Shaka Senghor | How Not to Be Defined by Your Worst Moment

I think love is the greatest liberating tool ever, and my goal is to leverage it more and to leverage the understanding of it for my sons so that they can navigate life unimpeded by narratives that really don't belong to them.

So I've always been kind of fascinated by the idea of snap decisions or these things that happen just a moment, how some can lead to amazing outcomes and others can literally destroy lives in the blink of an eye. And what you so often find is that nothing actually ever happens in a moment. There is no real snap, but rather a series of experiences leading up to it, often years in the making, where they're as much the authors of the moment as the instance itself. And sometimes when those moments lead to something you regret for a lifetime, then you get to the next question. What is recoverable, redeemable?

How do you make that happen?

And who gets to write the story of your own reclamation?

This is the powerful subtext of my.

Conversation with Shaka Senghor, New York Times bestselling author of Righting My Life, Death and Redemption in an American Prison, a leading voice on criminal justice reform, tech investor, head of diversity, Equality and inclusion at Trip Actions, former MIT Media Lab director's fellow and member of Oprah Winfrey's SuperSoul 100. He took another young man's life at the age of 19, served the next two decades almost in prison, seven in solitary, and through a series of unexpected awakenings, began to unwind the pieces of his life and begin the process of understanding and reassembling and eventually redemption and reclamation. In the decades since his release from prison, he has and worked with nonprofits seeking to lift people up, visited the White House, been interviewed by Trevor Noah and Oprah Winfrey, and given award winning TED talks. All with the goal of building a more inspired, just and fulfilling future for all. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

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Just so curious about so many different moments in your life and I really want to dive into some of the ideas that you have been working with and sharing over the years. Now let's take a little bit of a step back in time because there's a lot that set up the moment that you've come to in your life and the ideas that you've been working with and the creative things that you have been exploring. I know you describe yourself. You grew up in Detroit as a curious and precocious kid.

Yeah, yeah. You know, when I reflect back on my childhood, I think about all these random things and a lot of times what really sparks that is when I'm watching Jeopardy. And some random, you know, answer comes up, you got to figure out what you know, what is the question. And I realized I know tons of weird things. And it came out of my experience as a child when where I would just randomly read encyclopedia and just learn different facts and learn about different spaces and places and people. And I think that's been one of the things that's been consistent throughout my life, no matter what I've gone through is I've always been curious about how does the world work? How do people experience life? What are some of the things that show up in life that we Often just take for granted. And that curiosity, I think, has allowed me to navigate many things in my life. You know, the traumatic past experiences that I've gone through and the, you know, unexpected successes that I've been able to achieve post incarceration.

Yeah.

I'm curious when you show up as a kid so interested in sort of, like, the broader human condition. You know, I've had conversations with folks who have kind of, like, similarly wired, and they have shared how, on the one hand, it gave them all sorts of different worlds to explore, that maybe their friends or people around them weren't all that interested in exploring. But on the other hand, it could also feel somewhat isolating because it made them feel different. I'm curious whether you experienced anything like that.

That's really interesting. I think I've always felt a little bit different, and I think part of it was the dynamics of the household that I grew up in. So my dad, who, you know, is definitely, like, one of my heroes and, you know, a very interesting and evolved human being in many ways. You know, when he met my mom, he was fresh out of the Air Force. He was about 21 years old, and my mom was a teenage mother with three children. And my dad took on that responsibility. And then they had me, and then, you know, subsequently, my two younger sisters. So I grew up with my older siblings who had a very different experience. You know, they were navigating childhood with two dads. They had their biological dad, and then they had my dad, who was raising them. And, you know, they would go back and forth between Detroit and Chicago. And as a kid growing up, when my brother would describe Chicago, it was, like, otherworldly. You know, it was like he was describing a space that seemed so far away from where we were growing up in Detroit. And I think that was probably the earlier parts of me feeling a little isolated because my three older siblings had something that they shared that was different from what we were experiencing together. And then as I got into school and I was an early reader, I learned how to read very early on. I remember my parents dragging me out of the bed to come and read for my aunts and uncle after they've had a little night of partying and fun and kind of like the things that adults do with children. And of course, me being a child, I didn't know that this was unique or this was special at the time. Once I got into school and I would get done with my homework, I mean, my school work very fast, and then the teachers would send me off on these Little kind of adventures to go help other teachers or give me more challenging works to read. And I think that really just kind of set the tone for ultimately how I began to navigate life as this young person who had a lot of internal conversations going on while trying to navigate the world outside of me.

Yeah. And I know at the same time, you've also described those early days as, you know, you're this fiercely intellectually curious kid about the world, and you're given opportunities to learn and to read and to sort of immerse yourself in those landscapes.

At the same time, there was a.

Lot of abuse within the household, and that was another layer that you had to figure out how to navigate.

