the law library, and I came across this book called Houses of Healing. And I began to read this book. And I asked a librarian who I worked for, you know, would he support me in organizing the class. And I thought that, you know, maybe, you know, three or four guys would come in and we would talk about, you know, the things that we had experienced in life. And the first session was about six guys, and it was the first time that some of these men shared, that they had actually cried as we began to talk about the abuse that took place in the household. Within a couple of weeks, that class was at capacity, and there were men who had been in prison for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, all in this one space, crying and sharing stories of their trauma and their traumatic experiences. And so those moments are reflecting on my own life. And, you know, I've done a lot of it. You know, I spent seven years in solitary confinement. At one point, I was in solitary confinement for four and a half years straight. And what happened was I got a letter from my oldest son, and he told me that his mother had told him why I was in prison. And as a father, that was devastating. Not just to know that she had shared it with him, but I didn't know the context, and I didn't have a real way of having a conversation with him at the time. But what I knew is that I owe my son a father. And I didn't know at that point whether I was getting out of prison. But what I did know is that whether I got out of prison or not, I could live my life in a way that my son could say, you know, my dad was knocked down, but he wasn't knocked out. You know, he made choices to better his life despite his circumstances not being better. And so that sent me on this kind of journey of journaling and finally being honest with the things that had happened to me. You know, when I talk about personal trauma, like, if I was to lay out the roadmap of all the things I experienced, you know, it seems like this is impossible to happen to one human being. But writing in that journal really allowed me to, for one, reassign responsibility of things that I had internalized. So, like, my lack of self worth had, you know, that basically had been beaten to me. And so to unpack that and realize that I wasn't responsible. I was a kid, and I wasn't responsible for the behavior of adults, but I had internalized that. And that journaling really was liberating, you know, in a way that I didn't even know was possible up until I began to, like, write all of the things that I felt and to be honest with myself. And so I. I would just stay up late, you know, standing by my cell door. Cause, like, they cut the power off so you don't have, like, lights and things like that. But the little sliver of light is how I would stand. And I would just write, you know, whatever I felt in the moment. Sometimes it was anger. Most of the time it was anger. Early on I wrote what I felt, you know, in disappointment, you know, the people who abandoned me. And I was able to write about what I felt I had just stuffed down inside, you know, as a child. And so that was kind of like that reflective healing path forward.

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Can ask you about the writing and the anger. So, so many, so many things. I want to dive into that parallel. I think every man's journey with masculinity and I think one of them, regardless of our where we were raised, the level of trauma we were, we experienced, I think pretty much every boy can relate to this idea of not being able to cry. And you know something, you had, I think you'd written this in your book, but when you left the hospital after being shot multiple times, nobody hugged you. That gets me. Nobody asked if you were okay. Nobody. Nobody told you it wasn't your fault. Nobody asked you if you needed to cry. First of all, I'm so sorry. And second of all, so many men have experienced their version of that. So when you were talking about isolation and my distant parallel is in the deep healing work I'm doing right now, I'm having a lot of anger come up and I don't know where it's coming from. But just on the other side of that anger is just a well of tears that are just waiting to come up that weren't allowed to come up when I was a boy. And I'm wondering if after that anger, you tapped into that reservoir of tears and if that they just started to.

Come out.

I. I would say it took longer than I anticipated. But first, I want to say thank you for that. Like, that means a lot. You know, I. Growing up as, you know, a black boy in tough circumstances, you know, hugs or an assessment of how I felt wasn't a normal thing. You know, when I began journaling, one of the things that I realized is that I hadn't cried in years. And it was the badge of honor that I had wore as a kid, which really was a shield, you know, a protective shield. It was scary because I didn't know if I had feelings. And I remember being in a cell, and there was, like, an anniversary of, like, roots on, and they were showing clips, and I remember just, like, a sparkle of a tear came, and I was overjoyed. You know, I wrote about it in my journal of, like, I know that feeling. Like, okay, I know it can happen, right? And it wasn't a full cry, but it was just that. That emotional, you know, tug at the heart. It wasn't until a couple of years later, I was on a visit with a friend, a woman who at the time, I was. We had broke up. I was in prison breaking up with women. Whole other story. But she was still a friend, and she had come to see me after I had been placed in solitary without cause. You know, she came up, she was like, I just want to come up and see you. And during this time, I was kind of getting prepared to go to the parole board. I still had about a year and a half or so. And we were just talking, and she was like, what do you hope for your life after incarceration? And I was like, I just want to be a dad, you know, I just want to be a father to my children. And in the midst of saying that to her, like, just the tears just came out of nowhere, and she, like, almost panicked, you know, she was like, hey, hey, hey, hey. Prison visiting room. Are you going be good on the yard when you go back? And I was like, you know, I'm an OG on the yard. And, you know, I feel. And I'm like, if I wasn't, I would be good, because this is what it means to be human. And, like, I want to go home as a human being. Like, I don't want to go home as somebody who's been so traumatized by the system that I can't connect with other human beings. And most importantly, you know, my son and my dad and my family and my community. And so it was just the most beautiful experience and the complexities of the environment. And since then, you know, I think it's so important, you know, to be emotive and to really be able to express all of who I am as a human being. And I don't think that tears are only meant for sad moments. You know, I think there's tears of joy and celebratory tears. You know, and so I'm pretty good with expressing how I feel. I think it's important.

