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Mom’s love was harsh like sandpaper, suffocating like a thick pillow. I had to carry myself according to her rules,
what hurt worse was the envy I felt: this boy had a father willing to protect him like that.
Each year in the United States, three thousand men of color are murdered before their twenty-fifth birthday.
Poverty doesn’t feel like poverty when it’s all you know, when you’re surrounded by those just like you, when you can’t conceive of any other way.
to take my pain, doubt, and fear and project it all forward onto something else, to create something out of it.
If you push something down, it’ll find its way out. You can’t run from it. Jay-Z says we can’t heal what we never reveal.
Alexandra Grimes liked this
There’s the trauma of life in the projects, and there’s the survivors’ means of processing it. This kind of violence is so rampant, so habitual, that we put on blinders just to get through the day. We normalize the abnormal.
That’s why someone who is clean for thirty years can still call himself an addict. They’re always one choice away.
felt stripped, lost, emptied-out. It was like this darkness crept in on me during the end of that show.
Everybody’s at war with different things. I’m at war with my own heart sometimes. —Tupac Shakur
An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. —Nina Simone
Letting go freed me.
Instead of disappearing into the darkness, he turned into the very definition of a role model, running a program to help prepare men for reentry.
The trauma ages the kids. It takes their youth away, and they can’t ever get that back. Like the enamel on your teeth.
my own nonprofit Making Kids Win,
Violence interrupters are formerly incarcerated people, credible messengers, who disrupt violence brewing in the community.
Service simply means we embrace the possibility of living for more than ourselves….
There’s no justice, they say. There’s just us. And if we each do our part, that should be more than enough.
Getting a second chance at life is about service. Wanting to use my time and platform to give back keeps me sane, keeps me balanced. It’s part of my food now. It gives me perspective and purpose.
If my shoulders aren’t strong enough for others to stand on, then I’m wasting my second chance.
want to be the spotlight itself. Shine on others. If you’ve got the light and the heat, it may stroke your ego, but so what?