Yeah. And I think that abuse really contributed to me kind of turning inward. And, you know, as a kid growing up in a household where I experienced physical abuse, but also witnessed my older siblings, you know, experiencing that physical abuse. And, you know, most of the time at the hands of my mother, like, I would turn inside, you know, inward and just try to figure out, like, why is this happening and what is it about me that, you know, makes her treat me this way and what is it about my siblings? And then, you know, to take all of that energy and have to go out and embark on the world of school and, you know, trying to play as a kid, but being haunted by these experiences and not feeling sure and confident externally, because you just never know when something was going to happen. And so that really, I think, led to me being more introspective, more thoughtful about how I engage with other people. And, you know, really I recognize now, you know, something that I didn't recognize then, but that's the world where I began to make up stories about who I was in the world and who I wanted to be. You know, I really wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a doctor, you know, as my occupation, I wanted to be a doctor in terms of, like, my creativity. You know, I always fancy myself as a visual artist, and a lot of times that internal conversation was really rooted in trying to figure out how to do those two things.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like there is, along with everything that you're sort of. That you're experiencing as a kid, there was also something in you that. Where there was a sense of possibility that existed in you, where you struggle with a lot of things. And it sounds like part of that storyline in your head was also, you know, and this is so common in households, especially with kids, where there's abuse or violence. Like, you're. You're Asking, well, what's my role in this? And you're trying to figure out, like, what am I doing? Or how am I being that's causing this? Not realizing that. In fact, that's not what's happening at all. Like, there's a different, bigger dynamic that you're sort of, like, subsumed by. But it can be really. I mean, it's difficult for adults who are equipped and skilled to process that. But as a young kid, you know, it's just. It can really shut people down in so many different ways. And it sounds like you were finding outlets, and part of those outlets for you was to lose yourself in these different worlds and exploring and learning.

Yeah. What I understand now is that those were definitely trauma responses, you know, responding to trauma. And I think that, you know, as a young kid, you know, when you experience physical violence and, you know, a lot of times especially, you know, it's a very cultural, you know, expression, the cultural identity of what corporal punishment means in different environments. And I know, you know, growing up in the city of Detroit, growing up in a black household, growing up in a community where, you know, it was normal to, you know, for children to talk about the spankings or the beatings or the whoopings that they received as children. And so it begins to challenge what's normal and what's not normal. And as a kid, I think for me, you know, because I had witnessed it with my siblings and realized that it was frequent enough to where it became normalized to expect, you know, a beating or spanking or harsh words being hurled. And so I think what happened was that I was compensating for, you know, the lack of balance, the lack of safety that a child feels when they're not struck by a parent, the identity of what love is, what care is, and being able to negotiate those things internally, which is a great deal of responsibility for any child to have to bear. And now, as a dad, I really think deeply about my life back then and the way that I'm raising my younger son, say, cool. I can't even imagine how his life would shift if I ever hollered at him, let alone struck him. And it was through that experience of just being able to raise a child without the trauma of having a parent strike them or say mean things, that I realized how harmful abuse is when it comes from, you know, within your household. I mean, I think abuse is harmful in general, but I think specifically, when it comes to the people who you don't have any choice but to trust as your Caretakers and your early providers and your nurturers and you're being hurt by them. Like that's just a lot for a child to navigate.

Yeah. I mean, and because in no small part, right, it gets conflated with love, you know, and it all gets confused in this really weird and eventually toxic and harmful thing that so often plants the seeds that become generational. And so it's interesting to hear you talk about the way that you're navigating the relationship as a father now and really breaking like reexamining and breaking cycles in a very intentional and thoughtful way. But this was a long journey to get to this moment for you. So you're showing up as a kid, you're dealing with what you're dealing with at home, but you're still kind of showing up as non oral student, as this precocious kid in school and then sort of like the mid teens hit for you and everything starts to change.

Yeah, my, my family dynamic is, is, you know, was very complex back then. You know, my dad, my mom, they separated early on when I was about 11 years old. And then they did this dance that I think a lot of parents do when they're trying to stay together and keep that nuclear family unit is they would get back together, they would separate, get back together. And. And when they were going through that process, my relationship with my mother really became strained. And I would say my relationship with my dad became strained in a different way. But my mother and I's relationship became strained because the frequency of the physical attacks or the physical abuse was such that I was getting old enough, mature enough and strong enough to know that, you know, I didn't have to accept it. And it got to a point where I think my body had became numb to being hit, but my heart hadn't became numb to it yet. And one day I decided to run away. And what I thought would happen was that, you know, some other families would see this smart little boy with all his potential in the world and they would welcome me into their home and wrap me in the love and care that I think all children are deserving of. But that was the naivete of being a youth is that, you know, you don't understand the complexities of what it means to take in another child. And so for a couple of weeks I bounced between friends, basements and garages and vacant houses or wherever I can find myself shelter at, you know, and I hustled food from the local store by carrying people's bags to their car. And in the Midst of that, you know, this was at the height of the crack cocaine era. It was just beginning to really hit Midwest, you know, America. And I found myself being seduced into drug culture. And when I went into that culture, I could, I mean, I was so naive, so vulnerable, so innocent and, you know, yet I found myself in this very adult subculture. And within the first six months, I experienced all the horrors that come with that culture. My childhood friend was murdered, I was robbed at gunpoint. I was beaten nearly to death. And I never forget the feeling of laying on a cold bathroom floor, bleeding in this crack den. We know, we called it crack houses back then. And just thinking to myself, like, what kind of world do we live in that people don't care about children? And sadly, you know, to this day, you know, 30 plus years later, there's really been no answer to that question.