Tell us three quick things that bring you joy.

Three quick things that bring me joy.

Make you smile, that fill your spirit.

Up where you can't take my spirit. Watching my 9 year old son Sekou discover something new. And he is just a super excitable soul. Like he gets excited about everything, anything new that piques his curiosity and it's just the most beautiful thing to see is magic. And my personality type, I'm not a really excitable person. I'm very. Just kind of like chilling. But it brings me immense joy to see my son just discovering new things and getting excited about it. Creativity brings me joy. You know, anytime I've written something that really is an expression of my soul, like I just get, I'm just so hyped up, you know, I'm like, I'm literally like my best all hype man. I do little dances when I finish the chapter, chapter. Things like that. And love, love, like really love is what brings me joy. You know, I think it's such a beautiful way to live life. You know, I was playing around and I wrote a piece the other day about things that men deny themselves that we shouldn't. And joy is one of those things. And smiles and so all those things are just rooted in love. You know, I love, you know, being in love. I love being in my family. I love loving my son as a father. You know, I love arts and creativity and those things are like the source of my joy. Even though I may not carry it in my demeanor, I'm truly, you know, an advocate for joy.

How about when the Pistons beat the Lakers? Bring you joy?

Oh, that brought me immense satisfaction.

Why do you think, why do you.

Think just jumping into masculinity here. Yeah, why do you think all of those things you just described we as men are not allowed to feel?

I just, I think that for one, we haven't created space for the honest conversations of why we deny ourself those things. And oftentimes they're rooted in our upbringing. You know, they're definitely rooted in this societal narrative. And it's not that we don't experience them, it's that we're kind of limited to the ways that we can experience them or express them. Recently when I was writing a new book, you know, I thought about.

You.

Know, I thought about Nipsey Hussle and his unfortunate demise. You know, I thought about Kobe Bryant and I thought about some of the images I Saw these beautiful images of men sharing tears. And unfortunately, it was as a result of a tragic moment. And I was like, why don't we see that normalized when it's a birth happening, when it's a wedding happening, when it's someone getting that business off the ground, graduating. And a lot of that is rooted in behaviors that go back historically, especially for black males. This idea that vulnerability can really create space for you to be exploited. And, you know, and I've had to navigate that, like, as a dad, like, you know, I'm constantly checking narratives when it comes to my son. He's truly a beautiful soul, and he's so full of love and he's so full of light. And I remember as he was starting to get off into school, and I started to think about, you know, other kids may not be kind to him because of this beautiful spirit and this ability to laugh. And what I realized, my responsibility, you know, one of my responsibilities as his dad, is to ensure that he always have full access to all of those emotions.

Yes.

And that he's affirmed for having those emotions. Every night we do affirmations. And, you know, part of those affirmations is, you know, I am love, you know, and love is a beautiful thing in prison. The reality is most of the men that I've encountered in there, they ultimately wanted love and acceptance and validation. And because those things were denied, they figured out ways to acquire a stand in, so to speak. You know, those stand ins being material acquisitions, you know, the ability to navigate having multiple women to affirm whatever insecurities that they have. And so I think we're now in a space where we have a great opportunity to shift the narrative. Like, we have way more accessibility to people than we've ever had before. Also realize, like, I'm privileged in the space, right. Because when I go talk to young guys in the streets, like, I did all the things that they're aspiring toward, when I talk to rappers, the things that they rapped about, I've actually lived. So there's an element of honesty that I can get to in a quicker way than, like, most therapists could ever get to. And, you know, I could tell you on those cell blocks, like, you know, watching men who are able to confront but also be supported in their emotional evolution and their emotional development, you know, it's a beautiful, you know, experience to witness in an unfortunately horrible and ugly environment.

Yeah. And I think it was in your interview with Oprah where, you know, you were talking about how a lot of men are seeking or taught to seek power, but really what they really want is validation. Right. What they really want is to feel like they matter to someone else. Right. Which is what we're all here seeking. And you talk about fatherhood so beautifully. And I think it speaks to mass. Incarceration doesn't just steal people's freedom. It steals parents away from their children. And in that way, it's not this issue that just affects people who do end up being incarcerated. It affects entire communities. And. Right. The. It's like we're all connected. So I'm wondering, as a father, you know, how do you see your relationship with your son being affected by incarceration or even in your entire family in the ways that it's. I'm sure some of your brothers and sisters may have children as well. How does that trauma get passed on? And particularly with boys? You know, we've talked on this podcast that there's, you know, research showing that, of course it affects daughters, but it really does affect boys in a different way, where there's a real emotional tol to have a parent incarcerated. So I'm wondering if you can speak to that.

Yeah, thank you for asking that question. You know, when I went on the journey of writing my latest book, you know, I had this kind of big idea. You know, I mentor kids all over the country, and I was like, well, I'm just gonna write to all these different type of sons I've met along the way. And as I was processing it, I was like, you know, I have two sons with very different experiences. You know, my oldest son, Jay, is 29 years old, and my youngest son, Sekou, is 9 years old. Jay was born three months after I was arrested. And our relationship was really shaped by prison visits, which were over 19 years. I may have seen my son 10 times and shaped by phone calls, in letters. And what happened for me was that I created a narrative about what our relationship was. I thought that these snippets of life, these letters, which I could read for months and just hold onto, was a real parenting relationship. And when I got out of prison, I realized that couldn't have been further from the truth. You know, I came home, and I treated my son as if he was a mentee who I was trying to help avoid all the pitfalls that I had taken. And that if I did my job, I can inspire him to navigate a dream that I have for myself, which was him working with my company and us riding off to the Sunset Crossing, and had never stopped to ask what his dream was or what his relationship to me. What was his relationship? Desires to me. And, you know, on the second hand, there was this reality that he had to now navigate, this man intruding his life, who he had only known through prison bars, phone calls, and stories that was told by the family. And often those stories was the glorification of a part of my life that no longer existed. And so our relationship has been very complex. It's been very contentious at times. It's been very distant at times. And then there's the other side, where I now have this amazing opportunity to raise a son whose life I've been in from the beginning. And I get to pour into him daily, and I get to affirm him daily, and I get to create space for him to just be the magical little human being that he is and to detach my ego from any outcome that his life will have. And as you can imagine, that creates a very complex emotional reality for me as a dad. I oftentimes don't feel adequate or that I failed my oldest son. You know, I have an incredible life. I have great life experiences at this point in my life. And to not be able to share them with, you know, my oldest son because of the complexity of our relationships, you know, that's something I navigate every day. You know, for every hug that I give my youngest son, Sekou, you know, I think about the hugs that my oldest son, Jay, has been deprived of, the wisdom that I'm able to share in real time, the opportunities I'm able to expose my younger son to. And my dad, you know, my dad is my complex hero in so many ways, because, you know, to the point of what you asked about, the question, how does this impact family? You know, when I was writing the new book, which is a series of letters to my sons, I went back and I began to read the letters that my dad wrote me in prison. And he gave up a lot of his life to step into the gap and to be the father that I couldn't be. And so there's this complex reality of, like, my dad bringing my son to see me in prison and what that must have meant for him. And he gave me the gift of those words and those experiences through letters. And it's why I chose to write the book in that fashion, because the gift of my father's letters was life saving. You know, we were able to debate, we argue, we healed, you know, we apologized. My father carried the weight of my incarceration as if he was responsible. And to help him reconcile that, you know, there were Times when I had to be his mentor, you know, I had to be his source of support and strength when he was navigating complex things on the outside. But rereading his letters while I was writing the book, it led me to interview my dad and to ask him all these questions about what that was. And like, now, you know, as a father of a 19 year old, precocious, creative, beautiful black boy, I now understand how devastating my incarceration was to my dad. And it's something that we don't talk about a lot, you know, when it comes to fathers. You know, I come from a family where the fathers are just such lovely men, like caring nurturers. You know, I can go to, you know, my uncle's house, they fix food as a part of care. You know, I'm a grown, able bodied man, but it's nothing to have them come and bring me a plate. You know, the way that they take care of family has never been rooted in just being financial providers. They're like caretakers. Like my dad, you know, I've watched him, you know, do my sister's hair and cook and do laundry. And when I think about, like, my role as, you know, Sekou's dad, as much as I'm able to provide him with, you know, all the opportunities, the greatest joy is in doing his laundry and folding his little clothes. You know, those things are forms of nurture that often, you know, don't get talked about when it comes to men and dads. And so when a dad is taken out of the home, you know, that void is there.