Yeah, I mean, it's upsetting on so many levels. I mean, you know, so you, you kind of start to lose yourself into this world and this goes on for, you know, like a couple of years. And I guess part of the curiosity is always, you know, you use the word seduced. I was seduced into the drug trade, into this world, and for sure mid-80s, especially in major cities and towns all over the Midwest in particular, and actually major cities like New York, everywhere. It was the height of the crack epidemic. But when I think about your experience, I guess the question that's rolling through my mind when you use that word seduced also, because it's a powerful word, you know, I'm curious, what was the feeling? Because what you're describing are sort of like, is not a joyful or not a fun. It's not sort of like the day to day experience that you think somebody's going to be, quote, seduced by. What was the feeling that this experience was giving you that you were yearning for, that you weren't getting outside of that world.

Yeah, I'm very intentional about using that word. And I think it's really important, especially as we think about human trafficking, we think about, you know, the tons of young people who find themselves transient and homelessness and navigating, you know, whether it's drug culture, whether it's prostitution or whatever, the things that are, that afflict so many young people. And oftentimes I don't think adults really understand. They really think that these are just rebellious kids who run away because they don't want to follow the rules. And in my experience, that can't be further from the truth. And what I experienced was this very intentional grooming, this intentional kind of idea that this world that we're bringing you into is going to provide you with all the things that you are craving right now. It'll provide you with a means to take care of yourself. It'll provide you with more money than you've ever seen in your life. It'll provide you with shelter and most importantly, protection. And if you come with us and you come be a part of this, here's this world, we're going to open up to you. And it's never articulated in that manner. It's articulated through intentional means. You know, for example, when I met the guy that I ended up selling drugs for, I was starving. Like, I was hungry. I was eating chips for days. And the first thing he said is, let me take you to get something to eat. And he took me to Burger King. And while now it's not, you know, Burger King isn't a big deal. In the 80s, that was a big deal to not only go to Burger King and not have to choose off the child's menu, but to be told, you can order anything on here that you want, and then let's go shopping. You look like you need new shoes and new pants, and all the things that are lacking are exploited. And that's where the seduction happens at. And then there's the intentional ego boost, you know, or you're smart, or you're you. You're going to be one of the best hustlers ever. And nobody's thinking about, you know, how to do this in a way that I know that you're going to think about it. And so it's all those things that, you know, to a young mind, the affirming, the validation, the sense that you're a part of something that's bigger than yourself, that you're accepted, that your opinion matters, that your perspective matters. And even though it's all an illusion in the mirage, to a young, impressionable mind, that's everything. Because that's what I crave to have at home. There's somebody to pay attention to me, somebody to show me love, somebody to nurture me, somebody to feed me when I'm hungry and to make sure that I have somewhere to sleep that's safe. And as cruel and brutal as that environment came to be in the early days, it felt like all the things that a child would want, a little bit of agency, money that's disposable, and, you know, again, the validation of people who aren't quite your age, but they're not as old as your parents. And so they fit into that cool space. And that consistently happens to kids in many ways throughout the world.

Yeah. And it's like it's filling a hole, like a heart size hole, an esteem size hole, a belonging size hole, a hope size hole, all at the same time. But like you said, on the surface it seems like it is, but you scratch a little bit beneath the surface and it's smoke and mirrors. But by the time you do that, so many people, you're so deep into it that, you know, it's hard to actually see what's really going on. And I would imagine even harder to extract yourself, barring some sort of really big traumatic incident, which for you happens, you know, on, you know. Well, I guess there are series, you know, for you, you know, one of them is you actually end up shot. And then after that, that leads to a series of events that tumbles into a whole different part of life.

Yeah. So, you know, from, from the age of 14, 13, 14, you know, there was just this kind of cadence of very violent acts that were occurring within that culture. And the, the adult wisdom would say, you know, one violent act is enough for you to lead that culture forever. But what people don't account for is all the other things I talked about when it comes to the seduction, which is that validation, that sense that even though this isolated incident happened, we're going to protect you from it. And then your role is to become a protector as well. And so, you know, I continue to navigate a very toxic, very traumatic culture. And when I was 17 years old on March 8, 1990, I'll never forget that day, I was shot multiple times standing on the corner of my street on the west side of Detroit at the time. And when I was shot, my sisters and my friends, they called ambulance. And the ambulance never came. And so instead, a friend of mine put me in his car and he drove me to the hospital as he coached me on how to stimulate the flow of blood, how to navigate the pain I was feeling. And he was able to do that because he had got shot the year prior when he was 18. And when I got to the hospital, they rushed me in, they extracted one of the bullets from my legs, they patched that leg up, they left a bullet inside. And within two days, I was back in my neighborhood. And during that whole ordeal, no one came and said to me that this event, this traumatic event is going to forever change how you see and experience life. Not one doctor, not one nurse, not one social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist thought to say, here's a 17 year old kid laying in the bed, probably terrified. And no one thought to just say, hey, this is an isolated incident, it shouldn't have happened. And so what I went back to my neighborhood with was this very volatile recipe. I was angry, I was confused, I was hurt. I didn't know that I could even ask for help because I hadn't experienced that. You know, my friend who had got shot the year prior, he never talked about how he processed those feelings. I only was able to witness what he did. My brother who had been shot a year or so prior, I was only able to witness what they did, which was to arm themselves. And I remember at that point that I started to carry a gun every day. But what was worse than carrying the gun really was the narrative and the story I began to tell myself. And that story was that I will never allow anyone to harm me again. And if I find myself in conflict, I will shoot first. And 16 months later, I shot and tragically caused the man's death and was subsequently arrested, charged with open murder, and sentenced to 17 to 40 years and in prison. And my arrest happened one month after my 19th birthday. And when I went into prison, I found myself angry. I really was very resentful. I began to blame everybody. I blamed my parents, I blamed the school system, I blamed the hospitals. And that led to me getting into tons of trouble. I was in and out of solitary confinement. And I eventually served a total of 19 years, with seven of those years being in solitary confinement.