Yeah.

And for men who are listening, who want to be more nurturing fathers, where do they start? Because it seems like the men in your family already had it in them. How about men who are listening, who don't know how to do all those things or don't feel like it's a natural thing for them?

I think it starts with, at least for me, you know, like, I think there's a narrative trope that isn't always honest when it comes to, like, men and fatherhood. I think the easy trope is, you know, we're only providers, you know, financially, that's our only role in my experience. And I have, like, my friends are incredible fathers, all of them. And I realized that that was a criteria for friendhood is like, what kind of father are you? Yeah, Like, I don't care about how much money you make, I don't care about how tough you are. And I'm fortunate just to have friends who are like, yo, Bro, I'm going be a little bit late because I got to fix dinner, you know, for my kids, you know, I gotta give them a bath. And I actually think it's far more normal than, you know, we're credited for. But I would say for those who are struggling to navigate, that is, look around you. There's examples. You know, this may be your grandfather. You know, it may be your uncle. And of course, those things are complex, and they're intermixed with, you know. Yeah, my uncle taught me how to fight and stand up for myself, but he also taught me how to cook breakfast.

There you go.

And fold clothes. And I think that duality is something that is important for us to acknowledge. You know, it's not really about whether one thing is right or the other thing is wrong. It's just recognizing that those contributions do happen. And I would just say start with the small things, you know, things that you would do for yourself.

And.

And my son probably doesn't even understand how much joy I get out of, like, folding his little clothes up. Well, I make him fold them up his own. So now he's old enough, but I still wash his clothes, you know, and I still am able to do things for him that at this point, he may not even recognize, like, the joy that I get from it.

And what I love is that you value it. These, like laundry. Right. It's like laundry. But cleaning their clothes, it's such an act of love, and we devalue it in our society. But I love the way that you treat it like this divine thing that it is to take care of someone in that way.

Yeah. And I can see how much it means to him when it's the small things that shows that he's taken care of. Like, my son doesn't care about fly sneakers. He doesn't, you know, I'm a sneaker head, just to give some context to that. And he doesn't care about those things, you know, but what he does care about is conversations. You know, can we talk? You know, when he wants a hug and he can just roll up and hop on my lap, and he's 9 years old, and, you know, it's a space and, you know, and I can see in him, like, there's times where, you know, he wants me to make breakfast, and it's just something that he wants because that's an act of nurturing for him, you know, and it's honorable to do that, you know, it feels good. It feels good to my soul. And, you know, even days when I don't feel like doing it. You know, I think about, like, what does that mean to him? You know? And so I just think it's important to, like, honor those moments, because that's the other part of it. Like, sometimes we're doing things and we don't even honor them as a form of nurture. We're just like, oh, I gotta just take care of this business. Cause this is the thing, right? And sometimes that's how it feels like it's not. It doesn't always feel like an act of love. It feels like, dang, I got this one more thing to do and I'm busy and all that. But I think if we paused enough to just really appreciate, you know, the importance of those small things, that it just makes life more enriching for not just our children, but for us as fathers.

So do you think some of that appreciation comes from what happened with your first boy? And being in solitary confinement for so many years alone thinking. I mean, one of the things that I've noticed is it's not until I stop moving do I actually have the ability and the time to think and appreciate, right? Which is one of the effects, I think, that this patriarchal pyramid scheme, as Liz says, has on us, which is like, we have to stay moving, right? Stillness is death. That's what's come to me personally in my revelations. And my healing work is like, I have to keep moving because of the hustle. I gotta keep going. I gotta provide. I gotta protect. I gotta move, move, move, move. And in reality, right, we're not human doings. We're human beings. And it's not until we can be that we're able to, like, reflect and be like, oh, my God, I'm. I'm not gonna fold my boy's clothes forever. Or in prison, maybe. I don't even get. I don't even know what size he wears. I don't know what shoes. So is some of that maybe that you didn't have it also? And it's kind of giving you this new. You got a second chance. And you. You have this totally new perspective on fatherhood.