Yeah, I mean, the being in that environment, you know, which so often can reinforce this notion of you behave a certain way because, you know, you need to stay alive and there are certain rules that you need to follow, and there are certain alliances and affiliations that you create in order to feel as safe as you can. And you're in there. And as you said, there's a lot that went on over those 19 years. In the early days, it sounds like you were sort of like you were working the system the way that you believed it to be, but at some point, and you spent a chunk of time, like a total of about seven years in solitary, four of those, from what I understand, consecutive, where you were in there away from human beings. And as we have this conversation, and we're going to go a lot into sort of like what unfolded in your mind during that time and also like since that time. But when you're in there, it sounds like there was this one pivotal experience that kind of changed everything. And it was a moment that you receive a letter from your son that somehow flipped a switch for you, that up until that moment in time, everything that you'd been through didn't get you there.

Yeah. I want to frame it a little bit differently. It wasn't one moment. It was the most pivotal moment. And, you know, for the sake of the audience, I really want them to understand that prison is very barbaric, it's very inhumane, and it's very psychologically traumatizing. And you can double that when you think about children walking into prison. And at 19 years old, I was still a child, and I went to a prison called the Michigan Reformatory. And the actual nickname for that prison was Gladiator School, because the levels of violence that was either encouraged by the guards or that were a circumstance of just hurt young boys turning on each other. That was the environment, that was the setting. And early on, I had to decide whether to be a lion or a lamb in that environment. But also what happened, you know, leading up to that big pivotal moment were, you know, two of the three what I now call miracles. And the first was I met and encountered some incredible men who were serving life sentences, who by default, became some of the best mentors I've ever had. And I say that because they were the men who guided me to books, and they guided me to the power of literature and reading. And I was really fortunate to be literate. The average reading grade level in prison is third grade. So I was at an advantage that a lot of the men and women in that environment just unfortunately don't have, and that's the ability to read. And then the second miracle was receiving a letter of forgiveness from a woman named Nancy, who had raised the man David, whose life I was responsible for taking. In that letter, she shared with me who David was. The father, he was the man, he was the friend, the son. And it was devastating to read her accounts of who David was. And I honestly wanted to just borrow that letter up and throw it away because I didn't want to come face to face with this horrible, horrible moment that I was responsible for. But I continued to read that letter. And I read it multiple times over the course of years. And in that letter, she said, you know, despite the pain I've caused, she forgave me. And not only did she forgive me, but that she loved me. And it took years for me to really embrace the fullness of that letter. So it was incremental. And then finally, while I was in solitary confinement on a four and a half year, what Turned out to be four and a half years straight. I got a letter from my oldest son, Jay. And in that letter, Jay told me that his mom told him why I was in prison. And he said to me, dad, my mom told me, you're in prison for murder. Don't kill. Jesus watches what you do. And that letter really kind of crumbled the rest of the facade of hood toughness and prison savvy and anger and distrust that I had used to mask this vulnerable boy that was still inside of me. And in that letter, you know, I found what I knew was my responsibility, which was I owed my son a father. And I owed him a father that he can be proud of despite my circumstances. And I owed him the responsibility of showing him that no matter what you go through in life, if you are willing to give yourself a chance, you can. You can turn things around. And that's what that letter inspired me to do.

Yeah, so it was really. It was a series of events, you know, and that letter sort of like came after them.

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When you get that first letter from the woman who's describing who this person whose life you took was on the planet. It sounds like it was devastating on so many levels, but in no small part because it forced you to grapple with that person's humanity in a way where maybe up until that time and your role in taking it up until that time, you hadn't really seen who was on the other side of the gun in that way.

Yeah, I think it really forced me to grapple not only with David's humanity, but also with my own humanity. And it really helped me to unpack that narrative that I had created from my own traumatic event. And, you know, one of the most amazing things about Nancy is Nancy had the wisdom to understand that I was a child making that decision and that there were other elements that contextualized that evening. And I was resistant to that for a while. You know, I wouldn't tell her all of the details of what actually had happened that night. And I didn't want to tell her because I didn't want it to come across as as if I was excusing the decision I made. But she pushed me on that, you know, she pushed me on that for years. We corresponded for several years and she always would go back and ask me what happened to that 19 year old boy that would allow him to make such a decision. And the fact that she continued to frame it with the recognition that I was a boy, it was the most I've ever felt connected to my own humanity because I had lost empathy for myself or compassion. I thought of myself as a bad person. And I had believed the narratives from, you know, from my early childhood and from everything associated with the crime that night. And it was through years and years of being able to really unpack all of the things that really helped me see David's humanity in full display and to really understand my own humanity. And the thing about David's humanity is when you're convicted of a crime, you can't reach out to the family. The only way you could communicate with them is if they reach out to you first. And fortunately, Nancy reached out to me and that began our journey of correspondence.

And during this same time also, and I guess during, it sounds like really almost the entirety of 19 years that you're incarcerated, you're also writing letters back and forth. It sounds like hundreds of letters with your dad, which it sounds like what ends up being communicated and shared, processed and hashed out through a series of countless letters over years and years and years also becomes a really big and meaningful part of your awakening to sort of like, what's the truth about who I am? What's the truth about who my past was? What's the truth about the nature of my parents and their relationship and their relationship with me? And like, it sounds like that years long letter writing process with your dad was also just so instrumental in your evolution.

Yeah, my dad wrote me for the entire 19 years I was incarcerated. And I remember when I first got arrested, I really had no expectations of how people would show up because I had no knowledge of what that would look like. You know, I had known a few people who had been incarcerated and who had got out of prison, but they had did shorter time and typically they didn't discuss that experience. You know, they kind of wanted it to just go away. They wanted to move on with their lives. And it wasn't until I got out of prison that I understood why they reacted that way. But while I was inside, I remember getting the first letter from my dad and him telling me that, you know, as sad as he is and as hurt as he is by my circumstances, that, you know, his plan and his purpose as my dad was to be there to support me through it all. And so we started corresponding and we were able to really unpack a lot of things. You know, one of the things I admire most about my dad is that, you know, he has been accountable for the times when he didn't show up. He's been accountable for the times where he showed up in ways that were less than stellar. And that ability to be honest, to be vulnerable, to be real, like it really built a bridge between us, it really helped us to grow together. And you know, I was able to challenge him. You know, I was able to, you know, discuss things with him that I had never talked to him about in my life. And we were able to, you know, laugh together through that, as we were able to cry together, we were able to really get to understand each other as men. Especially as I began to grow up in prison. You know, when I went in, I was a teenage boy. When I left, I was a 38 year old man. And so for the course of that time, my dad got a chance to see me evolve into a man. You know, he saw me at my angriest, he saw me at my most heartbroken. But he also was able to see me as I began to grow and become more hopeful and become more intentional about what I wanted out of this thing we call life. And you know, his letters are truly, you know, treasured. Gifts that I still have some of them to this day. Unfortunately, I lost tons of them because of a flood at his basement. And I always wish I could go back and read those because I would send him letters and he would keep them, but also I would send home just, like, tons of letters to be stored, and unfortunately, they got lost in a flood. But, you know, when I do read his letters, like, especially now, you know, I'll be 50 in June, and when I'm reading these letters, my dad is younger than I am now, and it's powerful, you know, it's so deep. And I have such a deep appreciation for what he chose to do. You know, he chose to step up and raised my oldest son due to my absence, you know, at a time where all his children were leaving the nest, and he was close to being in a position to retire, and he took on this great deal of responsibility. And, you know, I really got to see this man go through everything, you know, the struggles in his marriage, the victories in his marriage, the struggles with my siblings, the triumphs with my siblings, and, you know, all the things that men navigate, typically silently, especially within our culture, that doesn't really create space for men to be men and share their troops and be mostly evolved human beings. I was able to see all of that with my dad through those letters.

I mean, so powerful. What also, you know, becomes a regular letter writing process for you. I mean, for you, you also start to adopt a regular writing process. It grows into. Beyond writing to other people, but also starting to write your own thoughts, starting to journal as this tool to sort of figure out what is going on inside of me, who am I? Who do I want to be and to become? And that becomes this central tool for your own internal processing and eventually external expression. It's interesting because you write about how that process has and continues to affect you. And also in your book where you're literally writing letters to your two sons, you talk about the importance and the power of letter writing, which I thought was really interesting because you touch on a bunch of different topics, which I want to dive into with you. But you very intentionally talk about this process of writing actual letters and how it's so different. And you're somebody who, when you come out at 38, the world is profoundly different. You emerge from prison, and yet there's technology, there's Internet, there's social, there's all these things which have radically changed and made it so much easier and faster and digital to communicate. And yet there's something that remains so powerful to you about the written word, about taking your hands and writing, like pen and paper, that you want this tradition passed on to your kids and you want them to know how powerful it is.