I think it's.

I don't want to belittle the fact that you're just naturally like that either. I just wanted.

But no, I think it's a combination of things. In nurturing my son, I get a chance to nurture the little boy in me, and I get a chance to acknowledge that there was a little boy whose life got stuck in kind of like, this time warp because of the trauma and you know, the things that are visceral to me when I think about my dad is those moments when I was a little boy and he would hug me and like the feeling of his beard, like on my little face. And so I think often about that, like when I hug my son or when there's a thing I'm doing and he comes up to me and he's like, dad, one day I'm a shave. And I think about when I was a little boy and just all the things like, my dad was my hero and he was bigger than life to me. You know, he was in the Air Force. And I remember when he would go to the reserves and he would come home with his uniform on and just like that sense of pride I felt as a boy, I would go to the Air Force base and I would get in those jets, you know, and I would sit there like, man, my dad, you know, are in these jets and he's in these big cargo planes and he felt super important. You know, he's like a master sergeant or something. But as a kid, he might as well had to been the colonel of the Air Force or whatever, the highest position. So part of that nurturing is recognizing that this little boy didn't get the love and care that he deserves. And so there's that part of it. And then with my, you know, obviously not being able to parent my oldest son, I recognized that had I not been went to prison, I wouldn't have been able to parent him the way that I parent my younger son now, because my life circumstances would have been dramatically different. And so, you know, the way that I think about it now is just like human beings are worthy of love and nurture and it's not just a gift that we give to others, it's also a gift that we give to ourselves. And our ability to really be able to hold space for another human being, not just in their sad moments, but in their joyful day to day moments. Like, I just think there's beauty in that and I think that that's ultimately the validating factor is like, can you be present enough to nurture those around you while recognizing that that feeds to your own nurturing? So that's kind of how I think about it.

You're listening to the Mad Enough podcast. We'll be right back.

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All right, welcome back to the MADF podcast. I have. I'm curious about something. So you have shared. Thank you so much for sharing a lot of your story, who you are. Part of why we do this podcast is to address. I know Justin doesn't like the word toxic masculinity. I understand why, but I don't know what the other term is. Whatever. But you know how masculinity has. It's wonderful things, but also how there's a lot of it that can be toxic depending upon how you use those tools and those wonderful things. So that's why we do this. Right. One is so that we can hear stories of people and how they are arriving and contributing to humanity through their own life, but not just to settle on that now. It's like, how do we use that? So I personally feel that at the end of my life, unless I've contributed to an ever advancing civilization, then my life was just about me. The reason why we go through this stuff, the reason why you are the man that you are now, is not only for yourself, but it's for humanity. One of the ways that keeps humanity down is this whole relationship that men have with ego and masculinity and the stuff. And the stuff we're taught that we're supposed to be. Keeping women down is one of the ways that we think that we need to rise up. What do you think now in your life? Why is this stuff important to you to share with young boys? What is your whole life story? What do you feel that purpose was about, like, going through it all, that how now does that contribute to the growth of humanity? And I specifically mean in relation to, like, being a man.

Yeah.

And. Or at least with masculinity.