Yeah, I mean, you know, letters historically have been some of the most enlightening literary documents we've been fortunate enough to have. You know, I think about, you know, Dr. King's letter from a Birmingham Jail. You know, you think about, you know, whatever your religious belief is. I'm personally not religious, but very spiritual. But if you think about some of the grandest religious texts, you know, those are letters, you know, that are articulating what we should be thinking about, how we should think about love, how we should think about life, how we should think about our own personal salvation. And for me, you know, I actually wrote a letter last night to my son and put it in his lunchbox, and hopefully, hopefully he eats his lunch today and he gets it. But, you know, the process of journaling to me, I tell people all the time that internal process of getting to know yourself is the greatest adventure that I believe human beings can ever go on. And it's one that I've been on for a long time, and sitting with my own thoughts and processing my feelings and the way that I see the world and things, you know, that I'm reading and thinking about, you know, it's such a gorgeous gift to give to yourself, you know, this ability to travel inward and to really think about what do I actually feel? You know, how does love feel in my body? How does it feel in my mind? How does it feel in my spirit? And I found that the only way I'm able to get that deep is through the written word. You know, I was recently asked, how do I write with such vulnerability? And to me, vulnerability translates as honesty. You know, like, this is my truth, this is my experience that I've processed and been able to walk through word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. And I think it's just that process, you know, that. That taking one step forward, no matter what the circumstances are. And I think the beauty of the written word and all its iterations, you know, is that ability to move us from one space to the next. And if you really think about it, writing shows up in almost everything that we do, everything that we consume. You know, if you think about a TV show, the acting is based on the script. You know, you think about your favorite movie and those lines you remember somebody sat down and wrote that. You know, you think about your favorite song, there's composition, notepads, all over the world, in studios everywhere, where artists are sharing their most heartfelt feelings, feelings in a musical form. But it's all the written word, and it's those things that moves us through space and time. And so to be able to be fortunate enough to recognize this gift that I was, you know, bequeathed to communicate through the written word is something that, you know, it still brings me chills to this day when I think about what I've written or when I go back and read some of my earlier works, and I'm like, wow. Like, this is really. I'm just a vessel for these truths that I share.

Yeah. And what starts out, it sounds like for you as this way to really. To get what needs out, to process, to exercise, to integrate and synthesize and understand when you come out, also then becomes a way to express yourself and a way to communicate and a way to tell your story in a way that isn't designed just to help you process, but to connect with others, to stand in the role of advocacy and activism, and to actually draw on the experience and to draw on your internal experience of transformation and share that with others. And, you know, in part through the spoken word, in part through, like, being involved in a lot of different things, but also through the written word and form of books. And it's interesting because I think a lot of people, when they hear your story, would wonder, okay, so after this experience and you emerge and you're sort of like you're trying to figure out, okay, so who am I, and how do I step back into this other world that I had been literally removed from for the better part of two decades? That one of the big things that spins around is this notion of redemption and reconciliation. And I think what you've shared is so much of that process had already been set in motion over a period of years while you were inside. And that's something that I would imagine is just going to continue for life. There's something that you. That you speak about and that you write about that also seems to really have become the heartbeat of so much of the way that you move through the world, which is this notion of mindfulness. In fact, you know, you sort of seed it as you. You can't think about things like redemption or reconciliation or anything else, really, until you actually start to understand what it is to be present, what it is to be mindful. And I'm curious about how that emerges as such a central tenet of the way that you step into your life.

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when I. When I reflect on the stories that I share, the personal stories that come from my experience, and then the journaling process, one of the things that I realized is that as we grow through life, we are wholly dependent on. On other people to tell us who we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago. @ every family reunion, this story plays out. No matter what the culture, gender, political affiliation, personal identity, everybody has a story of who you used to be. And sometimes those stories are similar, sometimes they're dissimilar, sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're sad. But it's other people's recounting of who you were at each period in your time. And what I love about the beauty of journaling is that you get a chance to memorialize all of the moments in your life that you care about or you think are important or you feel are inspired to write about. And you can go back and you can reflect on that, and you can see your own personal growth, how your opinions change, your views change, your outlook change, your love life change. All these magical things that. That are transformative over time, that no one outside of you really will understand about you because they're only seeing one portion of your experience. But you can capture that. And, you know, when I. When I think about that, you know, that is what really kind of sets up the way that I think about mindfulness. And when. When it really struck me was my last in a solitary confinement, which was from 1999 to 2004. And I remember how disheartening it would be to get super excited that I was going to be released only to have my hopes dashed. And I remember that. That inability to ground myself with just a very, you know, date, a date of finality, of, like, this is when this thing will end, was creating so much turmoil. And you know, what I tell people now? Especially that we've all shared this global pandemic. And while it's not as isolating as a solitary confinement cell, there are some similarities psychologically that people experience. If you think about when the pandemic first began, and they said, it's March by May, we'll be back to life as we knew it. And then May got here, and then they extended it two more months, and then those two months got here, and they extended it again. And on and on we went. And the further we got into it, the more uncertain we became, the more anxious we collectively became. And then you see the, you know, emotional reactions to that. You see the social reactions where people are organizing in the street and Going against different orders and challenging things. And that comes out of the same experience of feeling isolated and feeling uncertain. And so what I began to understand in those moments was that if I could just bring myself to presence, if I can just be in the moment in my body of what I was in, that I wouldn't be terrorized by past thoughts, that I wouldn't be defeated by uncertain thoughts of the future, but I can just be present in the right now and think about what is it that I can do to get me through this troubled moment and help me come out on the other side of this pain. And for me, that ability to just be in the moment, not telling myself all these stories, but really feeling grounded in the moment, to me, I think it was the difference between me coming out healthy and whole with a perspective that anything is possible, and me coming out as just one more broken human and, you know, a series of broken humans who has had to navigate one of the, you know, the most barbaric environments imaginable. And today I live with that presence of mind. Whether I'm dealing with the complexities of being a black man in America, I'm dealing with the complexities of being a co parent, raising a son, or whether I'm just dealing with being one of the only black people in a lot of the spaces that I go into and just happen to remind myself of the presence of the moment.