I mean, I think a tribute to the growth of humanity is like, a really big thing to navigate. And I don't think I've thought about my life through that lens. You know, I think about where I come from, you know, that shapes everything that I do. You know, I come from, you know, the east side of Detroit. You know, I'm super proud of my hometown, those beautiful brown faces that I grew up amongst and how our lives took so many unfortunate twists and turns. You know, I can't tell you how many of my childhood friends were murdered or who are living out their lives in prison. I can't tell you how many of the young women in those communities have been molested, sexually assaulted, and treated, you know, as if their life had no value? You know, these are things that I bore witness to within my own family, within my community. And so that those drivers, for me, really get me, like, super fired up, you know, I remember walking into a high school, one of the high schools that I mentored at in Detroit. It's called Cody High School. And the police presence there was shocking to me. You know, the similarities between the uniforms and the prison guard uniforms. And I was just like, wow, this is. This is crazy to think at this point in our life, this is a reality for inner city kids. And I actually remember the first week I got out of prison. I went to a school that my youngest son's mother worked at at the time, and it was in worse condition than any of the prisons I had been to. And it spoke volumes to me about where we invest when it comes to black kids. And so those things drive me the way that I do. And, you know, part of it is, you know, I have two things that I share with my mentees. One is you have to take all excuses off the top. The world doesn't care about your excuses. It's crass. It's very harsh to hear. It's a fact. It's not a job application you can find in the world that has excuses on it. This is real. Another thing is to master your thinking, pay attention to what we take into our minds, because what we think about most often manifests in some type of way. And so for me, it's just like those kids just light me up with the desire to just live my life in a way that's accessible to them. I don't make none of what I do complex. Like, I'm very. I believe that I'm a master manifester. I think that about anybody. And I arrived at that through this way. I thought about the series of things that happened in my life and how I thought about them, you know, and through no fault of my own. But the reality was I had been told that, you know, my hair was nappy. I had been told that I have a big head and gap teeth and I was dumb and I was going to end up in prison and all these things. And so I began to live that narrative. And what I determined was if those thoughts led me down a very specific path that played out. That means thoughts were magnetizing. And if I can shift my thoughts to focus on more positive things, then I can attract into my life those things. And so I was very intentional about writing down what I wanted my life to look like. And I live my life in a way that honors the things that I think about most. And, you know, that sense of, like, accessibility, of showing, you know, my son and, you know, kids I mentor, like, anything is doable. You just have to make the decision on whether you want to do it or not, you know, and whether you want to, you know, navigate the adversity, the complexities that come with it. But it's doable, you know, and so that's kind of the way that I think of it. I just, you know, I think recently I kind of got to a space of kind of zooming out of my own day to day life, of just, you know, doing the things and showing up and to actually just have appreciation for where I'm at, you know, in any given moment that I'm in. I don't know if that answers your question.

No, no, it does. I see, you know, as fathers, we don't want to just be fathers or mothers just so that we can put a mantle on our shelf. We want to do it so that our children are better than us, so that their path is better than ours were. Right? So they have all the tools. It's not just for ourselves. It's for our children or it's for our grandchildren. We think like that when we think about our immediate family. That everything I do is not just for me, but it's for others. If we think of the world as a family and the whole thing, then our thinking is the same way. The only reason why I'm building this company is so that others can benefit, so that someone else's path is better. So we have to always be thinking about one another, not just ourselves. So what I see you doing is you've been through a life of learning, life of love, life of trial, a life of showing up. There's this quote that I love from the Baha' I faith, which I'm a Baha' I that says, reminds us, Bahaullah says, noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto which thou was created. Rise then unto that which for thou wast created. I created the noble. So, like, we're good and there's a purpose, but yet thou hast to base thyself. How often do we just, like, not fully show up in who we were created to be? And I think the reason why a lot of people who are religious always want to share their religion with people, like, bring people, like, to you know, people on the corner with the Bible and they want to bring people in and like, share. It's not so that they can put a mantle. It's so that they can help another person realize their own spiritual awakenings and joy. So everything we do, I feel we were created to help others. So the book you're writing, when you're writing to your sons, it's not just for you and your sons, it's for other people as well. The reason why you're on this podcast, you're doing what you're doing, is that others can learn, which means that the shit you went through and also the joy that you went through to get there as well, has prepared you to be who you are now so that you can in fact serve humanity to change the way the world is moving. So your trials, your time in isolation, which is a whole nother podcast, prison reform, and, and, and how that can just, you know, fuel me and get me really angry. I should have seen that before.

He was.

Oh, yeah, man, when I think about you sitting in the whole thing, that's a whole nother thing. I ain't gonna get involved because I'm gonna get really upset that that happened to you. And so many of my brothers and so many of your brothers and your brothers and our sisters as well, that experience all this fucked up shit that's happening in there, and then we just turning a blind eye to it and pretend it ain't going on. In the meantime, we got this beautiful man right here that we forgot about and who has to show up here and speak to everybody for us to care. But why didn't we fucking care about you 30 years ago? Why doesn't humanity care about you all the time it takes now for you to like, show up and prove yourself and write a book and then be articulate and, and tell everybody. Now listen to me. And now we care. All that. I'm sorry, I'm going off on it now. So we should have cared about you a long time ago. And we, the reason why we don't is because we don't see each other as one family. So we sit here and pretend that we don't see. So the reason why I'm going on about what I see you doing now is that you are demonstrating that you care about people in spite of, of how you have every right to only think about yourself for what you've been through. But even still, what you're showing up and who you've become, who you've always been, is noble. And you Are demonstrating your love for humanity by showing up every day now, showing up for your children now, reflecting and writing books because you care. And I'm affected by it, and I know they're affected by it. And I hope more people are affected by it and don't see you for anything other than being noble and wonderful and beautiful. I went off on a little tangent.

I apologize.

But I appreciate you being there, brother.

Appreciate you having me. My man. Definitely receive all that.

Rapid Fire. That's what we're doing. Right after that, following up with More Fire.

Will you come back and hang out with us?

Maybe.

I think that there's a lot more conversations we can have together.

I would come hang out with this crew anytime.

All right, Rapid Fire Questions. Welcome to this week's Man Enough Podcast. Rapid Fire Questions.

When was the last time that you cried?

Including this podcast, 20 minutes ago, I saw that one.

Claping, including taping.

I think the last time I cried was a couple of months ago, you know, after my brother was murdered and, you know, just coming home processing all of that. So, yeah, that was the last time.

When was the last time you apologized?

Oh, man, I mess up so much in life. Last time I apologized, I think it was to my son the other day. You know, I was a little. Just kind of one of them days when, like, I didn't want to be, like, bothered with all the things. But before I put him to bed, I was like, you know, I'm sorry for not really being as present as you needed me to be in the moment you were navigating. So, yeah.

When's the last time? We started with, when's the last time you didn't feel enough? When's the last time you fully felt enough?

I honestly feel pretty dope every day. Good. So. So today, I think, Yeah, I think today just, you know, doing the things, you know, like waking up and just being in my purpose as a dad and like this.

Yeah, thankfully.

What are you afraid of?

What am I afraid of at this point? You know, honestly, I've lived a life that was characterized by terror for the most part and trauma for a lot of my life. And so I think, you know, my biggest fear while I was in prison was, like, losing my mental faculties. And I think once I overcame that, you know, I felt like there wasn't anything that I would ever be afraid of, and probably until maybe the last two years, and I was afraid that I would never be in a loving, healthy relationship again. And so that was only fear, and I just navigated that.

So, yeah, you have a time machine and you get to go back to whatever age young Shaka is in. I'm thinking about the boy that got out of the hospital. But whatever age you want to go back to, what would you whisper in your own ear?

Create your own narrative? Because the world would try to tell you all sorts of things about you that have nothing to do with who you truly are.

Fast forward in your time machine and you get to be a guest at your own funeral. Your boys, both of them, get to say a few words about you. What do you hope they say?

What do I hope they say? What I would hope that Sekou says Sekou is my nine year old boy. And I imagine he'll be 109 at that point. What I hope Sekou would say is that my dad was really silly, he was really loving, and he enriched my life by allowing me to be the fullest version of myself with all this ego attached to it. What I would say, what I would hope that Jay says is my dad didn't get it right all the time. He leaned in when he could and bounces back over and over again.

Can I ask you also hear me though, when I ask you this? At that same funeral, people are looking at your resume of life that unseen you as a boy, a young man, and now the man you are. And now the man you are when you finally left. What do you hope the world would say about you?

What I would hope the world would say is that I live my life in a way that revealed truths about the world that we often find very complex to navigate. But my life contributed to us, simplifying conversations that people characterize as difficult.

You do it.

Final question.

What does it mean for you to be man enough?

What does it mean for me to be man enough? It means that I have full access to all of my emotions. That I'm able to be in joy, I'm able to be in sadness, I'm able to be angry, I'm able to be loving, I'm able to be in love. I'm able to parent with all my ego being attached to my son's outcomes. I'm able to be emotionally reliant on myself when necessary, but also emotionally strong enough to receive support that I am fully worthy of the hugs, the care that I'm present as a partner in full partnership, that I can allow my partner to show up fully as who she is. I can appreciate and value all of her nurturing, even when it's not gender based or limited by those definitions. That I'm not threatened by, you know, my partner being a dynamic woman of her own making, that I'm not insecure in fatherhood when, you know, I can't quite fix the thing that my son needs fixing. And I think just being present with all of who I am as a person, like, that's. I feel man enough in that way.

I'm. Go ahead and write that as the addendum to my book.

You were just asked what it was to you to be man enough, and you just listed exactly what I think being a man is. Exactly it. Not all that other stuff.

Love it.

We gotta. Hey, Liz, we gotta get Chaka Letboys cry ring or something.

Yes.

Liz came up with. Liz had this jewelry line. She wrote a beautiful book as well called Let Boys Cry.