Yeah, I mean, it's so powerful. It's like this notion of aspiration, but disconnected from expectation. Like it's okay to hope, it's okay to want, it's okay to work towards something or towards building something. But at the same time, if you can hold, at the same thing that if you can hold the expectation of the outcome lightly and just be present in what you're doing, it makes it so that if things unfold differently, and they always will in some way, shape or form, you can touch stone a little bit more readily. You can find that space of equanimity and not be just absolutely. Just sort of like persistently feeling like you're just getting steamrolled and devastated and living in a state where it's just persistent, high stakes, high level anxiety without any sense of if it ever will end.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the, one of the lessons that I always give to my younger son, Sekou, is, you know, I have him build things, right? So, you know, it can be something random like a bookshelf. But I think it's important for him to build things to completion because to me, that's symbolic of what it means to be mindful. You know, when you think about putting something together and you open up that package and there's screws everywhere and the shelves and this, this thing, you need this tool, you need all this stuff that can be overwhelming if you look at it all at one time. But if you actually take your time to just build it step by step, just put this screw in, turn this screw, that's one step completed. And if you're present in that, then you can see that every step leads to completion. And that's what hope is to me. It's like if you can see the thing in the moment as you're actually doing it, then you know that the outcome is going to be all the things you imagined and dreamed it to be. But you got to first take that step and that step requires you to be fully present in it. And so metaphorically speaking, you know, I live my life where I'm like, you know, I have to build the thing one step at a time. And the way that I do that is by being present, not looking at all the nuts and bolts that need to be put together, the shelves and these complex instructions. But let me just put a screw in it and let me just start there and be present in that process and that experience and then that allows me to continue moving forward.

Yeah.

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And being present, right? It's being present in the moment, in the circumstance. But it's also being present in your own personal experience and your own emotion and your own thoughts. And this is something that you write about a lot of different ways. You know, in your most recent book, Letter to Sons of Society, it comes out in the form One way that you talk about it is in the context of love. You know, you write, I'm reading your words here. There's a checklist of things fathers are supposed to give their sons. Things like clothing, shelter and food. But there's one key thing missing from the lists I've read. I need to give you high level access to your emotions as black men growing up in America. The narrative about us is so distorted. Talk to me about this because this is and just for a larger context, this book is a series of alternating letters to your two sons sharing like these are things that I've learned. These are things that I feel are important. These are things that I want to pass on to you. And also more broadly, as a father, knowing that within your two sons is embodied so much of the context of the greater relationship between fathers and sons and so much of the complexity and struggle. So I thought it was really interesting the way that you immediately call out, let's talk about love. Let's be present to this thing called love. And also the expectation and the public perception that tends to get wrapped around men and fathers and sons and love and how distorted that can sometimes be. And can we free ourselves from that?

Absolutely. I think love is the greatest, liberating tool ever. And my goal is to leverage it more and to leverage the understanding of it for my sons so that they can navigate life unimpeded by narratives that really don't belong to them. You know, when I think of my life, you know, as a black man in America, I have experienced the extremes of what that looks like. You know, I've been in extreme poverty. I've been through the prison system. I've been boxed out of opportunities based on my past and, you know, things of that nature. But I've also been very successful, and still I have to reconcile my blackness in a world of success. And one of the things that's really complex about, you know, American culture specifically is we just don't like the truth. We don't like to talk about the truth. For some reason, it makes us uncomfortable. And me saying that my experience is unique to me is not a threat to your experience, and it doesn't diminish your experience, and it doesn't eradicate the things that you experience as a human being. But to deny me the opportunity to speak to all of who I am, to me, that's the greatest form of oppression. And so when I think about the narrative around black men and black fathers specifically, I have to think about the broader context of the narrative around men in general. And that narrative is that we can be the providers, we can be the protectors, and we can be the heroes. And those three things are our assignments as men, our assignments as dad, and our assignments as sons who will one day grow up to be men and dads. And it's such an unfair narrative to box someone into because there are so many other precious things about life that are equally important and equally valuable, and that is the ability to love, the ability to show up with kindness, the ability to experience joy. And I think it's important for me, as a man who've been through all these extremes of what it means to be masculine, what it means to Be tough to really just speak to. The thing that's the most fulfilling, which is when I'm showing up in love, I don't feel fulfilled. When I have to protect, I actually feel scared. We don't talk about that. Protections come out of fear. You know, I don't feel joyful as a provider because that requires work. And I don't like to work all the time. So there's the reality of that. The things we're assigned, you know, they're not joyful events in our life, they're purposeful events. They're things that, you know, we're charged with and we're responsible for, but they're not always fulfilling. And so when I think about joy and I think about love, like what a great space to navigate as a fully evolved human being. And that's what I want my sons to understand, is that you balance out the hard work life with the joy of lived life. And, you know, when I think about what's, you know, missing in the narrative because there's always this thing about, you know, if you show up in black excellence, it'll change the narrative. I don't personally have a commitment to changing anybody's narrative. What I do want to do is expand the narrative to include all of who we are. And the depiction of black men right now is one of such is that we are America's problem to solve. We are black women's problem to solve, and we're each other's problem to solve, and we're nobody's solution. And that couldn't be further from the truth. So what I try to do is expand the narrative to include all of the things. There was at one point in my life where I was everybody's problem because I was my own problem. And it's because I was living through a very traumatic childhood and reacting based on those traumas. But I'm also been a solution to many. And so I think, what if my life would have stopped at that one narrative? Then we wouldn't have all the work that I've been able to accomplish over the last 12 years of freedom. And so what I try to just really express to my sons is that one, we're responsible for our own narrative. It's important for us to recognize and acknowledge all the things about us, you know, like, you know, when I think of growing up, the hero for me was always in athletics because that's been a role that's been assigned to black men in America. If you can achieve in the world of entertainment and athletics, you are Somehow exempt from this other narrative that's been created to box us into these ideas. And now we're seeing those myths dispelled because we're taking on ownership of telling our own stories. And as a father, that was really important to me.