Let Boys Cry. Please let em.

Was there one more question?

There's an audience question from a username that's LV609. What is the most difficult thing to unlearn in your journey to be man enough?

I think the most difficult thing that I've had to unlearn is that every confrontation requires a fight. And that's emotional confrontation, physical confrontation, mental confrontation. Everything doesn't require a fight. And those were the things that I had to unlearn.

Beautiful, simple and profound.

Well, Chaga, you are all of those things, and you are more than enough.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate you.

Thanks for having me and thank you for listening. We'll be. We'll be right back with the recap. This is man enough. Hello and welcome back to Man Enough.

Hey, guys.

Breath, breath in. That breath out. That was incredible.

How you feeling, Jamie?

Yeah, I feel good, man. I feel like.

Hmm.

I appreciate that every episode does not have to be a link to everything. What we were able to do here is see the humanity in somebody and hear a story and hear how they likened it to growth. So I appreciate that we allowed it to be what it was because oftentimes this man's life, he was always told where to fucking go. Go here, go here. Don't say this, don't say that, say it in this way, behave in this way, all the stuff. So it's important that we let people sometimes just be where they are.

When he shared, I cried tears. When you can't cry tears. I cried bullets.

Right.

That made me cry immediately.

Damn.

And even calling it gun trauma, I've never heard that term. I think it's such a useful term when we do talk about again, gun violence tends to be this political, almost partisan term. It's gun trauma. It is trauma. Right. And so, yeah, and he's a master manifester. You know what he did not share with us in this conversation, but he shared with us before, is that he put being interviewed by Oprah on his vision board when he was in solitary confinement, and it came true. So master manifester feels like an understatement.

Yeah.

Wow.

What a lesson there is in that. That means when we. Because there is no other choice. When you are in solitary confinement, you have to go deep within and connect to your spirit in order to stay alive. And when you do that, things happen, things change. So to think about those that are not in that world and that are here living every day, if you can just meditate and connect to your spirit, how much more would happen in life?

Well, and he said that he noticed in prison that prison was the result of all the things he was told his whole life he was gonna be. He was told he was gonna end up in prison. Right. He was told all these things. And then he realized his thinking is what got him there.

Right.

Because when you're told this since the time you were a boy, you believe it. And then he realized he had the power to change that. And then here he is, best selling New York Times off, like, author, you know, sitting down with Oprah, like just the second book coming out. It's just really. Man, this life is incredible. So much magic in this life. If we allow there to be. And I just. My prayer is for all the boys, all the black boys, the Latino boys like him, all these boys that are just not allowed to cry, not allowed to feel, not allowed to just.

There's a lot of white boys like that, too.

Yeah.

That aren't allowed to cry. And, you know, in fact, it's probably.

Equal all over the world.

It's equal all over the world. Thank you for saying that. But I'm specifically thinking about him. Yes, but, yes, boys in general. Just the constraints we put on people, and we don't allow them to be human. I just. God, I just pray for a world where we can all feel what we need to feel.

Well, we gotta put our money where our mouth is. We gotta have our businesses, we gotta have our life, we gotta have our neighborhoods. We gotta have everything look different and be different. We can't just be saying stuff as so many people do. Myself included. Sometimes I say I care about something. I care about women, but yet I don't do the laundry, let's say. And I just allow that to just be my wife's job. We have to really actively, consciously be different, not just say it. We have to realize it through action.

Amen.

Yeah.

If you like what you are hearing, please like and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you would like, check us out on man enough.com podcast. Is that right?

That is right.

You got it right.

Man.com podcast. And until next time, I'm Justin Baldoni.

I'm Liz Plank.

I'm Jamie Heath and this is Man Enough.

Liz said it with passion.

Thank you for listening to the Man Enough podcast, produced by Wayfarer Studios and presented by Procter and Gamble in partnership with Cadence 13 and Odyssey Company hosted by Justin Baldoni, Liz Plank and me, Jamie Heath. If you like what you heard, please follow us and tune in weekly as we undefined masculinity and learn in real time. Justin Baldoni, Jamie Heath and Tara Malhotra Feinberg from Wayfair Studios, Mark Pritchard and Carrie Ray from Procter and Gamble and Chris Corcoran from Cadence 13 are our executive producers. Kehea Kewaha is our producer, Brandy Cole is head of marketing, Susie Landers o' Connell is our assistant editor, and Josh Snyder is our lead editor. Thanks for listening.