Yeah, you know, we started out talking about love there, and then you really moved into just this notion of reclaiming the narrative. And it's interesting how you say, like, I'm not so interested in. In reclaiming a public narrative or a collective narrative, but what I do have agency over is this story that I tell with the way that I live my life and the way that I give language and context and conversation around that and then turning around also. And as you write, sharing with your kids, this matters. And part of what we want to do is step into this space of freedom and agency in writing your own narrative and knowing that some of it may not go the way that we wanted or intended, and yet we are still the one with the pens in our hands. As much as society or even another part of ourselves may want to try and rip it out at different moments in our history, which, at the end of the day, it feels like you're speaking to power. You know, you're saying, like, there's a lot of power, and there are a lot of power dynamics swirling all around us, and there are lenses and expectations of who you are and aren't and who you should and shouldn't be in the world. But at the end of the day, you know, and we live in that context, we can't deny it, you know, and it creates equality and inequality in all sorts of vast and profound ways. But you're still sort of like looking at your sons and saying, but what's the story? To the extent that you have control over it, that you want to claim and write and don't let go of that pen.

Absolutely. You know, I think, you know, it's so important for young men specifically, and young boys. And I mean, and this is inclusive of all boys. I'm a mentor to many, and, you know, I realized that a lot of the harms in the world are rooted in the narrative that boys feel forced to live through. The way that we treat women, the way that we treat non binary conforming people, the way that we treat people who have a different race, different economical background. All of these things are rooted in narratives that boys have been handed down from society and their communities from time as long as we can remember. Some boys are raised with the idea that they have a right to all the things in the world, and even if that means trampling on other people's humanity. And then there's others that feel as if they don't have a right to anything in the world without asking permission of people who have been hurtful and harmful to them. And so what I really wanted to get through to this book, and I think it comes through at nighttime when I'm doing affirmations with my youngest son, Sekou, is the idea that you can create the most magical lived experience possible for you when you shape your own story and your identity of who you want to become. And the reason I started doing affirmations is because I knew that there was a story out there that he was going to encounter as he grows up that just isn't true. And I wanted to protect him from that and then to empower him to recognize and acknowledge all the things when he see him, you know, that he can see that he's beautiful, that he's funny, that he's smart, that he's thoughtful and kind and all these things, and that that truly is his superpower to move through the world with the agency to choose how to show up for himself and other people.

Yeah. You write, you're the ultimate author of your life narrative. And remember this, too, when all about you feels lost and your imagination has run out of fuel. Don't forget that no story stays the same for long. You have agency. You can decide to turn the page. And, like, built into those words is also this notion of resilience. You know, not every part of this story is going to go the way you want it to go, and it's planting the seed. That I think, is a lesson that so many of us eventually learn, often from a place of surrender on our knees, you know, which is whether we deem something good or bad. It's this classic phrase, this too shall pass. And the question is, like, how do we want to weather it in all the different ways? And if we believe that notion that in your words, no story stays the same for long, and we believe that we can then have some sense of agency in determining how it changes and how it shifts.

Absolutely.

That's a powerful message, a powerful place to be.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the beauty of living life. You know, you get a chance to see things change and evolve. And, you know, I always just tell people, if you can internalize the beauty of the universe and you recognize the change of seasons, you recognize the blossoming and decaying of flowers, you recognize the ebbs and flows of the ocean, and you realize all those things exist with inside of you emotionally, spiritually, mentally. And when you tap into that, you truly tap into the power of the universe. And if you show up in that way, you can transform any space and to be the most magical or destructive space imaginable or possible.

Now that feels like a great place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Smile a lot. You know, to live a good life. Smile a lot. You know, laughter to me is the greatest, greatest, you know, antidote to anything. And despite the circumstances I came from, you know, one of the things that I always remind people of that even in prison we found a way to laugh.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you will also love the conversation we had with Ani DiFranco, joined by a number of other guests, in fact one calling in from a max security prison while we were on the recording.

All about the current system of justice.

And how it relates to expression and personal narratives and human dignity. You'll find a link to Ani's episode in the show Notes.

And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects you and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes or you can also find it.

At your favorite bookseller.

Now until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields.

Signing off for Good Life Project.

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